Welcome to our new website!
Feb. 2, 2022

Celebrating Ayn Rand

Celebrating Ayn Rand

Today we kick off "Rand's Day" with our "resident Philosopher" James Valliant. We discuss Miss Rand's legacy and artistic value as both a novelist and a philosopher.

Call-to-Action: After you have listened to this episode, add your $0.02 (two cents) to the conversation, by joining (for free) The Secular Foxhole Town Hall. Feel free to introduce yourself to the other members, give us constructive feedback, discuss the different episodes, or check out the virtual room, Speakers' Corner, and step up on the digital soapbox. Welcome to our new place in cyberspace!

Show notes with links to articles, blog posts, products and services:


Episode 41 (51 minutes) was recorded at 10 PM CET, on January 13, 2022, with Ringr app.. Editing and post-production was done with the podcast maker, AlituTranscript is provided by Veed.io.

Easy listen to The Secular Foxhole podcast in your podcast (podcatcher) app of choice, e.g., Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle PodcastsAmazon MusicGaanaListen Notes, or one of the new podcast apps, on Podcast Index, supporting the Podcasting 2.0 initiative, and Value for Value through Satoshis Stream (Bitcoin payments). You could also listen to our podcast on our own standalone app, by downloading it for free on Apple App Store and Google Play

Rate and review The Secular Foxhole podcast on Podchaser. Your support will give us fuel for our blogging and podcasting! Thanks for reading the show notes! Continue the conversation by going to our digital town hall on Haaartland.

Transcript
Speaker:

Good afternoon and welcome to another

Speaker:

edition of the Secular Foxhole Podcast.

Speaker:

Today we have a returning guest, one

Speaker:

of our favorites, James Valliant, visiting the

Speaker:

Foxhole to discuss Ayn Rand today.

Speaker:

James, how are you?

Speaker:

I'm quite well.

Speaker:

How are you, sir?

Speaker:

I'm doing very good.

Speaker:

Pleasure to be back with you. Thank you.

Speaker:

It's nice to have you back.

Speaker:

I battled the cold for two weeks,

Speaker:

and I finally about 99% better.

Speaker:

I hope it wasn't Omicron.

Speaker:

We checked all those things out and made sure of that.

Speaker:

But it's my annual what I call crud,

Speaker:

sinus and sore throat kind of thing.

Speaker:

Winter has come. That's right.

Speaker:

Winter has come to spring the second of February.

Speaker:

That's true. Yes.

Speaker:

Ayn Rand's birthday again, today's topic is Ayn Rand.

Speaker:

And James, who was Ayn Rand.

Speaker:

And in my view, why is she

Speaker:

so important to the human race?

Speaker:

Well, Ayn Rand was, of course,

Speaker:

the famous novelist and philosopher.

Speaker:

She was born in Russia in.

Speaker:

But she came to America after witnessing and

Speaker:

enduring the Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath.

Speaker:

She was skilled and fortunate enough to

Speaker:

escape the Soviet Union and come to

Speaker:

America, where she became an extremely popular

Speaker:

novelist, playwright, screenwriter in the United States.

Speaker:

And she wasn't just an amazingly

Speaker:

powerful and popular writer of fiction.

Speaker:

She was, in my view, the most important philosopher of

Speaker:

our time as well, ranking with the great philosophers.

Speaker:

And so there's two ways to evaluate her importance.

Speaker:

And I'm going to start with philosophy

Speaker:

because I think that is the most

Speaker:

important philosophy, according to Ayn Rand.

Speaker:

And I agree with her.

Speaker:

Here is the most important topic that there is.

Speaker:

It is an inescapable topic for humanity.

Speaker:

This is one of the reasons why

Speaker:

humans, religion persists and why religion is

Speaker:

so ubiquitous in more primitive cultures is

Speaker:

because people need a comprehensive worldview.

Speaker:

It is not something that we can dispense with.

Speaker:

Our answers to fundamental questions

Speaker:

will shape our psychology.

Speaker:

We'll determine whether or not we're happy.

Speaker:

And since it's so important and formative on the

Speaker:

individual level, it is the single most important factor

Speaker:

in human history, in development of human culture.

Speaker:

In my view, we are still

Speaker:

overcoming the negative impacts of religion.

Speaker:

In my view, Western civilization is still, in

Speaker:

effect, breaking the chains of the Dark Ages.

Speaker:

We can hope.

Speaker:

But I'll tell you, Ayn Rand represents the

Speaker:

most powerful destruction of those chains. True.

Speaker:

That occurred in the last millennia.

Speaker:

She gave great credit to Thomas Aquinas back

Speaker:

in the 1200s and reintroducing Aristotelian logic and

Speaker:

Greek observational science into the Western thought, which

Speaker:

did lead to humanism Renaissance, the Age of

Speaker:

science, the Enlightenment dates, in effect, natural revolution.

Speaker:

But we are still the Industrial

Speaker:

Revolution, the Scientific revolution, my gosh.

Speaker:

But we are still especially in the area of

Speaker:

ethics and therefore in its related areas, all the

Speaker:

normative humanities, for example, politics and so forth.

Speaker:

We're still laboring under ideas and philosophy that

Speaker:

we haven't caught up as she points out

Speaker:

to the extraordinary developments that humanity has made

Speaker:

in the physical Sciences and technology.

Speaker:

And so I think that her importance on a personal

Speaker:

level is that she can autobiographical note about myself.

Speaker:

She was instrumental in making me a happier, more confident

Speaker:

person, in helping to organize my life in a rational

Speaker:

way, to make it a more productive one, to make

Speaker:

my relationships more honest and serious, and to make me

Speaker:

a happier person in general, to get rid of the

Speaker:

remnants of the ideas of previous philosophies and religious ideas

Speaker:

that lingered were lingering in my mind in psychology.

Speaker:

And I think that she has the

Speaker:

capacity to change history, to change history.

Speaker:

If you look at the world that she grew

Speaker:

up and lived in through the 20th century and

Speaker:

the great crisis of that time was totalitarianism.

Speaker:

She lived through the age of Hitler and Stalin

Speaker:

and Mao and the horrific effects of that on

Speaker:

humanity, and she could see that those were the

Speaker:

results of philosophy, the remnants of this ancient primordial

Speaker:

philosophy of altruism and mysticism and collectivism that she

Speaker:

was the most articulate critic of, I think, in

Speaker:

the history of ideas.

Speaker:

And Ayn Rand wrote several important novels that people

Speaker:

declared to be life changing for them personally.

Speaker:

She went on in the 1960s and 1970s to

Speaker:

write a series of nonfiction essays that were anthologized

Speaker:

into important books of philosophy, very popular books of

Speaker:

philosophy, which I think lay the foundation for a

Speaker:

whole new approach to philosophy, a Copernican revolution, only

Speaker:

more radical than Copernicus himself. Yeah.

Speaker:

Again, you touched briefly she grew up in,

Speaker:

if I remember right, the Czarus to Russia,

Speaker:

and then the Bolshevik Revolution came.

