YouTube video: Ayn Rand on Phil Donahue 1979
Phil Donahue: I am very pleased to present a woman that a number of people who have said “Atlas Shrugged changed my life. The Fountain Head changed my life.” Here’s a woman who is read by millions around the world. She may be our most-debated philosopher. She identifies that to which she adheres as “objectivism.” We’ll talk about it. We care very much about your sharing with us, your feelings about this most-interesting lady, a warm human being who has a lot to say and comes straight at everything she says. I’m pleased to present Ayn Rand. Miss Rand.
Ayn Rand is here and it’s about time we said hello after hearing so much about you when you’re not really altogether that available to the media. I know you do a radio show and there have been other occasions, but let’s see what I can do here in trying to help the world understand, those who may not be as familiar with your work.
You don’t go for altruism, and charity, and do-good, and liberal…
Ayn Rand: And conservatism… [unintelligible]
PD: You don’t like the conservatives, either.
AR: No… [unintelligible]
PD: I want to help people. I want to do good for other people. What’s so bad about that?
AR: Nothing, if you do it by your own choice, and if it’s not your primary aim in life, and if you don’t regard it as a moral virtue. Under those conditions, it’s fine to help people if you want to.
PD: Why can’t I think of it as a moral virtue? I mean, can’t I take some bows for myself for doing all these good things?
AR: Because that would be cannibalism. Because that would mean that you preach altruism, which means not merely kindness but self-sacrifice. It means that you place the welfare of others above your own, that you live for others for the sake of helping them, and that justifies your life. That’s immoral according to my morals.
PD: I don’t understand why you have to be so harsh in your evaluation of those people. Why call it immoral? Why don’t you just say it’s a waste of time? Why pass judgment on me?
AR: Because look at the state of the world today, and you cannot be harsh enough of those who created it, and those who created it are the philosophers of altruism. It’s those who preach self-sacrifice, selflessness, self-obligation, all unto itself theories which means anti-man. All those who demand man’s self-sacrifice, they have succeeded, and look at the results of the world.
PD: That’s a theory or way of life and philosophical idea which is advanced by religions, that we should sacrifice for others.
AR: That’s right.
PD: I want to make sure I understand you, Miss Rand. I’m still not sure why you are so harsh of those who would sacrifice for other people.
AR: Because I look at them. Just look at them. Because they don’t hesitate to sacrifice whole nations. Look at Russia. Communism is based on altruism. [Read essay Communism’s Soul by Larken Rose]. Look at Nazi Germany. The Nazis were more explicit than even the Russians in preaching self-sacrifice and altruism, and self-sacrifice for the state, for the folk, for the people. Every dictatorship is based on altruism. You can’t fight it by merely saying it’s a difference of opinion. It’s a difference between life and death.
PD: So, your view is then if we all became more comfortable with our natural tendencies, that is to say selfishness, there would be less horror, less war, less Hitler?
AR: There wouldn’t be any.
PD: So, the more selfish we are, the more kind, the more tranquil and peaceful the world in which we live?
AR: And more benevolent to other people. If we are rationally selfish, by that I mean as selfishness which can justify one’s every action rationally, not the kind of whim-worship, as I call it, which consists of just indulging in your own desires, or just of the moment. And, there is no innate, natural idea, you know?
PD: There isn’t, huh?
AR: No.
PD: Well, I have a lot of innate tendencies.
AR: You seem very innate. You know what I would say? Check your premises.
PD: Check my premises?
AR: Yeah, check the basic ideas behind any feelings that you might feel at the moment and you’ll see that your feeling comes from your premises, good or bad. But, they are held self-consciously. They will direct your feelings and you will think that it is innate, but it isn’t.
PD: How do you avoid… let’s take your thesis then and accept it. Now I’m going to be selfish. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to be real talented, and charismatic, and I’m going to develop a lot of wealth, and I’m going to have a lot of money and a lot of banks, and pretty soon nobody is going to be able to compete with me because I’ve already purchased all my competitors. And now I have dictatorial power over people and I can name the price of bacon, or the price of oil, or whatever it is the commodity I’m selling.
AR: You know I agree with you that you are very talented, and you can accomplish a great deal and already have, but you are talking about the impossible. In a free society, nobody can become a monopolist or a dictator. The system itself, the free market, will destroy you.
PD: How do you explain Mobil oil, Exxon? How do you explain the prices they’re able to charge for oil?
