No, Doug, the power of ideas is that they stand or fall on their own merit, and what others do with them is never relevant. Take, for instance, a few of Burns’s false assumptions that you too have embraced.

1. The phrase, “Objectivist orthodoxy” is a contradiction in terms. That is an accusation supported not by the content of the ideas of the philosophy, but rather by what some people allegedly did with them. To be an orthodoxy, there has to be an authority, some god, individual, or collective granted control of the truth. In Objectivism, the only final authority is not Rand, but rather the actual nature of existence that is unequivocally specified to be facts of reality wholly independent of all authorities, including herself. Objectivism imposes only an “orthodoxy” of reality, as it were. But that statement is nonsense on the face of it since “orthodoxy” applies only to the intellectual tyranny of human beings.

Grasping, as Objectivists do, the independence of reality from their own consciousness sparks their obsession with the pursuit of precise knowledge — consistency with that reality — that appears to uninformed onlookers to be an orthodoxy, but only because they are unable to distinguish certainty based on proof from certainty derived from blind faith in an authority.

Rand routinely condemned those who would accept her ideas on face value. She regarded Objectivism as her personal philosophy, and disliked the term “Randian”, and recommended that those who adopted her ideas as their own call themselves “students of Objectivism”, not “Objectivists.”

2. Exacerbating the above is the ubiquitous outrage over the so-called excommunications. As a philosopher, and in particular that philosophy, Rand’s life task was a quest for objective truth — most of which turned out to be a radically new formulation of it. When interest exploded in the early 60′s over Atlas, she gathered some of her brightest fans into her inner circle and helped them to fully understand her ideas so they could then apply them in their respective fields of endeavor. When their writings were published in pamphlets and papers, they would be regarded as approved by her, and so they became an extension of her own ideas.

The problems that ultimately gave birth to the disassociations and excommunications from the inner circle were not envisioned at first because so many assumptions were made by Rand and them about the degree to which these people understood and/or agreed with the implications of the philosophy. I embraced the philosophy in 1966 and attended all of the Institute taped lectures between then and 1968, but sandwiching philosophy into my young career slowed my progress significantly. It took me a decade or more to fully digest it. And I was in the minority, because most who are infatuated with it do not have the time or the will to pursue it thoroughly, and even fewer have the courage to adopt a philosophy that is counter to that of all their peers and family.

Now imagine a member of the group who are her extensions, or Patterson whose writings she had endorsed suddenly promulgating ideas that contradict positios they had previously exhibited and contradicting her as well. What other than immediate and total disassociation from them could protect the integrity of the philosophy that was the single product of her life. To us who had spent most of our lives in a society that kept truth in a quagmire of ambiguity and contradictions, Rand’s unflinching integrity was exhilarating and motivating.

3. Although there is a context in which the phrase “formal Objectivist movement” could have a real referent, in general — and specifically here — it is a misrepresentation. The Nathanial Branden Institute was not a movement, it was a school. Note how brief were her two lapses into political advocacy. By the mid 60′s her message was clear and consistent. Objectivism was “for the new intellectual.” History, including political change, can only be achieved by a change of ideas — of philosophy. Political advocacy other than support for the least of all evils was roundly condemned. Even today, the Objectivist blogs and forums warn that association with the Tea Parties beyond utilizing them to access whatever honest minds are about is counter productive.

Objectivism has not failed to be a viable political movement. It has not even started. That is the fact that baffles libertarians. They cannot grasp that in Rand’s view, capitalism is not a primary goal. It is a natural consequence of living by an ethics of egoism that itself is a consequence of recognizing the supremacy of reason as our access to the facts of an independent reality. Once you grasp that the ideas are the goal, not the politics, and you count the Objectivist professors that have in recent years breached the fortifications of academe, you will stop reporting the demise of Objectivism.