Speaker:

So what was her childhood like?

Speaker:

As she reached her teenage years, I

Speaker:

think she knew she had to escape.

Speaker:

So how did that occur?

Speaker:

But what was her childhood like

Speaker:

and how did she get out?

Speaker:

Well, her father was sort of a self

Speaker:

made, which is an extraordinary thing, if you

Speaker:

think about Eastern European's bizarre Russia.

Speaker:

He was sort of a selfmade man altogether.

Speaker:

He actually got a University degree now.

Speaker:

There were quotas in European universities at the time.

Speaker:

There were quotas as to the number

Speaker:

of Jews who could be admitted.

Speaker:

And he could only get a position as

Speaker:

a student at University in the chemistry Department.

Speaker:

And so he became a pharmacist, and

Speaker:

he actually became a very successful and

Speaker:

relatively prominent pharmacist in St.

Speaker:

Petersburg, Russia, the cultural heart of Russia.

Speaker:

And he owned a pharmacy, and the

Speaker:

family lived in apartments above his pharmacy.

Speaker:

It was on one of the main squares in St. Petersburg.

Speaker:

So Ayn Rand grew up in the heart of

Speaker:

the most culturally rich city in Russia, St.

Speaker:

Petersburg.

Speaker:

Nonetheless, she grew up.

Speaker:

They were a family of non observant Jews.

Speaker:

Her mother gave an official nod to Judaism,

Speaker:

but the parents didn't really push religious parents

Speaker:

were mostly Liberal minded people of the time.

Speaker:

And so she grew up getting a really good education.

Speaker:

Her parents made sure that their daughters she was

Speaker:

the eldest of three girls, got really fine education.

Speaker:

By the time that Ayn Rand was 19, she had gone to

Speaker:

one of the finest girls schools in Russia at the time.

Speaker:

And she had a degree from what was

Speaker:

then because it was after the revolution, the

Speaker:

University of Petrograd changed from St.

Speaker:

Petersburg to Petrograd.

Speaker:

It became Lenning Grad University.

Speaker:

Now, of course, it's changed back to St. Petersburg.

Speaker:

But when she graduated from University at 19

Speaker:

with a degree in history and the pedagogy

Speaker:

of history, she really had an amazing education.

Speaker:

Now, during that period, of course, in 1917, when she

Speaker:

was just twelve years old, she was about to turn

Speaker:

13 when the Bolshevik October Revolution happened and her father

Speaker:

lost her business was stolen from him.

Speaker:

The family initially fled to the Crimea.

Speaker:

When things settled out, they returned, in effect,

Speaker:

to Petrograd, where they nearly starved to death

Speaker:

and expected to officially starve to death.

Speaker:

They could live for a while on accumulated assets, but

Speaker:

his business and their home was stolen from them.

Speaker:

And her mother taught foreign languages,

Speaker:

but they barely scraped by.

Speaker:

And there were times where they nearly starved to death

Speaker:

in Rand knew she had to get out of Russia.

Speaker:

And in 1926, at the age of

Speaker:

21, that's exactly what she did.

Speaker:

She kind of had to lie to the Soviet

Speaker:

officials telling them that, oh, she was just going

Speaker:

there to investigate the American movie industry and bring

Speaker:

back ideas from the latest thing, the latest movies

Speaker:

from Hollywood, and I'll come back and help the

Speaker:

develop Russian cinema business.

Speaker:

So she lied, saying she would come back,

Speaker:

but she got out with that lie.

Speaker:

There were cousins of hers, were living in Chicago, and

Speaker:

she lived with them for a little time in the

Speaker:

summer of 1926, before she came to Hollywood, where she

Speaker:

actually met she came to Hollywood and by September of

Speaker:

1926, actually met Cecilby DeMille himself.

Speaker:

And she became extra on the movie he was

Speaker:

making at the time, King of Kings, the story

Speaker:

of Jesus, the silent version of King of Kings,

Speaker:

where she met her husband, Frank O'Connor.

Speaker:

She tripped him on the bus.

Speaker:

He was an actor on the set, tripped him on the bus,

Speaker:

met him, and he became her husband for the next 50 years.

Speaker:

Right now, her first novel, We the Living, is quote,

Speaker:

as close to an autobiography as I'll ever write.

Speaker:

What did she want to show with that

Speaker:

novel to the people and Blair and James

Speaker:

that you said before about the movies?

Speaker:

It turned into a movie also, so

Speaker:

please add a comment on that also.

Speaker:

And the power of ideas. We the living.

Speaker:

Yeah, We the Living.

Speaker:

There was a party, a going away party that was thrown

Speaker:

for Ayn Rand as she was heading off to America, and

Speaker:

one old gentleman stopped her at the party and this left

Speaker:

obviously a very deep impression on Ayn Rand.

Speaker:

He said, tell them in America, tell them

Speaker:

in America that Russia is a giant Cemetery

Speaker:

and that we're all slowly dying.

Speaker:

And that's exactly what Ayn Rand thought of Russia.

Speaker:

She knew that she wouldn't have the intellectual

Speaker:

or artistic freedom to do the work that

Speaker:

she knew she needed to do.

Speaker:

And she witnessed the misery and starvation,

Speaker:

the typhus and the cholera and the

Speaker:

economic misery, the bread lines. Exactly.

Speaker:

Her family nearly starved to death, as I say.

Speaker:

And so she brought a vivid

Speaker:

personal experience to about totalitarianism.

Speaker:

She became one of the very first

Speaker:

Russians who developed an audience outside of

Speaker:

Russia, being critical of the Communist revolution.

Speaker:

Written in published in the mid 1930s by McMillan,

Speaker:

it had only a modest success in mixed reviews.

Speaker:

And if you look back on that period,

Speaker:

of course, most intellectuals in America were Communists.

Speaker:

Editor of the New York Times Book Review, Granville Heck

Speaker:

said in The New York Times, one cannot be a

Speaker:

proper author without first being a proper Communist.

Speaker:

So the intellectual world was not even

Speaker:

ready to hear anti Communist material in

Speaker:

what Eugene Lions called the Red Decade.

Speaker:

So a lot of the critics would say things like,

Speaker:

too often the Communists wear the black hat and Ms.

Speaker:

Rand account.

Speaker:

But it was a devastating critique of

Speaker:

not just Communism, but of all dictatorship,

Speaker:

philosophically speaking, and enriched by Ayn Rand's

Speaker:

personal experience, deeply influenced.

Speaker:

And you can still see the impact of

Speaker:

Victor Hugo on the style of her writing.

Speaker:

She was still learning English, by the

Speaker:

way, in Russia, she had become fluent

Speaker:

in Russian, of course, and French.

Speaker:

She could read and write German, but English

Speaker:

was sort of a whole new language.

Speaker:

And to become a novelist and to

Speaker:

be able to write a novel.

Speaker:

Now, mind you, the great US American

Speaker:

literary critic HL Menken, admired we the

Speaker:

Living and believed it should be published.

