Ayn Rand and Objectivism: Is Atlas Shrugging? (Leonard Peikoff on McCuistion TV)

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] my question talking about things that matter with people who care production of mquan program is made possible in part by the Hillcrest Foundation the Hatton W sumers Foundation Sterling software headquartered in Dallas Sterling software is a worldwide provider of software products and services for electronic Commerce applications in systems management and highly Technical Services for the federal government and by the Dallas Business Journal provider of up-to-date business news the latest trends market analysis and tips to help you succeed in [Music] business according to a survey in Parade Magazine I Ran's most famous novel Atlas Shrugged is the second most influential book ever written ranking only the Bible her other major novel The Fountain Head was written 55 years ago and yet it and Atlas Shrug continued to sell about a 100,000 books a year even now 16 years after inran died but just who was inran and why did she write these and other works her philosophy is called objectivism in which she argues that selfishness is a virtue but what does that mean as we prepare for the 21st century today we have a special treat one guest Dr Leonard peacock IR Ran's handpicked legal and intellectual he he's here from his home in California to answer these and other questions let's meeting please welcome from California Leonard Poff Leonard we're delighted that you're here well I'm glad to be here thanks for having me who was on Rand an Rand was a novelist a philosopher Arts champion of reason you her famous novels are ad in the Fountain Head and her uh philosophy is a defense of reason and individualism you met her when you were just a kid so to speak tell us tell us how that happened uh through a mutual friend I was a teenager I was in Premed I was visiting California and I wangled an invitation to her home and uh I asked a couple of philosophic questions and she gave me overwhelming answers completely blew me away every everyone I had ever met before her thought that philosophy was a matter of opinion and there were no answers and she gave straightforward detailed 20 minute long answers that not only answered the question but that finished with the mistakes I had made in my thinking that caused me to ask it and not to know the answer myself I was on the floor at the end of that there are a lot of people and and we a lot of us have read the books about her uh and even though I never met her a lot of people who would say that while she was brilliant I don't think anybody would deny that would say that it was sometimes difficult maybe intimidating did you find that to be the case I never found her intimidating she had a definite quick intense temper and if she thought that you were doing deliberately something irrational uh uh or engaging in some form of sloppy thinking when you could have done better she would be quick to be indignant to put it mildly but if you could show her the reason behind your question the thing that you didn't know that she didn't realize that you didn't know she calmed down right away so I never had a problem with that I knew there was going to be an explosion but I knew I could cope with it I'm glad you could and i' just like not to have one in this program if it's all right with you um Leonard she is someone who even the people who have read her novels a lot of people pronounce her name anran which is what we find all the time ion rhymes with mine that's she used to say that wasn't her real name tell us something about her background how she got here what her real name was her real name God was a Alicia Rosen bomb is that right yeah Alicia rosenbom uh I've only known her as on Rand she was born in Russia in 1905 she went through school and high school college there um escaped at 21 to the United States uh completely poverty stricken she didn't know the language very well and she went to Hollywood with the idea of writing in silent films and happened by sheer accident to bump into cesil be de Mill and he employed her first uh in the movie The King of Kings the silent movie by the way on the set of that movie while she had just come to this country she found the man that she was in love with and she tripped him in one of the takes in order to get to meet him because she couldn't think of any way you know to get him to talk to her and they started dating subsequently she worked with a screenwriter for dill and she married Fran o Conor why did she write these kinds of novels and what caused her what drove her do you know that well what drove her was she decided at the age of nine to become a writer a novelist because she said she did not like the world the way it was she wanted the world as it could be and should be and that was her view of art so she started writing stories from the age of nine but childlike stories at the same time she was developing a philosophy and she saw the two as being related to each other because you couldn't present the ideal man until you could Define what he was and the purpose of philosophy was to define the ideal man so the two grew up together right her early stories and her first philosophy both before she was 13 well we think sometimes of of people who decide early on what they're going to do in life it sometimes works out sometimes doesn't but for someone to come from Russia uh to America not knowing the language and then to be able to write those kinds of novels and for those of you who haven't seen them they're about this thick with the perfection in language that she used must have taken an incredible amount of discipline oh incredible and a tremendous amount of practice she started off writing short stories and broken English and writing scenarios for a silent screen and she didn't sell anything until she felt she was competent in English and it was really she arrived here in 26 and it wasn't until the Fountain Head which was close to 20 years later that she felt she completely mastered English a lot of people myself included read The Fountain Head in college and there was even a book written it usually starts with iron RAM and people read this they get very um let's say caught up in the story I think when people write about philosophy sometimes we think it's it's dry it's difficult but she wrote it as a novel as she did with Atlas Shrug why did she choose that form because she wanted ideas in the lives of people where they belong she did not want them as floating generalities she wanted stories about actual people showing concretely what different ideas did in their lives and then at the end she usually had an abstract summation like roor speech or G speech in which