{Audience applause}
AR: I think there are stupid appeasers who get too little and put up with too much.
PH: Who, the oil companies?
AR: Yes. How? Here you’ll have to let me explain.
PH: Alright.
AR: If President Carter‘s own policy admits that we need the oil company, and the lack of oil is a serious national crisis which might lead to the stoppage of all industry, if that is what we need, by what right can we tell this man go ahead and produce what we want, while we’re insulting you, while we’re trying to control your business, and why we’re not leaving you that which you produced? Today it’s crudely obvious if we need the oil companies we have only one of two choices. Either we will produce oil ourselves and no government has ever done it or can do it, or we have to accept the oil company’s terms [and] pay them whichever they can get. The more they get the more credit to them because that means the country needs it and pays them. They produced something needed by the people. And, we must say thank you instead of proposing to put a tax on them in order to give the money to the government who does nothing. The government doesn’t deal with anything except impediments.
{Audience applause}
[See Government Produces Nothing, Ever]:
[G]overnment spending, far from being an appropriate means to counteract economic downturns and unemployment, always and everywhere exacerbates the very economic problems it is called upon to solve…. Government is a consumer, albeit a consumer of a special kind. Hence, all of its activities and programs, whether to finance various welfare projects, public education, or construction of roads, dams, and infrastructure are consumptive by their very nature. Like any other consumer, the government must turn to the production process — that is, to producers — for its funds. But unlike ordinary consumers, who obtain their incomes through voluntary exchange, the government obtains its income by means of forcible taxation.
PD: But if we allow the oil companies to have the power, which you say has come to them because we need the oil, it’s a question of supply and demand.
AR: Yes.
PD: So, if we approach this laissez-faire, as I think you would like us to, free of government intervention, free of all the force and the regulation and controls, which you abhor…
AR: Right.
PD: …now we have this gigantic oil baron saying, “$2.50 a gallon!” Here’s what happens. The blue collar guy trying to make a living and feed his kids can’t buy gas for his truck, can’t possibly survive in the free marketplace, and suddenly he’s on welfare, and he’s got to go for a handout, another feature of government which you abhor. You can’t have it both ways.
AR: But, all this is economic fallacies. To begin with, nobody in a free society, now we’re talking about the free market in which the government doesn’t interfere, nobody can become a monopolist. All monopolies are created by a special privilege from government. It’s only by an act of government that you can keep competitors out of your field. Therefore, you could not become that kind of monopoly. The power you hold as an industrialist is not the power to use force; it’s the power of producing something of value.
PD: That people want.
AR: And it’s the people who literally control you because every purchase is a vote in the favor of some businessman and in a way against others. It’s the public who decides what they want to buy and what they pass up. If, using your examples, you became this powerful tycoon economically but you cannot use force and you cannot force competitors out of your field, then every small[?] of a man would be in that field because you would have established a price way above the market. You might last a month, if that.
PD: So, in other words, if I try to be Mr. Big and charge outrageously high prices for gasoline…
AR: You’ll go broke.
PD: …I would go broke, in your view, because in your leave-them-alone [laissez-faire] and-let competition-handle-it approach to civilization, somebody with a smarter, better mousetrap… (pardon my mixed metaphors)…
AR: No, that’s a very good one.
PD: …somebody would come along and undercut me (sell at a cheaper price)?
AR: That’s right, which isn’t just my view.
PD: You know what I’ll do? I’ll buy them up the minute I see this burden. I’ll buy him. I’ll own him on Tuesday.
AR: And, where would you get your money when you’re not allowed…?
PD: I’m already holding them up for $2.50 a gallon.
AR: But, they’re not paying you. You say they’re all going out of business.
PD: But, they got to get to work. We’re married to a petroleum civilization.
AR: This has already been done, you know? It isn’t incidentally just my view. That is history. There are people who have tried to corner the market repeatedly, and the result was that they went broke.
PD: Alright. Let me see if I understand you now. See if this has got it. You’re saying in effect that the oil companies have this power because we gave it to them. We gave it to them with our large cars that need a lot of gasoline. We gave it to them with our wasteful practices of energy. We have such a tremendous demand and need and reliance on oil that in effect we have given the people who produce the oil the power over us.
AR: No.
{Audience laughter}
PD: Tell me where that’s wrong.