Speaker:

And I think with some help in getting her

Speaker:

having that published, as Martin pointed out, even though

Speaker:

face to some hostile critics and some mixed success,

Speaker:

it was turned into a film. Now get this.

Speaker:

It was turned into a film

Speaker:

in Mussolini's Fascist Italy, right.

Speaker:

They stole it from Ayn Rand.

Speaker:

They didn't tell Rand or the

Speaker:

publisher that they were stealing it.

Speaker:

And so with a huge, big fat Copyright violation.

Speaker:

But the people who made the film were anti fascists.

Speaker:

Alessandrini and the actors and the others who

Speaker:

were working on the film were well known

Speaker:

for being antifascist and anti Mussolini.

Speaker:

And it's funny, they did actually two films

Speaker:

out of the one book, and they used

Speaker:

the book itself rather than some screenplay.

Speaker:

And so it turned into just this beautiful, magnificent film,

Speaker:

by the way, big success until Mussolini realized that it

Speaker:

was anti dictatorship and he had it pulled.

Speaker:

People were lining up around the block to

Speaker:

see the movies, but it was only out

Speaker:

for a short time until the Italian government

Speaker:

pulled it and all the copies were destroyed.

Speaker:

It was only the director, Alessandrini, who

Speaker:

basically buried it, buried a copy of

Speaker:

the negative that even saved the film.

Speaker:

It later came to Ayn Rand's

Speaker:

attention that it had been made.

Speaker:

There was an international lawsuit after World War

Speaker:

II which got Ayn Rand royalties for the

Speaker:

Copyright theft that they'd engaged in.

Speaker:

But later on, her lawyer had discovered the negative,

Speaker:

and I'm Rand actually supervised the editing process and

Speaker:

the subtitling process of reediting the two films into

Speaker:

a single film, which was rereleased in the 1980s.

Speaker:

I was at the premiere at the Screen Actors Guild

Speaker:

and Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood when it was premiered.

Speaker:

Leonard Peikoff gave introduction to it,

Speaker:

told the history of it.

Speaker:

What a beautiful film.

Speaker:

I highly recommend that anyone interested in Iran's life

Speaker:

or work, check out the film We the Living.

Speaker:

It's a black and white film made in

Speaker:

Italian, but an extremely beautiful film and extremely

Speaker:

faithful to Ayn Rand's original novel.

Speaker:

Right now with her other novels, Excuse

Speaker:

Me, Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, she later

Speaker:

called herself a romantic realist.

Speaker:

What is that genre, and why is it all but unknown?

Speaker:

Well, there are certain literature.

Speaker:

American literature, especially in the last century, has been

Speaker:

characterized by a school that Ayn Rand called naturalism,

Speaker:

and it attempts to provide an image of life

Speaker:

as it is, the way things are.

Speaker:

And, of course, the way things are for most

Speaker:

naturalist writers is pretty darn miserable and horrific.

Speaker:

Some really good writer like John Steinbeck, the writer

Speaker:

of Grapes of Wrath, or a brilliant stylist like

Speaker:

William Faulkner Sound in The Fury, or the great

Speaker:

American playwright Tennessee Williams Streetcar Named Desire.

Speaker:

They're naturalistic, but they all have a very grim

Speaker:

view of the world and humanity, don't they?

Speaker:

Naturalism by doing, einrand identified the real difference

Speaker:

between naturalism and romanticism is a belief in

Speaker:

human free will, that human beings can make

Speaker:

choices, can think, can to some extent take

Speaker:

control of their lives and direct it.

Speaker:

And it's the logical consequences of

Speaker:

people's choices that give any literature

Speaker:

any moral, inspirational point to them.

Speaker:

And so Iran was much more akin to the romantic

Speaker:

writers of the 19th century, whom she very much admired.

Speaker:

Men like Victor Hugo and Fyodor

Speaker:

Dostoevsky, Edmond Rostand, for example.

Speaker:

Authors like that, even the lesser Romantics, she thought,

Speaker:

were much better because they believed in heroes and

Speaker:

villains, they had moral values because they believed that

Speaker:

human beings had free will, that they made choices,

Speaker:

and those choices mattered to their personalities, actions and

Speaker:

the consequences of those actions.

Speaker:

And she wanted to create her own goal in writing

Speaker:

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, as she said, was to

Speaker:

create characters and stories that would interest her.

Speaker:

And so to her, the goal of her

Speaker:

literature was the fictional presentation of the ideal

Speaker:

man, the ideal human being you see, morally,

Speaker:

psychologically, and from her personal perspective, a man.

Speaker:

Right, right.

Speaker:

The goal of her writing was

Speaker:

this projection of this moral ideal.

Speaker:

And so the hero of The Fountainhead, Howard

Speaker:

Rourke, is unlike any hero you will ever

Speaker:

run across in any other kind of literature.

Speaker:

Because Ayn Rand, in having to do this, realized

Speaker:

that because she was in disagreement with all of

Speaker:

the previous moral philosophy, pleased before most of the

Speaker:

great romantics that she liked from the 19th century,

Speaker:

for example, were Christians, a Christian socialist like you

Speaker:

Go, or a Christian conservative like Dostoevsky.

Speaker:

They were Christians.

Speaker:

So she realized she had to develop a whole

Speaker:

new philosophy, a whole new approach to ideas, simply

Speaker:

in order to project this new ideal.

Speaker:

And so her heroes are unlike any heroes

Speaker:

you will ever confront in other literature.

Speaker:

Yes, exactly.

Speaker:

I'm speaking for myself with a gracious tip of

Speaker:

the hat to The Fountainhead, I think at The

Speaker:

Shrug is the greatest novel written in human history.

Speaker:

I have to agree with you.

Speaker:

Of all the novels that I've ever

Speaker:

read, and I've read some great novels.

Speaker:

It's not just the great French romantics.

Speaker:

Even some of these American

Speaker:

naturalists were great novelists.

Speaker:

And going back, I like Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Speaker:

I like great epic writers from the past, sure.

Speaker:

But there's just no question in my mind.

Speaker:

Atlas Shrugged is the greatest knowledge, the

Speaker:

greatest epic ever composed by human writer

Speaker:

so far in human history.

Speaker:

Yes, it was an inspirational, life changing event for me,

Speaker:

but so was my earlier reading of The Fountain.

Speaker:

But I have to tell you, I fell in

Speaker:

love with Jackie Taggart in a way that I've

Speaker:

never fallen in love with a character in literature.

Speaker:

I know I was a young man, and I

Speaker:

know Ayn Rand's work is sort of flattering to

Speaker:

the ego of young men in certain ways.

Speaker:

But I fell in love with Tag. Me, Taggart.

Speaker:

I identified with her.

Speaker:

I think I identify with her more than

Speaker:

any other character in all of world literature.

Speaker:

I mean, in some ways I identify

Speaker:

with Serena to Bergerac or something.

Speaker:

I was about to mention sir.

Speaker:

No, it was one of my all time favorites. Yeah.