you gave the general meaning of the events that you'd seen concretely in advance so she didn't want meaningless fiction or empty philosophy she wanted philosophy appli to concrete lights you have a radio show uh in Los Angeles syndicated in several markets around the country and the show's title is what philosophy who needs it so it's a belligerent uh it in the sense that I get asked that question all the time so I figured I'd make that the the title of the show and then show them why people need philosophy why do people need philosophy because they're alive they're human they have a rational faculty they can't escape it you can escape as physics never have a thought on it in your entire life you cannot Escape philosophy because implicitly or if not explicitly you have some kind of values some idea of what you're after what's good or bad what's desirable or undesirable that's ethics and you have some idea what you will take as reliable knowledge what counts as true and what is just nonsense or absurd and that's epistemology that's the branch of philosophy which tells you how to acquire reliable knowledge so those two branches which are the key of to philosophy you can't avoid you can either have unconscious mixed up contradictory ideas or consistent explicit ones that's it she said some things and we have a Graphic on our screen right now about philosophy and I can see it from here and I'll read it to the audience as a human being you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy your only choice is whether you define your Philosophy by a conscious rational discipline process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions false generalizations undefining contradictions undusted slogans and unidentified doubts and fears obviously she didn't have a strong opinion about it as you can as you can tell she never held strong opinion very tentative about everything exactly but when she I mean when she put this philosophy together she didn't have I I don't even know she went to college did she yes she got to college bachelor's degree in Russia in Russia in in journalism or no um she majored in history in history okay because she said there was no way to tell people what they ought to do until you first found out what they had done and the what the results were and I think that's something that that a lot of people a lot of people talk about the future but I find that a lot of people don't understand where they are now much less where they've come from did she basically say that you had to understand where you came from where you were before you understood where you were going yeah she thinks that a knowledge of History was an essential to originate a proper philosophy because it's the laboratory of human actions we see what choices people made and what the consequences were you just have to look the middle middle ages versus the Renaissance or the ancient world and that's tells you what belief in God does in human life to get in one indication well now you just mentioned something that I would imagine is probably the most controversial part of her philosophy uh a lot of people who I personally know who've talked about this over the years have said I really agree with what i r Manet I really agree with objectivism which is what she called her philosophy however you know there's that but and however uh she didn't believe in God and you just mentioned that that some of these atrocities that you mentioned in the Middle Ages had to do with h faith in some way tell us what that controversy is all about well she didn't believe in God or Gremlins or ghosts or Santa Claus or witches or anything Supernatural by definition the Supernatural is that which transcends the realm of physical objects which are interconnected which make up nature so they're not accessible to our senses it's not accessible to our reason because our reason can only draw conclusions from the sensory material that we observe so therefore it's something unknowable and in conflict with everything we do know so her attitude was either you accept reality as you perceive it and your mind which is your means of knowing it or you reject all of reality and your mind for the sake of something unknowable that contradicts them both and she certainly in a choice like that there was no question but but but but 90% of the people Plus in this country almost all of which are very nice people uh very productive people uh many of whom are intellectual um many of whom are scientists many of whom are are super large IQs um believe in the concept of God on some basis uh they 39% of them go to church Etc I mean they have a lot of different ways of defining it but they believe in something Beyond this Earth Beyond themselves how do you explain that well I'll quote her she said it's earlier than you think historically speaking we're still emerging from the medieval period Century each Century since the Renaissance has seen a decline in religion uh and it's still disappearing but it's going to take a long long time and one of the main reasons that people continue to believe in God good people is because they believe that's the only possible source of ethics and of course the intellectuals and Educators today tell them that they tell them that uh everything is a matter of opinion there are no absolutes there is no morality uh that's what's presented as the secular Viewpoint and therefore people come to the conclusion that if they believe in Morality and after all a human being can't live without a moral code they have to do it through religion religion has had a mon on morality and that is its lifeblood and that's what iron Ryan was out to break that tie between religion and ethic but how can you how can you have a moral code without appealing to the Supernatural Well how can you have it by appealing to the supern I ask you first okay it's very simple what is morality according to an ran the standard of morality is man's life the good is that which promotes human life and if man has has to survive by a certain means he has a rational faculty every living organism has a means of survival and man's is the mind so therefore you have to live by a code of Virtues uh which enable you to use your mind to the full and uh she defined what they consist of Independence Integrity Justice every one of those is validated as being a form of rationality and essential therefore to the full development of the mind and therefore to self-preservation uh a lot of people uh however have either never been exposed to that or don't believe it you wrote this book a few years ago called objectivism the philosophy of irran and you wrote about it pretty specifically in here what would you suggest to that person watching this program who