AR: Because the oil producers are not the only people who we’ll patronize, and not the only people who supply a need. Even if (I say “if” because it never happens), let’s suppose only one man cornered the market. He has competition from every other industry who produce other things which we need. Therefore, we cannot leave all the power to one company. Even if in a given field we will patronize only that company, that company is competing with every other producer. And the moment you charge too much, and somebody can give us the same product at a lower price, he’ll go out of business.
PD: Okay. You realize, of course, that your critics suggest that this is a pie in the sky, unpractical notion that you’re offering to us, and that it sounds wonderful as you gather with the intellectuals of some university, but it doesn’t work out on the street.
AR: Quite the opposite. It’s in the universities that it doesn’t work because all the leftist ideas and all the misinterpretation of capitalism come from leftist, liberal professors. {Applause}. The universities are the real villains in the picture.
PD: Alright. But you… go ahead…
AR: I don’t give a damn about my critics.
PD: You don’t?
AR: No, because I have not heard a good one.
PD: You’ve not heard a good one?
AR: No. Someone who will be honest and discuss the issues.
PD: Let’s try to walk into some other areas in the brief time that we have. It’s a little frustrating because I have a lot of folks out here who want to question you. You do not accept the existence of a god, of a divine, prime mover.
AR: No.
PD: Now the reason you don’t is that you can’t prove that such an entity or being or energy exists.
AR: I can’t nor can anyone else. There is no proof.
PD: There’s no proof that there is one, so therefore you conclude that there isn’t one?
AR: That’s right.
PD: You can’t prove there isn’t.
AR: You are never called upon to prove a negative. That’s the wrong logic.
{Audience applause}
PD: Right. Why can’t we have you say, “Mr. Donahue, I can’t prove there’s a god so I just have to take a pass on that one. No comment. I don’t know”? Why don’t you say I don’t know rather than I’m sure there isn’t?
AR: Because you can’t accept even as a hypothesis something for which there is no evidence. I could be saying…
PD: Well, I think there’s circumstantial evidence.
AR: There isn’t any.
PD: Oh, this is pretty impressive, huh?
AR: It’s magnificent. They’re built[?] by man.
PD: The Universe. You’ve got to be impressed by the Universe when you see order in the Universe. This wasn’t an accident, Miss Rand.
AR: Oh, now you’ve got to give me a few minutes. {Audience applause} What do you think would happen in a disorderly Universe?
PD: In a disorderly Universe?
AR: What’s the concept of order? What does it have to do with things which exist? If they clash with each other, if there were contradictions, they wouldn’t exist. There is no such thing as a disorderly Universe. Our whole concept of order comes from observing reality. And, the reality has to be orderly because it’s the standard of what exists.
PD: Right. So…
AR: So, the contradictions cannot exist.
PD: Okay. So, we have an orderly Universe because it’s impossible to have a disorderly Universe.
AR: That’s right.
PD: I got that. I understood that.
AR: Fine.
PD: Do you understand what a breakthrough that is that I understood that?
AR: [Unintelligible]
PD: Having understood that, I still don’t understand why you can’t just leave the door open. Why do you have to be so unforgiving, and so final, and so don’t talk to me about it, you can’t prove it, if anybody who goes around believing it is wasting time?
{Audience member makes a statement somewhat inaudible} God can’t be proven[?]!
PD: Okay. Out there, we’ll give you a chance in a moment.
AR: He’s quite right.
PD: Yeah, he thinks God can’t be proven.
AR: That’s right, and shouldn’t be.
PD: Okay, yes.
AR: But, the real issue here as far as man’s concerned, is that when you accept such an important issue as the creation of the Universe, on face you’re destroying your confidence and the validity of your own mind. It has to be easily reasoned always. I am against God for the reason that I don’t want to destroy reason.
{Audience member blurts out something inaudible}
PD: (To audience) Give us a chance, alright? We appreciate your zeal, but if you continue that it’s going to make it difficult for the other people to absorb what’s going on here. Okay?
AR: He asks, how can I be against God? I am against those who concede that idea.
PD: Tell us why.
AR: Because then it gives man permission to function irrationally, to accept something above and outside the power of reason, and superior to reason.
PD: And, what’s so bad about that? Why can’t I be a reasonable philosopher walking around wondering what it’s all about, struggling, striving, trying to understand and join the quest and the journey, and then the last little part of my consciousness I say, “I know you’re there somewhere. I don’t know why you did it this way, but I certainly can’t wait to die and find out”? {Audience applauds} I’m not going to ask that. You understand that? I’m not trying to be cute now. I’m honestly trying to understand, and I know that it’s easy to step out of person of your controversial view and wave a flag. I don’t want to do that, but do you appreciate the question? You understand? Why are those two things not possible?