Speaker:

But I still think that I'm more spiritually akin

Speaker:

to Dagny Tagger than I am to any other

Speaker:

character in the whole of Western literature.

Speaker:

Well, I think you can see herself

Speaker:

in Dagny in a lot of ways.

Speaker:

The way she describes the heroines of The

Speaker:

Fountainhead and Alice Rugby are very interesting.

Speaker:

Dominique, she said, is me in a bad mood. That's right.

Speaker:

And Dagney she described in her early notes as

Speaker:

me with any possible flaws removed, entirely removed.

Speaker:

She's going to clean up herself and make herself

Speaker:

idealized as Dagny psychologically, and then convey herself in

Speaker:

more negative, bad mood when the world was getting

Speaker:

to her through the character of Dominique.

Speaker:

But one thing that she always could do

Speaker:

with her female characters is to convince you

Speaker:

of their love their passionate love for the

Speaker:

hero or their passionate love for their values.

Speaker:

Dominique loves architecture, and that explains why she regards

Speaker:

Howard works work as sacred, which explains why she

Speaker:

acts the way she does or getting tagged Taggart

Speaker:

the way she loves her railroad, or the way

Speaker:

she loves John Golf or Francisco or Hang.

Speaker:

The way they value is a reflection

Speaker:

of Iran's passionate love of this Earth. Really?

Speaker:

Now, again, we touched on it a moment

Speaker:

ago, but she had to create her own

Speaker:

philosophic system, and that system is again, in

Speaker:

my personal view, an epoch creating philosophy.

Speaker:

Talking about, let's have a second Renaissance.

Speaker:

What is the significance of this for her ideas?

Speaker:

If they ever gain a foothold in America

Speaker:

or in the world, what do you see?

Speaker:

The world looking like?

Speaker:

Yeah, me too.

Speaker:

The liberation of the human mind, the veneration of

Speaker:

reason and its capacity to improve human life on

Speaker:

Earth, the freedom to liberate the human mind, to

Speaker:

let it do so, were it not for government

Speaker:

interventions, were it not for government attempts very often

Speaker:

to help people, at least that's their excuse.

Speaker:

What they end up doing is shackling the

Speaker:

mind and inhibiting creativity, which is all that

Speaker:

coercive government regulation can really end up doing.

Speaker:

Ayn Rand demonstrates that it is

Speaker:

the creative, independent mind that is

Speaker:

the Fountainhead for all human progress.

Speaker:

And she demonstrates further that the

Speaker:

primary social condition for the operation

Speaker:

of the creative mind is freedom. Freedom.

Speaker:

The freedom to disagree, the freedom to buck

Speaker:

the trend, to go against the current all

Speaker:

real creative thinkers, philosophers, scientists, artists, think of

Speaker:

Galileo, think of Beethoven or Victor Hugo.

Speaker:

They all have these same struggles.

Speaker:

If they weren't being burnt at the stake

Speaker:

for their innovative ideas, they were being denounced.

Speaker:

Man was meant to fly denounced and imprisoned.

Speaker:

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker:

And look at the fate of artists in the

Speaker:

Soviet Union, for example, which surely would have been

Speaker:

on Ram States in some gulag or psychiatric hospital.

Speaker:

So, coming to America and looking at the

Speaker:

spectacular success of comparative freedom in the west,

Speaker:

she drew the inductive conclusion that freedom, the

Speaker:

liberation of the human mind, was the key

Speaker:

to human prosperity and progress.

Speaker:

And when that's understood in a principled fashion,

Speaker:

the future would be a future of unlimited

Speaker:

possibilities, endless discoveries of the mind both in

Speaker:

science and in the humanities, and understanding of

Speaker:

humans themselves, and a consequent revolution in both

Speaker:

culture and technology.

Speaker:

More than that, guilt free love of life on Earth,

Speaker:

the end of all of this Christian misery, of being

Speaker:

slaves to one another and the lowest among us.

Speaker:

No, no, no.

Speaker:

Iran was opposed to the idea of unearned guilt,

Speaker:

opposed to the idea of people having to sacrifice

Speaker:

their happiness for the Socalled greater good.

Speaker:

Just a religious concept of mystical concept in our

Speaker:

view, because the common good is no different than

Speaker:

the good of each and every individual.

Speaker:

And so what would the world look like?

Speaker:

The world would be a world in which we

Speaker:

would respect one another's rational selfinterest, a world in

Speaker:

which we would share our values enthusiastically, a world

Speaker:

in which people in an uninhibited, guilt free way,

Speaker:

would be enjoying and pursuing their long term happiness.

Speaker:

So barely scratched.

Speaker:

All I can do is the most vague ways

Speaker:

tell you that comparative paradise to anything that humans

Speaker:

have known is waiting for the world.

Speaker:

Should it embrace the basic ideas of owning

Speaker:

Rand now, actually, I'll throw this in even

Speaker:

though it's not related to Ms. Rand.

Speaker:

One of the positive effects of this covet

Speaker:

debacle led by government interference is the collapse

Speaker:

of the government education and the burgeoning home

Speaker:

school movement or private school movement.

Speaker:

Lots of parents have pulled their kids out of

Speaker:

public schools over the last two years, haven't they?

Speaker:

Yes. Amazing.

Speaker:

And to me, that's getting very critical out there

Speaker:

and getting very critical of the whole system.

Speaker:

The seed for the second Renaissance right there. Yeah.

Speaker:

Well, I absolutely think that's true.

Speaker:

I think people are growing skeptical of the

Speaker:

value of a University education and the humanities.

Speaker:

I think they can see it in

Speaker:

the technical areas, science and engineering.

Speaker:

I think it's still Aristotelian based somewhat.

Speaker:

There is some rationality there.

Speaker:

But when it comes to philosophy and history and

Speaker:

economics and psychology, just garbage, people come out with

Speaker:

degrees that they may not be able to use

Speaker:

at all or that have absolutely corrupted any correct

Speaker:

understanding and prevented them from seeing the truth.

Speaker:

So I got an undergraduate degree in philosophy

Speaker:

only because I knew I was going to

Speaker:

go on to be an attorney, for example.

Speaker:

But if that characterized my education, but that is to

Speaker:

say a University education in the 20th century in philosophy,

Speaker:

I would be one messed up individual with probably no

Speaker:

marketable job skills except at Harvard or Yale.

Speaker:

Even if you go to Harvard, Yale,

Speaker:

some of those people are complaining.

Speaker:

Some of those people who want the government

Speaker:

to cancel because the government gives these guaranteed

Speaker:

loans, these low interest loans to students, even

Speaker:

if they don't qualify for scholarships, their politicians

Speaker:

want to cancel all those College debt.

Speaker:

But the fact is they undertook all that College debt.

Speaker:

Now they have what is even from the

Speaker:

prestigious private universities become a useless degree.

Speaker:

We're recording this for release on her birthday

Speaker:

February 2 next month, and I generally celebrate

Speaker:

her birthday with some quiet reflection.