is interested in expanding their mind not necessarily agreeing with your position obviously but how could they best understand where you're coming from so they can either argue against against it or agree with it as a case may be well I mean if they want a short presentation a medium a long a fiction emphasis on ethics on politics there's a there's a tremendous amount of literature out there I wouldn't recommend starting with my book because it's fairly comprehensive and and I hope uh you know helpful but it's a more advanced it's not easy to read is what you're trying to say and I can tell you that I tried to make it but you know it's hard not that difficult but it's not it's not your 495 novel that it's not a Gish novel to say the least I I wish it sold like that um but they they can start with i they should start with the Fountain Head is a simple story uh that anyone can read and be interested in and can grasp something of the ideas and then they can go on from there okay thanks what is the present status of the teaching of objectivism and what do you see in the immediate future for objectivism you mean the teaching of objectivism in the schools no no no among people like this seminars and universities and so forth well the irand institute in Los Angeles runs programs has a essay contests and campus clubs uh throughout high schools and colleges in this country and there are individual professors at the universities that make various works of iron RS required not nearly enough our universities to to answer directly in my opinion are closed uh to controversy only fashionable controversy they allow but if it's something that is not accepted by uh their significant others is something that challenges what they essentially believe they are barred to it they simply closed they won't allow it in as I know having I taught for many years in in philosophy departments and I know what the attitude of of of colleges is to unpopular idea one of the uh things that I think you and and I and Rand and some others talked about over many years was the idea of of actually getting more of this taught on the college campuses in fact I think at one point in your time you just said that's the key item I think you kind of backed off of that um but today with the Iron Man Institute and some other folks do put on seminars right you do courses by by phone or how does that work oh I do phone courses all the time with people around the around the world but there on more advanced courses on objectivism but there are institutions that specialize and putting together conferences and courses uh but that's not Harvard and Yale unfortunately not yet thanks um getting back to the religion issue um uh everybody ascribes reason to whatever their philosophy is this may not be a direct quote but if my my memory serving correctly Ian said that um religion is the antithesis of reason yeah um how would you answer those who think whatever their philosophy happens to be whether it's religious or not has a sense of reason to it well I'd say we have to say what reason is if you define reason appropriately then you can decide what it is or isn't uh reasonable now I Define reason as that which is either based on sensory observation or logical inference there from and which is expressible in conceptual terms uh that is to say it can't be I have an INE able grasp of something that I can't put into words if it can't be put into words it's out as far as reason is concerned if it can't be supported by evidence it's out so uh so the leap of faith doesn't count the leap of faith is C is the antithesis of Reason faith is the acceptance in the either in the absence of reason or in opposition to reason so Plato for instance thinks that the form of the good which is equivalent of God is reached by reason but reason for him is an ineffable grasp in that case of a supernatural entity so I certainly wouldn't call that reason absolutely not thank you thank you Lance I I think we can all agree that ion rant had enormous uh impact on the political culture not only of this country but of the entire world socialism is in Retreat I think that the world is a very different place from what it was in the 1960s when I was growing up but one thing I would like to see and I'd like to ask you about is I think that if Atlas Shrug was turned into a movie that would do more to disseminate the great ideas of iron Rand than anything else I can think of even more the movie uh iron Rand a sense of Life which I saw in LA and I'd like to see in Dallas as well but my on my understanding if I'm incorrect about this let me know is that you have something to do with whether or not this movie is ever to be produced now not true um I had something to do with it and watched the movie uh be turned down by every major Hollywood studio and every television network and most major stars on the ground that it's simply too controversial their agents or their lawyers wouldn't let them come near it the Moguls didn't want have anything to do with it and I finally sold the rights outright to someone and I no longer have any control a businessman who is trying to uh toh do something with it whether and what he's going to do I have no idea I I backed out of it because I decided that it was premature there was not the talent or ability in Hollywood or in the television world to make that book so and a couple of things I think that perhaps um most people here know that the Fountain Head was made into a movie I think in about 1942 or 44 with Gary Cooper and it was a black and white movie an interesting movie to say the least and he also mentioned or maybe it was Phil who mentioned the movie Ein Rand a sense of life and I think Lance you said you had seen that tell us a bit about that movie we hop to get some clips but because of all the releases we couldn't get them for this program tell us just a bit about that movie and what it's all well that's a two-hour documentary that was made after her death uh basically out of interviews from her friends or her appearances on Mike Wallace Johnny Carson and so on it's a kind of biography using a lot of Stills uh from her estate that I uh provided and it was nominated actually for an Academy Award which I just almost you could have knocked me over with a with less than a feather uh it didn't win but that it got nominated uh in today's Academy was amazing it's very instructive and it's showing now if anybody want is interested in seeing it yeah it's a very passionate film too yes sir um given that one of the central tenants is that selfishness is a virtue and the non-belief in in Supernatural power um given that I read Ein rind a long time ago could you sort of give me a little bit of overview how do you what force do