In this 1971 lecture, Ayn Rand examines President Nixon’s imposition of a nationwide wage and price freeze aimed at curbing inflation. Drawing her title from a chapter in Atlas Shrugged, Rand outlines the perils of policies that stifle innovation and examines the futility of trying to revive a nation’s economy by straitjacketing the only people who can save it.
In the Q&A session, Rand discusses a spectrum of topics including university education, free will, federal liability for state property taxes, capital punishment, government actions that are forbidden to individuals, homosexuality, groups that distort her ideas, Objectivist influence on government, the 1972 presidential candidates, the “Libertarian movement,” martyrdom through disobedience of price control laws, the Pentagon Papers, the American “sense of life” contrasted to Europe’s, the U.S. Constitution, American foreign policy, abortion, gun control, the Montessori method of education, good manners in expressing disagreement, favorite sculptors, shaping children’s psycho-epistemology, communist propaganda, male dominance in sex, and the prospects for effective political action for freedom and against statism.
The lecture lasts 51 minutes, followed by a 62-minute Q&A.
In honor of the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Ayn Rand contrasts the Founding Fathers’ principled concern for individual rights with the unprincipled views of voters and candidates in the 1976 presidential election. Rand also dissects the evils of the welfare state, focusing on Sweden as its exemplar, and calls for Americans to observe their Bicentennial by discovering and upholding the nation’s founding ideals.
In the ensuing Q&A, Rand addresses a variety of topics including her favorite Founding Father, the reason she pays income taxes, the Vietnam War, anti-war activists, bonuses and profit sharing in business, control of environmental pollution, Objectivism’s influence in Scandinavia, the fate of innocents in war, the Equal Rights Amendment, the use of amphetamines, compulsory copyright licensing, the Soviet Union’s influence in the Middle East, the Patricia Hearst kidnapping, American Indians and abortion.
The talk lasts 41 minutes, followed by a 47-minute Q&A.
In this radio talk, Ayn Rand identifies two types of business personality: Money-Makers (innovators and entrepreneurs who take calculated risks and succeed on a free market) and Money-Appropriators (those who become rich illegitimately, by “cutting corners” or political favoritism). Along the way she describes the qualities of real-life money-makers such as steamship and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, steel industrialist Andrew Carnegie, automobile innovator Henry Ford and banking magnate J. P. Morgan.
The program lasts 27 minutes.
In this 1962 recording, Ayn Rand argues that America’s intellectuals have defaulted on their responsibility to understand and defend capitalism. Rand contends that intellectuals failed to grasp the source of businessmen’s productivity and the destructive effects of collectivist schemes implemented by government coercion. By failing to uphold the value of individual liberty, intellectuals paved the way for authoritarian states and the decline of freedom in the twentieth century.
In a separate program, Rand answers questions prompted by her talk, addressing such topics as charity in a free society, the nature and evils of altruism, what she had in common with liberals, Nietzsche’s subjectivism, economic regulation, pollution remedies and the need for television airwaves to be recognized as private property.
The lecture lasts 50 minutes, and the Q&A program lasts 32 minutes.
In this 1963 talk, Ayn Rand offers her assessment of President Kennedy’s signature New Frontier program. Rand identifies a fundamental principle that Kennedy’s program shares with the fascist states of twentieth-century Europe: the “subordination and sacrifice of the individual to the collective.” This principle, Rand argues, is the “ideological root of all statist systems, in any variation, from welfare statism to a totalitarian dictatorship,” and was ubiquitous in the political dialogue of 1960s America.
The program lasts 58 minutes.
In this radio talk, Ayn Rand explains her theory of esthetics (the branch of philosophy concerned with art), discussing the role that art and literature play in human life. “Do not make the mistake of concluding that the purpose of art is education or enlightenment or propaganda, or any kind of narrow didactic message,” Rand observes. “Art is the expression of men’s deepest, most fundamental, most philosophical values.” She examines how the school of Naturalism replaced Romanticism in the twentieth century, creating a vacuum that deprives modern man of needed spiritual fuel.
In a separate program, Rand answers questions raised by her talk, addressing such topics as the accuracy of various definitions of “Romanticism,” the role of conceptual thinking and plot in Romantic art, the nature of tragedy and tragic character flaws, Shakespeare’s works and Homeric heroes.
The lecture lasts 59 minutes, and the Q&A program lasts 38 minutes.
In this radio talk, Ayn Rand comments on the 1960s’ “brain drain” that resulted when many of England’s best and brightest citizens chose to leave the country. Dismissing explanations that she thought too narrowly focused on particular economic events and policies, Rand argues that migration patterns of highly capable individuals are best explained by the relative levels of freedom between nations.
The program lasts 30 minutes.
In this 1981 lecture, Ayn Rand laments the growing political influence of the religious right, focusing especially on the incoming Reagan administration’s support for and sponsorship of such movements as the campaign against abortion rights, the advocacy of “creationism” in schools, the veneration of “family,” and the Moral Majority. Observing that American culture “has been growing progressively grayer, duller and more desolately empty,” Rand argues that the nation has entered an “Age of Mediocrity.”
In this audio track of a 1964 television interview promoting her just-published essay collection The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand explains why she considers selfishness to be a virtue. The host challenges Rand on a number of issues, including the purpose of government, government financing without mandatory taxation, business regulations, Christian ethics, the welfare of the poor under free-market capitalism and the idea that successful individuals owe a debt to society.
The interview lasts 19 minutes.
In 1962 Ayn Rand accepted an invitation to write a weekly column in the Los Angeles Times. From current events and controversies, Rand was able to draw timeless lessons. In this radio program, Rand reads aloud three articles from her syndicated column: “Let Us Alone!”, “The Cold Civil War” and “The Man-Haters.” All three discuss aspects of capitalism, such as the nature of economic growth and the views of capitalism’s opponents, including the claim that governmental controls can “stimulate” growth. At the end Rand offers a brief analysis linking the columns together. These columns were later anthologized in The Ayn Rand Column (1991 and 1998).
The recording lasts 30 minutes.