Speaker:

Maybe I'll pick up actually, what I like to

Speaker:

do is I'll grab her nonfiction work for The

Speaker:

New Intellectual, and I'll peek that I'll peek into

Speaker:

the excerpts from the novels and just get reinspired.

Speaker:

Yeah.

Speaker:

Can I ask what you normally do?

Speaker:

If anything, that's a good one, because the book

Speaker:

for the New Intellectual was her first book.

Speaker:

Collecting sort of excerpts included a big

Speaker:

nonfiction essay Intellectual, which had a powerful

Speaker:

effect on me, helped shape the course

Speaker:

of my life and my career decisions.

Speaker:

It's that big an influence on me.

Speaker:

Just that essay for the New Intellectual I

Speaker:

think we discussed before the faith and force

Speaker:

between faith and force, and for the New

Speaker:

Intellectual to avoid Rand's early nonfiction essays after

Speaker:

publishing Atlas Shrugged, those two had formative impact

Speaker:

on my thinking about everything and even my

Speaker:

interests, intellectually and my career direction.

Speaker:

So, yeah, and that book is I highly recommend

Speaker:

the book because it's got Ein Rand, the most

Speaker:

philosophical excerpts from her novels, with a living Anthem

Speaker:

Fountainhead atmosphere and really an excellent place for people

Speaker:

who want to know Einran's ideas, a good place

Speaker:

for them to start.

Speaker:

It's in that book that she named her philosophy

Speaker:

in a Public way Objectivism for the first time.

Speaker:

But her other books, The Virtue of Selfishness,

Speaker:

which came shortly thereafter, a revolution in ethics.

Speaker:

Yes, I'm Rand was controversial because, of course,

Speaker:

she advocated selfishness, and by that she didn't

Speaker:

mean what most people mean when you concretize

Speaker:

what selfishness means in specific concrete actions.

Speaker:

For most people, they mean criminals and

Speaker:

drug addicts and thieves and people who

Speaker:

are on a course of self destruction.

Speaker:

I was a prosecutor for many years, and people,

Speaker:

some of my more conservative colleagues would say, oh,

Speaker:

yeah, look at all those selfish people in jail.

Speaker:

And I would always make the point, well, even if we

Speaker:

didn't manage to put them in jail, we're looking at some

Speaker:

of the most self destructive people in our society.

Speaker:

These people are not developing productive skills.

Speaker:

These people, whether or not we catch them

Speaker:

or not, these people are, in effect, ruining

Speaker:

themselves, their characters and their own psychologists.

Speaker:

Some of them are destroying

Speaker:

themselves with drugs and alcohol.

Speaker:

The folks in that jail, whether they were

Speaker:

in jail or not, would be among the

Speaker:

most self destructive human beings in our country.

Speaker:

They were always taken aback by that.

Speaker:

But what I ran meant by selfishness was your long

Speaker:

term actual self interest, something that very few people even

Speaker:

take the time to identify, much less consider in a

Speaker:

principled way as Ian Randy and putting it on that

Speaker:

ground, making human life the objective needs of human life

Speaker:

is the standard of moral values.

Speaker:

As she did, she was able to provide us

Speaker:

with an objective grounding for ethics for the first

Speaker:

time, giving us a real motive to be good,

Speaker:

that is to say, our long term self interest.

Speaker:

When I contemplate being dishonest.

Speaker:

No, not all lies are dishonest.

Speaker:

If you were hiding Jews from the Nazis, of

Speaker:

course I ran to say, go ahead and lie,

Speaker:

but the reason why I'm honest with people is

Speaker:

the same reason why I'm honest with myself.

Speaker:

And if I try to gain a value by

Speaker:

lying to somebody, it feels like I would be

Speaker:

standing on concrete into railroad tracks with a locomotive

Speaker:

headed at me at 100 miles an hour.

Speaker:

I regard being ethical as the

Speaker:

most selfish thing I can do.

Speaker:

And Ayn Rand, therefore had a

Speaker:

radically different perspective on selfishness.

Speaker:

But because she was an egoist figures from

Speaker:

both the left and the right and everywhere

Speaker:

in between as selfish, because in their minds,

Speaker:

selfishness is associated with the ideas of philosophers

Speaker:

like Thomas Hobbes or Friedrich Nietzsche, and very

Speaker:

much disagreed with their approaches and their assumptions

Speaker:

about what selfishness implied and entailed.

Speaker:

And that's another reason why her

Speaker:

philosophy is such a revolution.

Speaker:

And in this respect, she could give a moral defense

Speaker:

to capitalism, to the free market that no one had

Speaker:

ever done before, until, unless we can defend a person's

Speaker:

right to live for his or her own sake, defend

Speaker:

the profit motive on an ethical basis, capitalism will always

Speaker:

be struggling uphill against the Socialists and collectivists who claim

Speaker:

to be working for the common good.

Speaker:

But as I say, I'm Rand saw

Speaker:

no conflict of interest between rational individuals.

Speaker:

So long as I respect your rights and we get

Speaker:

on peacefully, so long as reason is what we put

Speaker:

first among our values, Einran saw no reason for there

Speaker:

to be any conflict or any real conflict of interest

Speaker:

between rational people in a free society.

Speaker:

So in other words, being an egoist doesn't mean walking

Speaker:

past drowning children with your nose stuck up in it.

Speaker:

Oh, quite the opposite.

Speaker:

You know something?

Speaker:

My love for humanity in general is simply an

Speaker:

emanation from my love of my own life.

Speaker:

I assume that the value I place on

Speaker:

my life, it's not true of everyone.

Speaker:

Some people are monsters and suicidal whether they

Speaker:

know it or not, but I assume I

Speaker:

give the benefit of the doubt to humanity.

Speaker:

I assume that they love their life like I do.

Speaker:

I assume that they too appreciate this.

Speaker:

So therefore I'm going to respect their selfishness.

Speaker:

I can only gain from their selfishness, and it is

Speaker:

in my self interest to help other people when appropriate.

Speaker:

It's not an atomistic individualism that Iran

Speaker:

advocated, but one which acknowledges the huge

Speaker:

potential value that other people can be.

Speaker:

I mean, I'm much better off in society than on a

Speaker:

desert island in some ways, but I'd rather be as Iran

Speaker:

points out, I'd rather be on a desert island alone than

Speaker:

be a slave or in some Nazi concentration camp.

Speaker:

Yeah, go ahead, Mark.

Speaker:

Yeah, it will do as an ending, maybe to get you

Speaker:

back again, James, because this could be a follow up.

Speaker:

We could go on and on for hours.

Speaker:

I think we'll wrap up, but I will give you

Speaker:

some things that you could ponder on and give you,

Speaker:

like the cliffhanger version and we'll come back.

Speaker:

Is your book High Range Critics? Yeah.

Speaker:

And also that you talk about this egotist

Speaker:

and the development of Rans view about Nietzsche

Speaker:

and others that have written about that, and

Speaker:

also the anecdote about the businessman that approached

Speaker:

Random wanted to change her philosophy.

Speaker:

These are like hard things.