you use as a break against uh rampant selfishness hurting other people you know we have to Define selfishness selfishness is simply holding yourself and your welfare is the Top Value it does not say how you should achieve your values or even how to define your welfare hran defines your welfare in terms of your life as a human being and defines virtue as the exercise of reason so her definition of selfishness is acting to achieve your own Welfare by your own mind and effort neither sacrificing yourself to others nor others to yourself so there's absolutely a Prohibition against sacrifice as such she rejects the idea which is common today that there's only one two choices in life either you cut your throat for other people and that's called altruism and self-sacrifice or you cut their throat for you and that's called selfishness she tells us that gives you only a choice of throat cutting and it's just a haggling over whose blood is going to be shed the proper human policy should be we're against it we oppose sacrifice as such each man lives as an independent entity achieving his own goals and trading with others voluntarily when he chooses to so there's no no Malignant Force that you have to have a breakup um you have on the screen now uh her definition of altruism and she says it's the basic principle of altruism that man has no right to exist for his own sake that service to others is the only justification of his existence and self-sacrifice Is His Highest moral duty virtue and value she talked about it a lot in all of her books and all the other things that she wrote and yet uh does that mean that people don't do things for other people well this is the point altruism is a term coined byus com in the 19th century it means literally otherism it it's was a substitute for theology just as under religion you were supposed to sacri live for God and everything was for God he said you should live for others and everything is for others it was just a placing of humanity in the position of God but the individual was still a self-sacrificial agent now the fact of doing something for others is not incompatible with egoism if you do it for selfish reasons if you do it for selfish gain if it's somebody you love my wife for instance I would certainly throw myself into the water to save her life because my Life is Richer with hers and I wouldn't want to go on without her so I would do something to help her and the same for my daughter or for friends uh but I do it on the grounds that they mean something to me and they Advance my life that's not altruism it's altruism when I help others as a sacrifice when I jump in the water to save Adolf Hitler whom I lo and despise but what the hell I shouldn't be selfish and assert my standards I'm supposed to live for others and he's another he's not me right well we just had on the screen the definition of egoism and I won't read it I think it's been up there long enough for people to see but but Define for us the difference between egoism and egotism well egotism is not a philosophic term egotism has been defined is an obnoxious egoist but I think that's just a joke and it's a coinage of the other Camp so I don't use the word okay thanks yes sir I'm curious what impact you think objectivism has had on the real world uh an earlier questioner thought that it had a major impact I'm not a sanguin about that I do know that we the living was made into a movie by Bonito musolini in 1942 musolini under his regime that was pirated and he took it out of circulation within about 3 months because people were cheering the movie because they realized it was so anti-fascist and he didn't know his people didn't have the brains to realize that and as soon as they grasped it he got orders from the the Germans under Hitler to get that movie out of the theaters right away well that's a story I'd heard I had heard it was supposed to come across as an anti-communist movie and it actually it was an anti-communist story but it was also anti-fascist right so it ended up coming across as anti-totalitarian so do you think objectivism played a role in helping roll back totalitarianism and what impact does it play today in the real world I don't know whether it had a role in helping to roll back totalitarianism it had a role in to some extent in some individuals and some leaders not feeling so guilty about standing up for freedom and individual rights which they used to feel tremendously guilty and there have been individual leaders around the world that have claimed to be influenced by by it uh Margaret Thatcher is was an obvious example but I wouldn't go so I'm not paranoid enough to think that it's had that greater role in the world I think its main role is going to be in the future in the generations Growing Up Now who are learning it and going to go into the colleges and teach it thanks Mr Poff um I come to you as someone who was fortunate enough to have an Rand uh in Rand and some of her Works taught to me at the University and required for courses what University Bowling Green State University in philosophy yeah and um I the the course was on rights Theory and one of the things that uh since this gentleman has opened up the discussion of her view of of government uh from the headlines today we hear the uh the uh Republic of Texas people are being tried and one of the things that I've read in your book and I read in her works is that uh we have an obligation to follow rational government that we should even go as so far as to give up our right of physical force and self-defense you say accept extreme situations uh and let the government take that over that it's that it's the government's job my question is what happens when we no long if we don't have a rational government and are you obligated to follow laws of a non-rational government how far ask me that because it's against the law to Advocate breaking the law so if I did think so I wouldn't be free to say it all I can uh tell you is that if your government is not rational you have to decide in your own mind is there's still free speech or not if there's still free speech you have a chance to fight and therefore I say you should fight intellectually educationally ideologically if however and at the point when there's censorship then go underground revolt and have another American Revolution but I think think it's too soon to give up this country I don't think it's time to say it's hopeless as long as you can have programs like this Leonard the the issue of of the role of government she spent a lot of time in her novels and in writing other ways about what she saw as the appropriate role of government tell us what that role is and tell us kind of where you see us now in a spectrum of where we are