AR: You said it, I think, unintentionally. You said, “So, I can’t wait to die and find out.” That, I am serious, is one of the results of acting on faith. {Audience applauds} You can’t wait to get out of this life.
PD: And, what’s wrong with that?
AR: Because this life is wonderful, as you said, because if you look at the Universe it’s wonderful. And, you have to use your life to the best of your understanding. If you go by emotions, not reason, it means you’re going against reality. Something exists, something is right, and you say, “No, I don’t like it” because I want to believe something else.
PD: I see.
AR: You, in effect, go by emotions, by your whims, not by reason.
PD: And religion, or the God concept, or faith, or worship, has people thinking life as a veil of tears…
AR: That’s right.
PD: …through which you probably will not get without falling where you are. Essentially, you are an evil person who is bent toward…
AR: Most religions do preach [unintelligible] original sin[?]
PD: And, you don’t believe that?
AR: God? No.
{Audience laughter}
PD: You think that life should be a celebration?
AR: Yes.
PD: We’re lucky to be here? We should happy to be here?
AR: We cannot be lucky because if we weren’t here we wouldn’t be.
PD: Right. It’s not a craps game that we are here?
AR: That’s right.
PD: So, we are here and we should celebrate it, use it, enjoy it, be selfish.
AR: Right.
PD: There’s a virtue in selfishness?
AR: Right.
PD: And, we got ourselves in trouble when we started using government to force us to be good because we had this notion that we had sort of a bad nature?
AR: Right. And, if we have a bad nature, we have no self-esteem. If we have no self-esteem, any demagogue can tell us. He can order us about because we wouldn’t consider ourselves valuable enough to be free. You would be anxious to follow anyone because you don’t trust yourself. So, self-esteem is a precondition of freedom.
PD: Alright, so you are obviously against forced government anything. Busing?
AR: Oh, certainly.
PD: You’re against taxes, forced taxation?
AR: That would be the last reform I would advocate.
PD: But, you don’t really think it’s going to be possible to have a community of men without forced, mandated taxes?
AR: No, I wrote, and I won’t go into details, about an alternative which would be voluntary taxation, voluntary contributions to the government because we need the government!
PD: You know why they’re going, “Bluh, bluh”? Because, you see? It won’t work.
AR: Oh, if you had to contribute 90% or even 50% of your income that wouldn’t work. But, the government doesn’t cost that much. The government’s proper function is only to protect your rights. And, that means to protect man from those who initiate force. So, the government protects the internal peace. That means the policemen. The government runs the army and navy, protection from outside forces, and lower court so that citizens who disagree can settle their disputes peacefully. That’s the only function of government.
PD: So, you like an individual who stands up, man or woman, does what he/she wants to do.
AR: Right.
PD: You have literally liberated millions of people by merely saying to them in your novels, “You want to do it? Do it.”
{Audience applause}
AR: That’s true, and if I helped them I’m delighted.
PD: Original sin sure does take a beating in your writings, doesn’t it?
AR: Oh, it does, yes.
PD: Yeah. You don’t think we’re born with sin?
AR: Do you?
PD: Huh?
AR: I have never met a person who really could believe that.
PD: Well, if you fool around with original sin there goes the whole idea of Christianity.
AR: Not really.
PD: Wait a minute! If there is no original sin then why do we need [unintelligible]? Why do we need the crucifixion? From what are we redeemed?
AR: Well, that is the most important thing. Look it. If you take Jesus Christ as an ideal human being, and that is properly the view of Christians, what do you do with your ideal being? You put him on the cross, you torture him, and murder him for the sake of those less virtuous. Is that a proper example to set?
{Audience applause}
PD: For the sake of those less virtuous?
AR: Yeah. For the sinners, to redeem their sins, as you say.
PD: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh.
AR: I think that is a monstrous idea. If I were a Christian, I would resent it enormously. The ideal men are to be appreciated and followed.
PD: And listened to.
AR: And listened to. Not crucified!
PD: But, our evil nature makes us rebel against those who would bring us…
AR: Oh, that’s a nice excuse, you know? If you commit a murder, then say, “But I’m evil by nature. I couldn’t help it”…
{Audience applause}
PD: The devil made me do it.