Speaker:

But if you could give it like a teaser to

Speaker:

the listeners, and then you will come back soon again.

Speaker:

Okay.

Speaker:

Well, Frederick Nietzsche was a big influence on

Speaker:

Ayn Rand early on in her life.

Speaker:

As a teenager, she was

Speaker:

already developing ideas about egoism.

Speaker:

I think a cousin of hers came up to

Speaker:

her and said, AHA, I've discovered a German philosopher

Speaker:

who beat you to all your ideas. She said, oh, really?

Speaker:

And so she read Thus Begsarathustra, and she was

Speaker:

favorably impressed by his poetry and some of his

Speaker:

expressions of the heroic sense of life.

Speaker:

But as she studied his ideas further, read

Speaker:

The Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil,

Speaker:

stuff like that, she realized that he was

Speaker:

a defender of subjectivism, irrationalism determinism.

Speaker:

He had a view of emotions that was

Speaker:

instinctive, the blue, the blood, not cognition.

Speaker:

I'm granted, our emotions were the result

Speaker:

of our evaluations and so forth.

Speaker:

She was also thought that he was

Speaker:

equivocal on the issue of force.

Speaker:

She thought that an egoist would neither want

Speaker:

to rule nor permit himself to be ruled.

Speaker:

He would neither sacrifice others to

Speaker:

himself nor sacrifice himself to others.

Speaker:

And so she made this very

Speaker:

important clarification, in my view, explicitly

Speaker:

indicating where Nietzsche had gone wrong.

Speaker:

He discovered this rather early on, still writing, Mind

Speaker:

you, in her first philosophical notes in 1934.

Speaker:

She's still in her 20s.

Speaker:

She is coming out against Nietzsche's view of emotions,

Speaker:

his view of determinism, his view of subjectivism.

Speaker:

She thinks, we don't need a

Speaker:

genealogy or history of ethics.

Speaker:

We need only a logical system of ethics.

Speaker:

She was clearly coming down on Aristotle side.

Speaker:

She was clearly coming down on the side of

Speaker:

voluntary interaction between people, as opposed to some Ubermens,

Speaker:

like you say, stepping over dead bodies.

Speaker:

Let me jump in here really quick.

Speaker:

In her published journals, at least speaking for

Speaker:

myself, I could see her growth from Nietzsche

Speaker:

to Objectivist, if you will, right?

Speaker:

As I say, even in her 20s, she

Speaker:

rejected the basic, the most fundamental philosophical ideas.

Speaker:

In his system, jar subjectivism, radical subjectivism

Speaker:

determinism, radical determinism, and a certain approach

Speaker:

to emotions, an attack on principled ethics,

Speaker:

logical ethics beyond good and evil.

Speaker:

We need the transvaluation of values.

Speaker:

But he didn't provide a positive system of values.

Speaker:

So in my book, The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics, the

Speaker:

way I put it is Nietzsche was a philosophical bulldozer.

Speaker:

Heinrand was an architect.

Speaker:

She built a system of principled ethics based.

Speaker:

I mean, one of the big problems with the new atheists,

Speaker:

in my view, is that they don't have a good answer

Speaker:

to the religious people to say where the ethics come from.

Speaker:

Ayn Rand has the answer, another

Speaker:

important revolution that Iron provides.

Speaker:

But she still admired Nietzsche to the point that she

Speaker:

was going to include a quote from Frederick Nietzsche.

Speaker:

The Noble Soul has referenced for itself.

Speaker:

The introduction is the dedication to the Fountainhead.

Speaker:

But even by that point, she had

Speaker:

grown so disenchanted with Nietzsche, she excluded

Speaker:

even putting that quote there.

Speaker:

She just mentioned it in the introduction she

Speaker:

wrote to the 25th anniversary edition in 1968.

Speaker:

Now, my book, The Passion of Ayn Rand's critics,

Speaker:

former associates of Iron Rand, who had, in my

Speaker:

view, terribly exploited her financially, lied to her.

Speaker:

They came out with biographies shortly after Iran's

Speaker:

death when Iran could not respond to them.

Speaker:

And that struck me as somewhat unfair.

Speaker:

And so around the turn of the 21st century, around

Speaker:

2000 2001, I published a series of critiques of Barbara

Speaker:

Brandon's biography, Anne Leonard Picoff and the Estate of Iron

Speaker:

Ran contacted me, and I wasn't the one who contacted

Speaker:

them even to let them know I'd done this. But Dr.

Speaker:

Pecoff liked what I had written and offered me

Speaker:

Iran's personal notes on the break she had with

Speaker:

the Brandon and asked if I could use them.

Speaker:

I went and looked at those notes and found that they

Speaker:

very much in fact, they provided a lot more information than

Speaker:

I ever thought was there to critique the brand and what

Speaker:

they'd left out and what they'd lied about.

Speaker:

And so in 2005, I published

Speaker:

The Passion of Iran's Critics.

Speaker:

It's very distressing to me that so many of

Speaker:

Iran's critics are focused on ad hominem personal issues.

Speaker:

And every single time I cannot think of

Speaker:

a major personal attack on her that is

Speaker:

even accurate, actually accurate, as if attacking her

Speaker:

personally could refute her philosophy, which it cannot.

Speaker:

Of course, that's just ad hominem.

Speaker:

But more than that, as if we should simply

Speaker:

dismiss her because, you see, she's this rotten, selfish

Speaker:

psychopath and all of that is lies.

Speaker:

But that whole personal attack has its roots in

Speaker:

the Brandons and their biographies, and I had hoped

Speaker:

to give Ain Rand side of that dispute.

Speaker:

The fact is that the brand, and as I say, lied not

Speaker:

only to Iran for many years, but lied to the public about

Speaker:

their break with Iron Rand in I had to bring all that

Speaker:

to the attention, I think, of people so that they could understand

Speaker:

the credibility and bias issues of the brand.

Speaker:

And apart from several factual issues,

Speaker:

they get wrong about Iron Random.

Speaker:

James, this has been great, but I want to do

Speaker:

a couple of things for our audience who may not

Speaker:

be as philosophically knowledgeable as the three of us.

Speaker:

Can you just give a quick

Speaker:

definition of subjectivism and determinism? Okay.

Speaker:

The idea of subjectivism is

Speaker:

that we cannot know reality.

Speaker:

Some subjectivist say, oh, yeah,

Speaker:

sure, there's a reality.

Speaker:

We can never transcend our own perspective on it.

Speaker:

All we have is our angle, our perspective,

Speaker:

and our biases, and our attempt to escape

Speaker:

that is always going to be impossible.

Speaker:

And that's what Frederick Nietzsche believed.

Speaker:

Friedrich Nietzsche was not a solipsist, someone who believes

Speaker:

that only his consciousness exists and that everyone else

Speaker:

is just really an image of his consciousness.

Speaker:

But he was a Subjectivist.

Speaker:

He believed that each of us had our

Speaker:

own wholly unique little worlds of perspective.