in terms terms of the limits that she would Place versus where we are today she believed with the founding fathers that there are a few inalienable rights life liberty property and the pursuit of happiness and that the they can be violated only by physical force or the threat or fraud and that the function of government is to protect us in those rights against force or fraud and that this meant three essential agencies the police protect you against domestic crime the military against foreign and the courts to enable us to adjudicate disputes without having to resort to war or to to fist fights beyond that she said there should be less aair hands off there should be no welfare state there should be none of the things that Franklin Roosevelt introduced no antitrust legislation nothing nothing that has been injected since this country was founded has been a continuous departure from the ideals of the Founding Fathers as to where we are now if you take communism and uh uh Nazism as the extreme of the complete collapse of Rights we are somewhere well over halfway from the founding fathers to complete totalitarianism it's it's impossible to quantify but the common belief among the parties today is not to protect rights but the simply dispute is which rights to violate and the Liberals want to the government to control economics and the conservatives want government to control morality and spiritual issues to impose their beliefs by force and so between the Republicans and the Democrats it's a fight over who is going to H get new laws on faster and which new laws between both of them how long have we got it's impossible for a philosopher to predict but the trend is bad it's getting worse it has been bad for a long time and you yourself could know this if you imagine bringing Jefferson or Madison back and let them look at Washington today they would drop debt they they it would be inconceivable they talked about a debased posterity but they could never have dreamt you know in their worst nightmares of what is taken for granted today as a common sense thanks you led right into my question uh very very well uh you spoke of Democrats and Republicans everything that I ran said was so libertarian I was a lowercase libertarian until I read Ein ran many of us came to the libertarian party became capitel Libertarians can you tell us exactly why she objected to the formation of the party absolutely libertarianism is an ad hoc group around the term Liberty and their view is let's forget about philosophy or definitions if you are for Liberty regardless of your definition or or the philosophy that led you to it or the lack of philosophy that led you to it will unite together now I say that makes Liberty a travesty it makes it an empty term it's a banner unfurled to attract every crackpot in the world who says he's for Liberty it would be exactly as if I said let's start a party the justices party whoever is for justice come to me I don't care your definition I don't care your philosophy let's promote Justice in the world you'd say obviously you can't do that and you tell me what Justice is what you mean by it why it's good otherwise Adolf Hitler was for justice he was for laan's realm you know Justice to the German people Liberty is empty it's meaningless and what you get there for is a bunch of crackpots such as Anarchist not not you you are obviously there under a misapprehension but and there's a lot of there's a lot of people that go into libertarianism thinking that this is really for Liberty and then find out differently but they have anarchists they have Iran used to call them hippies of the right uh to cut it short Terry uh one of the people that followed einan's philosophy and was quite well known today is alen Greenspan the chairman of the uh the fed and I want to ask you what you feel what influence that Ein ran had on him and if we've seen some of that in the policies that he has administered and if he has parted ways why he did that oh I wouldn't want to comment on him personally I haven't spoken to Allan for many many years I do not believe that he's acting in accordance with objectivism except in so far as he works to keep inflation uh down but his behavior on the Social Security Commission and on several other things in my opinion puts him totally at odds with objectivism as to why he's doing it you f the Federal Reserve and ask them um where I'm trying to figure out who who influenc who if if if either um Hayak talked about enlightened self-interest um does how does that word enlightened fit in to the selfishness concept is doesn't that require a certain degree of Enlightenment on the part of the population before this concept of selfishness can can flourish well that's not on Ran's term en interest she believes in rational self-interest enlightened self-interest goes back I believe to the 18th century and the idea a was that your Enlightenment consists of not being completely selfish but in incorporating other people's welfare into your own so it was a hodg Podge a mixture of altruism the whole 18th century in that regard morally speaking was a compromise between egoism and uh service to others they were trying to combine Greek and Christian ethics and enlightened self-interest wasn't one of the forms of that compromise but she doesn't compromise she goes back in that regard to Aristotle who was a pure naked egoist uh he believed that you live for your own happiness and you achieve it by developing your own potentiality uh how did an Ran's philosophy Express itself in politics or did she well I just said you mean the function of government or or do you mean practical politics how did she practice what kind of politics did she well she voted for the lesser of two evils when she voted do you mean that was she involved in the political process in her early years in this country she thought that she could get together a group of people you know on the right and do something and it was a series of bitter disillusionments to her to find out how me moed how compromising and how inep they were and she finally renounced practical politics altto together on the ground that it's just too soon you can't have a political revolution before you have an intellectual one and that's what she devoted herself to well along that line one of the things that she talked about the thing that that you mentioned that her theory of politics so to speak is a social system known as capitalism uh tell us what capitalism is I think we have a Graphic that talks about capitalism so if I can get the right one up here we'll look at capitalism in just a second and I think that is U graphic number eight let's look at what capitalism what she said about it and then tell us in your own words how