AR: Yeah. Incidentally, my philosophy includes free will, that you have the choice.
PD: It does?
AR: Only the free will consists of your capacity to think or not. If you think, you made the right choice. If you evade, that’s the mortal sin according to my philosophy.
PD: You were born in Russia, in Leningrad, what is now Leningrad. You graduated form the University of Leningrad.
AR: That’s right.
PD: You recently celebrated your 50th anniversary with the same man.
AR: That’s right.
{Audience applause}
PD: We’re in New York City with Ayn Rand. We’ll be back in just a moment….
{Commercial break}
PD: This is the Felt Forum of the Madison Square Garden. That is Ayn Rand, the philosopher who’s created such a stir everywhere with books which incidentally sell in numbers approaching 8,000 per month. Per month! Even today.
Audience member: Miss Rand, in your novels, you portray very strong women. I was wondering why you think in the world we don’t have strong women leaders.
AR: Because, if you’re speaking about women’s liberation, that whole movement, it’s a very false and phony issue. Women are human beings, so they need leaders just like men. If, in their own professions they don’t need leaders, but let’s say in politics. They need leaders who are men or women. As the leaders have learned, there is no such thing as specifically a leader of women, just as it would be ridiculous to say you have leaders of only men.
PD: But, the point is that women feel because of the cultural inhibitors that have been placed on women, some sort of woman leadership is needed, to compensate and break those barriers, and to make good all the grievances of the past.
AR: You can do it only by education. If women feel there is prejudice against them, you do it by spreading the right idea that women are not intellectually the inferior of men, physically they certainly are…
PD: That’s what feminists are doing. They are standing up and educating.
AR: No. They are asking for government power and government handouts. They go around depriving men of jobs because you have to have quota of so many women.
PD: But, their point is they have been denied jobs all these years, so let’s get at it and start swinging for them.
AR: You cannot fight an evil, if they think they’re victims (I don’t), but let us say assuming women have been treated unfairly, you don’t fight an evil by adopting it and practicing it.
PD: Well, what should they do, be nice little girls, and not say anything, and stay home and break bread?
AR: No!
PD: Well, what should they do?
AR: Go into any career of their choice, except longshoremen or professional football player [unintelligible] and fight for their career as every man has to fight.
PD: Would you fight for anything?
AR: How did I get here?
{Audience laughter and applause}
PD: You don’t deny there have been grievances. You don’t deny sexism. You don’t deny prejudice against women.
AR: I deny all that except unequal wages. There have been jobs…
PD: You’re telling me women have had these same opportunities, that they haven’t been given blinders by a culture that said they should be a nurse instead of a doctor…
AR: No.
PD: …that they should be long-suffering and nurturing instead of a composure.
AR: Not in this country. If you’re talking about Europe it might be different. Here, you can get anything regardless of your sex because all you have to do is show your ability. And, if someone is prejudice, and doesn’t hire you, the intelligent employer will.
{Audience applause}
Audience member: I want to change the topic and go back to what you said about history. Fifteen years ago I was impressed with your books and I sort of felt that your philosophy was proper. Today, however, I am more educated and I find that if a company…
AR: This is what I don’t answer.
PD: Well, wait a minute! You haven’t heard the question yet!
AR: She’s already estimated her position and my work, incidentally, explain the quality of her brain. If she says today she says she is more educated…
Audience member: I am more educated now than I was 15 years ago when I was in high school and before I read the newspapers.
AR: I’m not interested in your biography in that context!
PD: Let her make her point!
Audience member: It’s very basic. If a company is permitted to do what it wants to do like ITT. You wind up with ITT in Nazi Germany doing whatever it damn well please, and any other company in the United States doing the same thing. Conglomerates are not monopolies. They can do whatever they want. ITT owns everything from baking companies, to telephone companies, to munitions plants. I mean, I really think that’s wrong!
PD: Miss Rand thinks it’s wrong, too, but she’s saying that it’s not government force that’s going to correct the problem.
Audience member: I don’t think government force is going to correct the problem, either, but…
PD: If we back away and just let this invisible hand work and competition and free enterprise happen, according to its own inclinations, we’re not going to have abuse, and abuse and evil will fall of its own weight.
Audience member: I don’t believe that. I can’t believe it because money is power, and the more money you have, the more power you have.
{Audience applause}
PD: And, we encourage you to make a contribution to that observation.
AR: I will not answer anyone who is impolite, but…
{Audience disagreement}
PD: She wasn’t impolite.