Speaker:

Therefore, that objective truth is illusory as

Speaker:

such, particularly in philosophical and moral matters.

Speaker:

But subjectivism is the belief that your consciousness,

Speaker:

in effect, is all that you can know.

Speaker:

You can't know reality.

Speaker:

Or as Kant, an arch subjectivist, said,

Speaker:

we can never know things in themselves.

Speaker:

Or earlier subjectivist would say, reality is inaccessible to

Speaker:

our consciousness, and all we have are the effects

Speaker:

of reality at best on our consciousness.

Speaker:

Now, determinism is a belief that everything is,

Speaker:

in effect, predetermined, that everything has already been

Speaker:

set by atoms of the physical world, which

Speaker:

are, in effect, playing out with each other

Speaker:

in a billiard ball fashion, that's the scientific

Speaker:

version, Spinoza, was a logical determinist.

Speaker:

He thought that logic itself implied that human beings had

Speaker:

no choice, you see, and that whatever choice we think

Speaker:

is, we all know that thinking takes effort.

Speaker:

We all experience from the inside making choices,

Speaker:

and those choices seem to make a difference. Right.

Speaker:

So determinism is the denial that human beings have any

Speaker:

kind of free will and that it's all predetermined.

Speaker:

Ian Rand had a very specific view of free will.

Speaker:

She didn't think it was magic.

Speaker:

She didn't think it was limitless in its power.

Speaker:

It was very specific, and it had a specific role.

Speaker:

And we could bring control to our lives to

Speaker:

a certain degree through the use of thinking.

Speaker:

And look at how humans can do that.

Speaker:

Look at the range of human creativity.

Speaker:

We can play golf on the moon.

Speaker:

We can compose, we split atoms, right.

Speaker:

We genetically alter molecules to

Speaker:

create new life species.

Speaker:

Our power over the world is astonishing, but because of

Speaker:

our creative ability to think, and that's what Iran identified

Speaker:

as our free will, our ability to think or not.

Speaker:

And to that extent, we can change the

Speaker:

world and bring control to our lives.

Speaker:

So she actively argued against determinism, whether

Speaker:

of the religious or scientific variety. One more thing.

Speaker:

I want to give you a quote of hers, and

Speaker:

then you can expand on that for a little bit.

Speaker:

Quote, the alleged shortcut to knowledge, which is

Speaker:

faith, is only a shortcut, destroying the mind. Unquote.

Speaker:

That's a gem, isn't it?

Speaker:

It's a gem.

Speaker:

Ainrand believed.

Speaker:

So this is a technical point in philosophy,

Speaker:

but Iran was really the first philosopher to

Speaker:

come to grips with the fact that consciousness

Speaker:

possesses a specific identity and nature.

Speaker:

Previous philosophers had thought, and

Speaker:

I include Aristotle in this.

Speaker:

Who is the philosopher that had the

Speaker:

biggest influence of all on iron?

Speaker:

She regarded herself, in effect,

Speaker:

as in the Aristotelian tradition.

Speaker:

And even Aristotle said that if

Speaker:

consciousness were anything in particular, that

Speaker:

that would be a distorting element.

Speaker:

And that really did get modern

Speaker:

philosophy off to a bad start.

Speaker:

Based on Lock, I believed in this causal

Speaker:

theory of knowledge, this veil of perception.

Speaker:

All we know is the effects of reality on

Speaker:

our senses in mind, not reality in itself.

Speaker:

Iran rejected all of that.

Speaker:

It climaxed with cons.

Speaker:

Of course, we said we can't

Speaker:

ever know things in themselves.

Speaker:

All we know are the

Speaker:

categories of our own consciousness.

Speaker:

Space and time are just the way

Speaker:

we have of looking at the world.

Speaker:

It's not nothing about the world itself.

Speaker:

Logic, logic itself is only a feature.

Speaker:

It wouldn't be nice if it was an

Speaker:

automatic feature of you and my oh, boy.

Speaker:

God said that it was built in.

Speaker:

We have to be logical only, right?

Speaker:

Iran rejected all of that.

Speaker:

She said, all of that is, in effect, arguing that

Speaker:

we are blind because we have eyes, deaf, because we

Speaker:

have ears, diluted because we have a mind.

Speaker:

But it's not only a reputation of any of

Speaker:

the serious arguments of the skeptics, it's also a

Speaker:

reputation, the identity of consciousness, of the mystic.

Speaker:

The mystic is person who rejects reason for on

Speaker:

behalf of some other non rational means of knowing.

Speaker:

But of course, the senses connect me with reality.

Speaker:

Logic keeps me connected to reality.

Speaker:

I know how those work.

Speaker:

Those have a causal mechanism to keep me in

Speaker:

contact with reality and to connect me with reality.

Speaker:

Whereas mysticism, what do they have?

Speaker:

They have Crystal balls, tea leaves, horoscopes,

Speaker:

mystic, revelation, ancient texts, you name it.

Speaker:

There are these pseudo abracadabra, pseudo

Speaker:

methods of knowing Ouija boards.

Speaker:

It goes on and on and on, right.

Speaker:

And these are all pseudo means,

Speaker:

non causal means of knowledge.

Speaker:

And mysticism, religion always amounts to that.

Speaker:

It's not a shortcut to knowledge.

Speaker:

It actually shortcircuits knowledge by

Speaker:

evading the method required.

Speaker:

If an idea pops into my head

Speaker:

like ghost or God or unicorn.

Speaker:

It doesn't oblige reality to

Speaker:

contain those things, does it?

Speaker:

I've got to connect the idea in my

Speaker:

head to reality by a process of logical

Speaker:

demonstration that reduces it to the evidence of

Speaker:

observation, HAPS into respect for the nature of

Speaker:

consciousness and the causal identity that consciousness is

Speaker:

the process that consciousness has to go through.

Speaker:

You're not even having a proper how. So?

Speaker:

Iran rejected both radical skepticism and

Speaker:

radical mysticism on this same basis.

Speaker:

It violates the primary requirement of consciousness, which

Speaker:

must have an identity in order to operate.

Speaker:

It's not the disqualifying feature of

Speaker:

consciousness, it's the means of consciousness.

Speaker:

But it is the indispensable means of consciousness that

Speaker:

can have no shortcut and no short circuit.

Speaker:

How did she answer the critics, then, that said,

Speaker:

well, if you're just logical, you mean deny emotions?

Speaker:

Oh, quite the opposite.

Speaker:

Ayn Rand was a passionate person.

Speaker:

She didn't think that there had to be

Speaker:

a conflict at all between reason and emotion,

Speaker:

insofar as people do run it.

Speaker:

And there's a reasonably common phenomenon where

Speaker:

people believe one thing, but their emotions

Speaker:

are leading them in another direction.

Speaker:

Well, Ian Rand says that's ultimately a

Speaker:

conflict between your ideas, a subconscious idea.

Speaker:

You may not have recognized that you came

Speaker:

to maybe in childhood, maybe subconsciously, but in

Speaker:

effect, it's an evaluation you reached at some

Speaker:

point that informed your emotions.