capitalism is the ideal so to speak here's what she says the moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve the common good the moral justification of capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man's rational nature that it protects man's survival qua man and that its ruling principle is Justice tell us what she meant by is she strictly a la Fair capitalist pig is that basically the situation she is a complet well pig is your evaluation L she is complete L air unregulated uncontrolled which is not Anarchy it's the way this country was founded it's government as a protector of individual rights as I've earlier defined but no economic role capitalism is a separation of state and economics just in the same way and for the same reasons as we have the separation of state and religion as long as no physical crime is committed no fraud is committed everything is up to the voluntary transactions of the individuals involved and you succeed by producing a better product and out outdoing your competitors uh you fail if you can't uh so each man is on his own his motive should be profit that is a selfish motive which he achieves by production not by government favors what we have today is not capitalism what we have is a mixed economy which has some capitalist some fascist some communist and some you know distinctively uh eclectic undefinable elements all of it mashed together and pushed by pressure groups uh so today people think that capitalism is favors to businessmen that's some Republicans definition but that is not capitalism that is no more capitalism than favors to any group is capitalism capitalism means hands off it means unrestricted Doggy Dog each individual for his own uh profit committing no crimes a crime defined as force or front Okay you would agree that with most people uh economists who would say that that sort of an approach it's uh let's just call it the Adam Smith invisible hand that each person working in their own self-interest would as if by an invisible hand improve the lot of everybody but I think where you would disagree is that that would be the reason for it is that right absolutely I would thank you for saying that I say I have to say that all the time of course capitalism advances the public good but that is not its justif ification otherwise the implication would be the purpose of each of us in this life is to serve the public and here's a system that serves the public therefore it's good we don't believe that our perp our purpose in life is to serve others and therefore it's a secondary consequence obviously if you leave each individual free to pursue his own happiness and then stand back the group as a whole is going to be M much better off so it's you can't avoid that but it's not that you're leaving each man free because you're more interested in the group as a group groups as a group are a collective and that's a myth it's just a summation of individuals I'm going to go to this question here then we're going to talk about collectivism and what she said about that okay you mentioned the original Constitution and that an ran would have been a supporter of that with some exceptions with some exceptions uh the dominant intellectual influence on the founders was John Lock in the social contract I'm curious if you think uh an Rand is an advocate of the social contract and if not or if so what what are the intellectual um errors that she has you mentioned Aristotle are there any other people that we can cite well Aristotle is her main favorite in the history of philosophy Thomas aquinus to the extent that he reintroduced Aristotle minus his Catholicism but he was a great philosopher if you ever read Suma theologica he was it was a brilliant mind and he really understood Aristotle and John Lock to the extent that he carried that same thing forward because there was a strong Aristotelian element in lock in his advocacy of Rights unfortunately lock is a hodg podge of Augustine and dayart and many other things in addition so he's a very weak read but in so far as he advocated individual rights he was directly responsible for this country Sur you mentioned earlier that we've come a long way from the founders and I think that's evident to everyone we're uh you say over 50% towards fascism totalitarianism of some type and the question is you mentioned in your book that we need a Vigilant population our Founders believe this as well to maintain the institutions that Foster Liberty my question is how do you uh uh how do you think we can go do you think we can go back or go forward to the uh to go forward to history in a sense oh I think we can I think we will but I'd have to say ultimately and ultimately can be a very long time it depends on education it depends upon people being taught the right ideas I think the majority of people in this country are reasonable people in this country they still are experienc the American Legacy there's a tremendous breach between the intellectuals the university professors and the public if you could infiltrate the universities if they would have one pro capitalist Pro reason Professor for every hundred socialists and irrationalist I think the country would be safe we would have nothing to worry about so that to me is the Practical problem to break the Monopoly of the universities on uh uh accepting only one uh Viewpoint you know they have all kinds of controversies within the Dogma you can have 10 kinds of irrationalism and 10 kinds of socialism but you can't get outside those uh categories and that's what has to be done and uh practically speaking there's various possible ways uh one of which would be to convince big business to stop financing these people because that is truly altruism that is truly giving the money to your own Killers um the thing that some some people have said that the only Marxist leninist left in the world are professors tenure professors on college campus is in America yes I want to talk about this concept of collectivism we have graphic number nine I want to read that and then I want you to tell us about what she meant by collectivism and then this idea of of whether communism and fascism are some people see it as a as a fascism as a far right and a communism as a far left and try to tie that together so if we could look at that graphic right now it says here according to her that fascism and communism are not two opposites but are two rival gangs fighting over the same territory both are variants of statism based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state exactly what did she mean by that well collectivism is the exaltation of the group above the individual and then of the State as the representative of the group having absolute authority to