AR: I do not sanction impoliteness and I am not the victim of hippies. But…
PD: Hippies?
AR: That’s where it started, the dropping politeness and of manner.
PD: You are equating someone who disagrees with you with impoliteness. That’s not fair.
AR: Oh, no! {Laughter} {Audience applause}. If you didn’t interrupt me I would have demonstrated what I mean. To show you that I am not evading the question, if anyone wants to ask the same question politely, I will be delighted to answer.
{Audience incredulous}
PD: But, there was nothing impolite. You are punishing this woman for the energy and vigor that she brought to the dialogue. And, that’s not fair. This is the kind of woman we spend a long time trying to attract to our television audience.
AR: Wait just a minute.
PD: Miss Rand.
AR: I heard what she said. “I used to agree with you, but now that I’m more educated…” What does that mean?!
PD: Now she has a different view. There’s nothing personal about that observation. Don’t be so sensitive!
AR: I am going to be!
{Commercial break}
Audience member: Do you see any reason at all for giving social aid to people? Do you not care or? It’s so unstabled.
PD: Do you see any reason for social aid, for welfare, for charity?
AR: Only private charity, not through government and not through force, not with tax money. Audience applause}. But, I want to answer the preceding question. Doesn’t anybody want to ask politely?
PD: Yes. Your question asks this audience to agree with the assessment of the questioner. And, I don’t think they will. That’s the problem.
{Audience applause}
AR: All of them? Then why do they want to listen to me at all?
Audience member: I’m surprised that someone with the intelligence of Miss Rand can be so emotional in her approach.
{Audience applause}
AR: I can answer you. I didn’t come her to be judged. I came here to answer questions. A question asked in the following form “I used to agree with you but now I am more educated, I don’t” is an insult which I cannot sanction. I am not interested in the woman’s history. She didn’t have to begin it that way. And that’s what I want to register my protest against.
PD: How do we keep ITT from developing too much power, or any multinational conglomerate, in your world of objectivism?
AR: We don’t give them government privileges. All monopolies such as ITT is sanctioned by government. It’s the government that makes this field at monopoly and forbids the entrance of competitors. All these tings that this lady cited as example, I have covered before by simply pointing out that the free market does not produce monopolies, and never has in history. If you look at any monopoly you will see that it is held in power by an act of government, by government privilege. And, what we have today is a mixed economy. It’s not capitalism.
{Audience applause}
Audience member: Miss Rand?
AR: Yeah?
Audience member: In your book Atlas Shrugged, isn’t it true that you have a blueprint for the world takeover by the Illuminati?
AR: By what?
PD: Who’s the Illuminati?
Audience member: The Illuminati are the international bankers: Rothschild, the Rockefellers, and all the Bilderbergers…
PD: You think her philosophy would lead to capitalist control of everything?
Audience member: In Atlas Shrugged, she gives an exact blueprint for eight years of the world takeover and it’s enforced right now.
PD: Do you accept that?
AR: Certainly not. To begin with, I’ve never heard of any such conspiracies. Certainly Rockefeller is hardly an example of capitalism. And, what Atlas Shrugged gives you is a blueprint for how to be free. If a person feels that he’d rather be enslaved and poor but not let anyone be successful and rich, well, that is what Atlas Shrugged is against.
Audience member: I’d like to know your opinion on the United States’ foreign policy and what is happening in the Middle East right now.
AR: Right now? I’m not sure we know what’s happening. I think the United States foreign policy has been disgraceful for years, for decades. I would say roughly since the New Deal, and in part even before that. But, if you mean whose side should one be on, Israel or the else, I would certainly say Israel because it is the advanced, technologically civilized country who meets a group of almost culturally primitive savages who have not changed for years, and who are racist and who resents Israel because it is bringing industry and intelligence and technology into their nation.
{Audience applause}
Audience member: Miss Rand, am I correct to assume that according to your philosophy, that you are a perfect being?
{Audience applause}
AR: I never judge myself that way. I judge myself in the following way. Have I absorbed and practiced all of the principles and behavior that I preach? And, I would say, yes, resoundingly.
Audience member: Miss Rand, at this time are you planning or writing a new book?
AR: I’m just planning one.
Audience member: Apropos your atheism, how do you account about the millions of people of the Christian religion, who have validated the philosophies of the goddess of alive?
PD: Who have validated them? By what? By doing good works?