Speaker:

Now, heinrand was way ahead of the curve on this.

Speaker:

In recent decades, the cognitive behavioral school

Speaker:

of psychology has largely taken over the

Speaker:

therapeutic world and to a large extent,

Speaker:

even made inroads in the academic world.

Speaker:

And so Ayn Rand was decades ahead of her time.

Speaker:

She was one of the pioneers

Speaker:

of the cognitive view of psychology.

Speaker:

And so to Ayn ran thinking, sure, there may be

Speaker:

issues that you can never overcome, even with dedicated psychotherapy

Speaker:

and that you just have to live with.

Speaker:

But she said, man is a being, a self made soul.

Speaker:

We can shape our own characters, personality, our

Speaker:

own emotions through the values that we inculcate

Speaker:

in ourselves, that we really integrate into our

Speaker:

thinking and that we act on.

Speaker:

And that pretty soon that becomes who

Speaker:

we are, that becomes our emotional reaction.

Speaker:

And boy, I can confirm this

Speaker:

from my own personal experience.

Speaker:

My own values, as I've learned them, as they

Speaker:

have sophisticated over the years, have had a direct

Speaker:

impact on my native automatic emotional reactions to things,

Speaker:

so that there's less and less conflict in my

Speaker:

consciousness between my emotions and my logic.

Speaker:

No, a properly functioning consciousness

Speaker:

has them in harmony.

Speaker:

Has them in harmony.

Speaker:

One objective is writer.

Speaker:

Put it this way, think clearly so you

Speaker:

can feel deeply and feel deeply so you

Speaker:

can think clearly to the Objectivist.

Speaker:

There is no built in

Speaker:

conflict between reason and emotion.

Speaker:

Reason is our tool of knowing.

Speaker:

Emotions are our tool for both enjoying

Speaker:

life and helping me understand my values.

Speaker:

Who was that author, if I may ask?

Speaker:

Nevada.

Speaker:

Okay to give credit where credit is due, I guess.

Speaker:

All right.

Speaker:

Well, I was going to say his first three books,

Speaker:

I think were probably written when he was with Ms. Rand.

Speaker:

That's why I called him an objective, is because

Speaker:

that's back when he was still an Objectivist psychology

Speaker:

of self esteem and who is iron.

Speaker:

And even most of the material you'll find in

Speaker:

the psychology of romantic love was material he had

Speaker:

developed when he was with Iron Rant.

Speaker:

He went off the deep end.

Speaker:

He went off the deep end, in my view.

Speaker:

His later work becomes less and

Speaker:

less important, in my view.

Speaker:

And some of it is actually darn right, as

Speaker:

I say, his memoir about Aang Ran, his life

Speaker:

with Iran Rand, and some of his psychology implications

Speaker:

about what Ayn Rand was saying.

Speaker:

We're just outright misleading.

Speaker:

It was Aaron Rand telling him

Speaker:

not to be a rationalist repressor.

Speaker:

And then he writes, break free.

Speaker:

I had to stop being a rationalist oppressor,

Speaker:

which is what Iran was making me do.

Speaker:

No, if you read her notes, she was telling him

Speaker:

she was diagnosing in him the need to be himself

Speaker:

and stop trying to martyr yourself to try and be

Speaker:

in a quote, your view of an Objectivist hero.

Speaker:

That's what she was telling him.

Speaker:

But I did have to.

Speaker:

That's such a beautiful quote, though.

Speaker:

Even though it's raining, I

Speaker:

don't dismiss everything from Brandon.

Speaker:

Again, I stand by.

Speaker:

I think his first three books

Speaker:

are well worth trying to find.

Speaker:

But after those, it's garbage. Yeah.

Speaker:

Anyway, James Martin, do you have anything to add?

Speaker:

Oh, I didn't get to the Texas oil man store.

Speaker:

Martin mentioned that earlier, and that

Speaker:

popped back in my head.

Speaker:

Iran was a woman of enormous integrity,

Speaker:

and she was like Howard work.

Speaker:

She wouldn't give an inch on her ideas.

Speaker:

She would state them plainly forthrightly,

Speaker:

even if it offended the audience.

Speaker:

They were scandalized sometimes by her

Speaker:

defenses of aviation or selfishness or

Speaker:

radical complete free market capitalism.

Speaker:

She didn't care.

Speaker:

She was going to defend the truth as she saw it.

Speaker:

And there was one after Atlas Shrugged came out,

Speaker:

I guess there was a multimillionaire Texas oilman, a

Speaker:

conservative, apparently a Republican, who said, Ms.

Speaker:

Ryan, I'll give you up to a

Speaker:

million dollars to help spread your ideas.

Speaker:

If only you add a religious element

Speaker:

or make them friendly to religion.

Speaker:

Or don't be so hostile to Mystics and religion.

Speaker:

She, of course, threw the offer

Speaker:

into the waste paper basket.

Speaker:

As the way Leonard Peacock describes it, what good would that

Speaker:

money do me if I had to compromise my ideas?

Speaker:

It would undermine everything that I stand

Speaker:

for all of my life's work.

Speaker:

I may as well just rip up every copy of Atlas Shrugged.

Speaker:

I wouldn't do that.

Speaker:

And so for Ayn Rand, there was no

Speaker:

any more than there was a reason.

Speaker:

Emotion, dichotomy.

Speaker:

There was no theory, practice dichotomy.

Speaker:

It would have been the height of impracticality for her

Speaker:

to have compromised on a significant point, even if someone

Speaker:

was going to give her a million dollars to help

Speaker:

spread the rest of her ideas and work.

Speaker:

Martin, anything else for you? No. All right.

Speaker:

Looking forward to commemorate

Speaker:

and celebrate Rand's Day.

Speaker:

Yes, Gran's Day, RAN's birthday.

Speaker:

It's a wonderful holiday because it's the holiday

Speaker:

where we should do something for ourselves.

Speaker:

It's the holiday where we should.

Speaker:

Iran was asked whether indulgence and pleasure, but

Speaker:

I think Playboy Magazine 64 interviewing her.

Speaker:

Should we indulge her?

Speaker:

She doesn't regard pleasure as an indulgence. No.

Speaker:

If you are being rational and principled,

Speaker:

then it is a human need.

Speaker:

Do something nice for yourself.

Speaker:

Do something important for yourself.

Speaker:

On RAN's Day, Rand would have really

Speaker:

liked that way of celebrating her birthday.

Speaker:

And on that note, we've been talking

Speaker:

to James Valiant, author of The Passion

Speaker:

of Iron Ranch Critics and Creating Christ.

Speaker:

All the Romans invented Christianity.

Speaker:

I think that is correct. Yes.

Speaker:

And we wanted to talk about Ayn Rand today

Speaker:

to publish this on her birthday next month.

Speaker:

James, once again, thanks for

Speaker:

Manning the foxhole with us.

Speaker:

Oh, always my pleasure.

Speaker:

You guys always happy to come

Speaker:

back you guys are great, James. And you will be back.