do what it wishes to the individual collectivist systems differ only according to how they Define the Supreme group so communism and Nazism differ in that communism uses economic uh criteria and Nazi uses racial criteria one says the proletariat the dispossessed is the is the uh Supreme group and the other says no the racial Elite the Aryans but there no difference between them as systems except who is which particular Collective is devouring the individual but that the individual should be devoured that it's the function of the state to enslave him totally in the name of service to the group is in identical in the two systems Dr peov you've seen that in today's environment one of the major forces that's influencing our world is the internet and technology and you knew Miss Rand very well probably better than anyone if she were alive to today what do you think would be her opinion of the internet the worldwide web the news groups and what do you think she would tell us today how could anybody have a negative opinion of the internet the internet is the Magnificent disseminator sometimes of misinformation but it's the potential of disseminating information and of freeing us from dependence on you know a small C cabal of people of newspaper owners or whatever it's a it's a fantastic uh Discovery and the great thing about the internet is the government doesn't not yet know how to regulate it uh they're they're trying to get their foot in the door but the internet so far has been very vocal that people connected with it in in denouncing the attempt and as long as they hold out that's a major Bastion of Freedom they're U while you were talking they they flash your uh website address so you'll probably be hearing from some people so be ready for it what the heck uh let me shift in the just the 10 minutes that we have left to a couple of things first about uh the novel at shrug and I had had shown you this earlier something that we found in Colorado which is an appropriate State before first uh on the front of this thing it says uh John G Veil and on the back of it it says we can get a shot of this I can hold it up here who is John GT uh tell us and for that viewer who probably hasn't read Atlas Shrugged what does this phrase mean what did it have to do with the story you me answer it though because that's the mystery of the novel no not I don't want the whole answer right but just give us enough that who is John G is the opening line of the book and it is something that is said by all the different characters in moods of futility and despair and hopelessness so it conveys somehow something has happened to the world something has gone wrong we can't cope anymore what's the use who is John gon then the story is to find out who is John G and what did he or I don't want to give away what did it have to do with the state of the world what caused the collapse of the world and can it be rebuilt it's a story about uh a strike as well and in and in your instance it's a story about a strike when when a certain group of people who've never gone on strike before actually go on strike tell us just a bit about that again without giving away the story well once you say the strike she was going to call it the strike right and uh she was persuaded not to on the grounds that would give away the a plot but now we've done it so it's a it's a strike of the men of the mind she said every other kind of people have gone on strike and said now we demand so and so or you can't have what we have to offer she said this is the first strike of the thinkers who are actually the producers the intellectuals in in the valid sense of the term who make the world go round and who have always been cursed as being selfish or intransigent or materialistic or commercial or whatever and this is the time when they stop and they say if you want what we have to offer you have got to do it on our terms and they vanish and you see what happens to the world when that when it has every single thing that it has today it has every Washington politician uh it has every Professor it has everything it's got except it does not have the great producers or the great thinkers in any field and then you see what happen well she wrote this novel roughly between 1945 and 1957 and but people would say that uh she was an incredible predictor of the future but I'm not sure that's why she wrote it is it oh no she wrote it because she saw the principle she saw it happening here in the 30s she was very disillusioned when she came to this country because she found that the intellectuals in the 30s were saying the very things that she had run from in Soviet Russia she was astounded she couldn't believe it for 5 to 10 years after she arrived here she kept asking herself it must be that she's getting a misinterpretation of the country that it is so far left that she could have been in Soviet Russia and then she started the war against these intellectuals and they retaliated by declaring war on her from all sides right and left the left of course hated her because she was anti capitalist and the right because she was anti-religious and the middle because she was an absolutist so uh you know the entire Spectrum turned on her but I think she was equal to it cuz she turned on them I'm going to get another comment here from him but first he had had something on this lapel here and it's something that I have worn for one reason because of this but also because I'm a former Banker if we can get a shot maybe get a shot of mine and it looks a lot like his his just happens to be bigger which means he has more money but uh um I I tell people on the one on my lapel this was an 8ot by 8ot dollar sign this is after taxes and regulation so that's that's what I point out um tell us about the dollar sign why it was important to her well the dollar sign was a symbol to her free trade and therefore of free Minds it was a symbol of freedom and originally you know the dollar sign was the monogram of the US it's the USU and she said that if you want to know the fate of United States ask yourself what the chances are of a country that uses its own monogram as a symbol of depravity and you know that in every cartoon where there's a corrupt figure he's got a dollar sign and pig eyes and uh that's the state that we've come to in the United States I just wanted to say I I guess my view is a little bit more optimistic towards the future future and the current state of you know if you want to assess where we are in the world today with individualism versus collectivism I mean we are we have seen the fall of the Berlin Wall the total collapse of the Soviet Union I see Market forces uh fervent and alive and and I see Central Europe coming around and becoming more