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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.
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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, Alitu. Transcript is provided by Veed.io.
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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.