Audience member: By the doctors of the church…
PD: Oh, I see. It’s this man’s position that you can validate the existence of God. It’s possible to do that.
AR: It has not been done. The nearest anyone came to it was Thomas Aquinas, and he was a very great philosopher, but he could not prove it. Nobody has ever proved it.
Audience member: In relationship to your atheism, how do you think that ITT and Xerox and General Motors won’t overrun the world with their power? Do you believe that there is some powerful good like 360 degrees that always has to come back to good?
AR: No.
Audience member: What do you think is going to make them stop the monopolies, or…?
PD: …the acquisition of more power.
AR: I have already made clear. A) I don’t believe that they’re evil. B) They don’t have the power to run the world. Money is not power in the political sense. You cannot buy control.
Audience member: But, it’s power in the practical sense! I mean, if you have to pay $5 a gallon to get to work, a $1.50 for a head of lettuce, your children have to eat, they have to be educated. Our system has set it up so that you can only get a good education if you’re willing to pay for it. [See College Education Should Not Be Free by That Guy T] So, if you want us to be educated…
AR: Not necessarily. I would support the Americans who educate their own children. And, some of the most successful men of the 19th Century never went to college. And, today those who didn’t go to college are more intelligent and better informed and less easily fooled than the people who did go to college.
PD: I assume you’re against compulsory education.
AR: No, I’m against public-funded education because that is the sure way to create a country of people disposed to dictatorship, and that’s what you’re seeing today.
{Commercial break}
PD: We’re with Ayn Rand. Incidentally, her latest book is titled Introduction of Objectivism Epistemology. I should have had this at Notre Dame. I would have impressed all the girls. It is a rather multi-syllabic, high-sounding title, which speaks to your philosophy of objectivism.
AR: That’s right.
PD: I just have one point that I think should be made, Miss Rand, with time fleeting. Your characterization of the situation in the Middle East came down rather gratuitously and in a very angry way on the Arabs and without discussing the merits of either side in a most complicated and painful collision of cultures and peoples in our world. Why couldn’t the millions of men, women and children who are Arab and find themselves in this desperate conflict and look around wondering where peace will be, why can’t they be angry at you for your characterization of them, your slap at them, your roundhouse criticism of them, when you don’t seem to be able to tolerate a questioner who suggests that she disagrees with you? {Audience applause} You cannot accept any criticism unless you level it.
AR: No. I don’t resort to terrorism. I don’t go around murdering my opponents, innocent women and children. That is what I have against the Arabs. That takes the conflict out of the sphere of civilized conflict, and makes it murderous. And anyone, private citizens, who resort to force is a monster. And, that’s what makes me condemn and despise them.
Audience member: Miss Rand, do you believe there is going to be a day where there’s going to be a female in the White House as President? And, how do you feel about that?
AR: I wouldn’t vote for her.
{Audience laughter}
PD: Why not?
AR: For many reasons. I’ve written an article about that in my former magazine. You’ll have to find out my reasons there. The magazine is The Objectivist.
Audience member: Would you not vote for a woman even if she was better qualified than many men?
AR: If it would have fallen that low, I might.
Audience member: That low? I think you have a very low opinion of women.
AR: Let me answer this. It is not to a woman’s personal interest to rule man. It puts her in a very unhappy position. I don’t believe any good woman would want that position.
PD: So, you’re essentially against leadership positions for women, then?
AR: No. Oh, no. The President is not the only leadership position. There’s senators and congressmen…
PD: And, that’s alright for you if they run and be elected?
AR: Oh, certainly, and I’d vote for them. Wait a moment. A Commander in Chief of the army, a woman, I think it is unspeakable.
{Commercial break}
Audience member: Miss Rand, I’d like to ask you your opinion of Golda Meir.
AR: My opinion of Golda Meir? Oh, I think she’s a very unhappy woman. She was a good leader. I don’t agree with her philosophy. She’s a socialist. And, I think Begin is much better.
PD: I’m sorry our time is up. There are a 1,001 people with questions here that perhaps sometime in the future we’ll have an opportunity to share more dialogue with you.
AR: It’s a pleasure.
PD: It’s my pleasure. It’s been an enlightening experience to meet the woman behind the writings which have created such a stir.
AR: I really enjoyed it.
PD: Your latest book is titled Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Many thanks to you, Ayn Rand, and you who’ve gathered here in Madison Square Garden. Have a nice day, everybody! Goodbye.
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