capitalist and more free freedom of speech has been restored I see a great cause of optimism and I also attribute that to to iron Ran's philosophy and having a subtle indirect influence which is permeating throughout the entire world culture can you comment on that yes I would agree with you it's certainly a good thing that the Cold War is Over and that Russia collapsed uh there is a much more International capitalism than there was the problem is the battle has been won but the American leadership does not know it and is giving away the store in the process so they're going to get us right back to the same position again they built up Russia by trade and lend Le and every kind of favor Russia collapsed despite it by virtue of the inefficacy of Communism now Clinton and his friends are repeating the same thing with red China I think if Clinton were to be impeached it shouldn't be because of who he slept with or played with in the White House it should be because he allowed Hong Kong to be taken over by Red China that is such a TR tra traitorous action to allow the one Bastion of Freedom over there the greatest Bastion of freedom to be taken over by this corrupt vicious country and to turn the other cheek and and say yes it's fine with us when and he is the only superpower left in in the world he wouldn't even have had to go to war he would just simply have had to say keep your nose out of Hong Kong and we mean it but of course No One Believes the United States in foreign policy because the United States is a total wimp in foreign policy so that even this creature in uh Iraq uh thumb his nose at us it it's a disgrace to have a foreign a country with this weak of foreign power uh foreign policy that is as strong militarily and it's because it's undercut morally because it the leadership has no confidence in the principles on which this country was founded they spend their entire time apologizing for it and in global altruism trying to serve and the worst the nation according to altruism the more noble you are to serve it so they're loving their enemies and killing us in the Pro uh there was an interesting column by George will a couple of days ago when he went forward three or four years and and uh the president was down in Antarctica U apologizing in Antarctica because we hadn't done much for them lately uh that we've been apologizing for uh everything it's obvious to me and we just have a couple minutes left that uh you and your philosophy and and she and her philosophy uh don't apologize for much um are you just that confident of your I mean it's it's it's it's rare to find someone whose opinions are just it seems to be this black and white and and this is the way it is Take Me As I am well do you apologize for the fact that two and two is four and that you know it you can prove it and if no matter how big the gang that says it's five it doesn't shake you up well some people loved irran some people hated her because of some of these things didn't they oh yes great great many especially institutional pressure groups hated her because it was the end of feeding at the trough it was the the end of the big business that were getting all their special favors it was the end of the unions that were decreed by law was the end of religions if not they could be voluntary but if people listen to her ideas it was the end of liberals and conservatives and moderates I mean who there's a lot of special interests that were tremendously threatened by her absolutely looking forward the rest of your life you're still a relatively young man or at least the makeup's pretty darn good it's the makeup um what what do you think you can do with your radio show with with the writing that you do what are you trying to accomplish I'm trying to reach a small number of individuals who have the honesty and the intelligence and the interest in philosophy to devote their lives to spreading those ideas to become an educational philosophic Force to change the thinking of this country I don't expect to see more than a dozen individuals uh uh in the time that I have remained that would become accomplished uh teachers and intellectuals you know 10 20 you can't predict exactly and then leave it to them and uh hope I mean where there's life There's Hope and sometimes it looks black but I still think that this is America and uh that however bad it gets there is something of the original American feeling for Life uh left in people that you can't get it break brainwashed out of them totally and that's the only thing to count on we appreciate your sense of life and as Leonard said during the program those who knew IR Rand typically loved her or hated her I've seen the movie of her life it was nominated as he said for an Academy Award and it's entitled IR Rand a sense of life and I recommend it to you but no matter what you think about her ideas if you read and study them they will do one thing if no other and that one thing is the ultimate goal of Education they will will force you to think our goal on this program is now what it has always been to provide you with an objective no pun intended source of information that encourages you to think not just about the headlines that come racing across the TV set every day but rather about what is behind the events the philosophies that determine ideas policies on our next program we'll examine some of those events and compare the philosophies of a liberal a conservative and yes an objectivist join us then when as always we'll talk about things that matter with people who [Music] [Applause] care if you would like to purchase a video of this program for $24.95 and applicable tax or for information on upcoming programs or other mcqu educational projects for business or personal development call 972 255 2599 [Music] production of mishan program is made possible in part by the Hillcrest Foundation the Hatton W sumers Foundation Sterling software headquartered in Dallas Sterling software is a worldwide provider of software products and services for electronic Commerce applications and systems management and highly Technical Services for the federal government and by the Dallas Business Journal provider of up-to-date business news the latest trends market analysis and tips to help you succeed in business

Channel: Ayn Rand Institute

Views: 7,829

Keywords: ARI, Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, Ayn Rand, Ayn Rand Institute, Fountainhead, Individual Rights, Individualism, Objectivism, Objectivist, Philosophy, Reason, Rights, Capitalism, Freedom, Liberty, Atheism, Secular Humanism, Libertarian, Conservative, Libertarianism, Conservatism

Id: o_kkviVezWM

Length: 57min 54sec (3474 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 18 2023