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More oxford books @ www.OxfordeBook.comFore more urdu books visit www.4Urdu.com152FROM NOVELIST TO PHILOSOPHER, 1944–1957apartment. Energetic, polymathic, and erudite, Rothbard dazzled hisretinue, mostly young men who were students at the Bronx High Schoolof Science. This group called themselves “the Circle Bastiat,” after thenineteenth-century French economist Frederic Bastiat, and looked toRothbard as an intellectual leader. When the Circle Bastiat discovered heknew the famous Rand, they clamored to meet her. Rothbard reluctantlyagreed. First he went to her apartment with two students, and then aweek later brought the whole gang.Both visits were “depressing,” Rothbard told Richard Cornuelle in alengthy letter. The passage of time, and the presence of reinforcements,did not help. Rand argued vigorously with George Reisman, one of hisgroup, subjecting him to a barrage of vitriol. According to Rothbard,Reisman was the only one to “realize the power and horror of herposition—and personality.” The rest of the high school students werecaptivated by Rand and eager for more contact. Rothbard, however, wassecretly relieved that Reisman’s battle with Rand provided the perfectexcuse to avoid seeing her again. Even better, he would no longer have todeal with the Collective, a passive, dependent group who “hover aroundher like bees.” 46Rand was bad enough, but Rothbard was truly horrified by theCollective. “Their whole manner bears out my thesis that the adoption ofher total system is a soul-shattering calamity,” he reported to Cornuelle.Rand’s followers were “almost lifeless, devoid of enthusiasm or spark,and almost completely dependent on Ayn for intellectual sustenance.”Rothbard’s discomfort with the Collective masked his own conflictingemotions about Rand and her circle. After all, Rothbard had also gatheredto himself a set of much younger students over whom he exercisedunquestioned intellectual authority. He freely used the word “disciple” torefer to both his and Rand’s students, a word she eschewed. Now someof Rothbard’s own students were feeling the magnetic pull of Rand. EvenRothbard, as he later confessed, was subject to the same response. Manyyears later, speaking of this time, he told Rand, “I felt that if I continued tosee you, my personality and independence would become overwhelmedby the tremendous power of your own.” 47 Rand was like a negative versionof himself, a libertarian Svengali seducing the young.Rothbard fortified his emotional distaste for Rand with intellectualdisagreement. By the time of his second encounter with her, Rothbard