This is the audio version of Onkar Ghate’s November 6, 2017, post, “The Anti-Intellectuality of Donald Trump: Why Ayn Rand Would Have Despised a President Trump.”
In Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, there’s an unforgettable Thanksgiving scene at the mansion of Hank Rearden, a self-made millionaire industrialist whose achievements include the invention — after ten years of toil — of a revolutionary new metal, stronger, cheaper and more durable than steel. In addition to Rearden, seated at the table for Thanksgiving dinner are his mother, his wife Lillian, and his brother Philip, all of whom are wholly dependent on Rearden and his wealth.
In this wide-ranging episode of The Thinkery Podcast, Carl Benjamin (known on YouTube as “Sargon of Akkad”), interviews Yaron Brook. Among the many topics covered are: Why Adam Smith’s conventional morality undermines the case for capitalism; why Ayn Rand is not a “liberal” or a “conservative”; communism as the secularization of Christianity; the need for rational education; the essence of morality.
One of the biggest threats America faces — we are told — is the assault on our workforce: the loss of American jobs to immigrants, to foreign competition fueled by free trade, and even to technology that will make all kinds of jobs obsolete. In this talk the Ayn Rand Institute's executive chairman, Yaron Brook, argues that this fear is entirely misplaced — that a proper grasp of the virtue of productiveness shows that far from fearing and opposing free trade, immigration and robots, we should be eagerly embracing all three.
“When, at the age of twelve, at the time of the Russian revolution, I first heard the Communist principle that Man must exist for the sake of the State, I perceived that this was the essential issue, that this principle was evil, and that it could lead to nothing but evil, regardless of any methods, details, decrees, policies, promises and pious platitudes.“
Because ideas are powerful, societies throughout history have controlled speech through coercion. But what if each individual is capable of attaining truth?
“I’m often asked why someone with a penchant for philosophy and an academic life joins the Marine Corps. Why, some ask, does a scribe lower the pen to pick up the sword?” So begins this stirring and thought-provoking Independence Day address by Lt. Col. Scott McDonald, USMC, to attendees at Objectivist Summer Conference 2015 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
