This three-minute video contains the stirring conclusion of Yaron Brook’s message to everyone who seeks to expand the influence of Ayn Rand’s ideas in today’s culture.
In this talk, delivered at Ayn Rand Student Conference 2016, Gena Gorlin discusses how psychological strategies from contemporary psychology can be of assistance when exercising one's free will to choose and shape the form of one's own happiness.
“Give me liberty or give me death.” This inspiring slogan from the American revolutionary period is all the more impressive when we remember that the revolutionaries were not trying to flee a totalitarian dictatorship but were rebelling against one of the freest, most prosperous nations of their age. There is an important insight here — American revolutionaries demanded, in full, the political freedom expressed in the Declaration of Independence as a matter of principle. What was the principle these revolutionaries held so dear and why don’t Americans see it the same way today?
In this wide-ranging interview, Yaron Brook discusses Ayn Rand’s achievements as a novelist-philosopher; the role of philosophy in history; Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow; why “the poor” only need freedom to rise; environmentalism; and more.
“The folks at UCLA gave me a list of the topics we’re allowed to talk about tonight,” joked Dave Rubin, creator and host of The Rubin Report, and moderator of this panel on current threats to free speech on college campuses.
College used to be grounded in the inviolate principle that each of us should confront new ideas, speak our minds and learn. Has that time passed? This year alone we have seen a riot at U.C. Berkeley and violence at Middlebury College over controversial speakers. Instead of “express yourself,” a new view seems to be taking hold: “Suppress yourself — or I’ll do it for you.” What is happening to free speech on campus?
Today, college students’ attitude toward free speech ranges from ambivalence to outright hostility. They cry “microaggression” at the slightest offense. They demand “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” to protect themselves from controversial ideas. They attempt to ban speakers at public universities and support other bans on speech.
This video moment from the Ayn Rand Institute highlights novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand’s escape from Soviet Russia and why she chose to build a new life in America.
