Capitalism is under siege. The social-economic system that made America the land of opportunity, freedom and explosive growth is under attack. Many blame the greed and self-interest of Capitalists for today’s economic morass. Others wonder how and why the events in Ayn Rand’s novel, <em>Atlas Shrugged</em>, could so closely parallel today’s events.

In this talk, Yaron Brook provides evidence that today’s crisis is a failure of the un-free market. Massive government intervention, from Washington’s affordable-housing crusade to the Federal Reserve’s easy-money policies, laid the groundwork for the crisis which culminated in TARP and the various stimulus packages. Likewise, Medicare and Medicaid laid the groundwork for the government’s most recent massive takeover of health care. Dr. Brook evaluates the government’s latest actions and suggest alternatives.

Dr. Brook also explains why the free market has taken the blame for a crisis caused by government intervention, and why it is that self-interest and the profit motive are the reasons that capitalism is the only moral social-economic system. His talk provides some hints of why Ayn Rand’s provocative philosophy is the only explanation that makes sense of today’s events. (Recorded June 9, 2010.)

About The Author

Yaron Brook

Chairman of the Board, Ayn Rand Institute

Despite overwhelming evidence that government intervention wrecks health care, government control over American medicine keeps growing. Why?

Because, Yaron Brook argues, virtually everyone today believes that a person’s need morally entitles him to have it fulfilled at others’ expense. This morality of need is at the root of every government health care entitlement, from Medicaid to ObamaCare .

In this provocative talk, Dr. Brook attacks the morality of need, and proposes a revolutionary alternative: the moral right of each individual to live for his own sake, taking responsibility for his own life and needs — including his health care needs — on a free market. (Recorded May 11, 2010.)

About The Author

Yaron Brook

Chairman of the Board, Ayn Rand Institute

It is now widely believed that man-made greenhouse gases are causing an unnatural warming of the earth that will have devastating consequences for human life. Environmentalists and politicians are pressing for severe restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions in order to prevent climate change. But what does the scientific evidence actually support regarding the causes of climate variability and the role of anthropogenic greenhouse gases? Are the predictions of catastrophic changes supported by scientific fact? Are governmental economic intervention and restrictions on emissions an appropriate policy response? Drs. Keith Lockitch and Willie Soon address these critical issues and answer audience questions in a lively panel discussion. (Recorded April 13, 2009.)

About The Author

Keith Lockitch

Vice President of Education and Senior Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute

The theory of evolution is often disparaged by its opponents as being “just a theory” — i.e., a speculative hypothesis with little basis in hard, scientific facts. But this claim carries with it the implied accusation that Charles Darwin was “just a theorist” — i.e., that he was merely an armchair scientist and that his life’s work was nothing more than an exercise in arbitrary speculation. A look at Darwin’s pioneering discoveries, however, reveals the grave injustice of this accusation. Darwin was not “just a theorist” and evolution is not “just a theory.” In this talk, Dr. Lockitch explores Darwin’s life and work, focusing on the steps by which he came to discover and prove the theory of evolution by natural selection. (Recorded March 18, 2008.)

About The Author

Keith Lockitch

Vice President of Education and Senior Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute

Six years after 9/11, the Bush administration’s disastrous foreign policy has led many Americans to call for a supposedly “practical” alternative. To confront the threats from nuclear-weapons-chasing Iran and other aggressors, they say, we need a policy of diplomatic engagement and negotiation with hostile regimes. But what were the results when essentially the same policy was followed in the decades prior to 9/11?

Was America’s resolution of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis really a triumph of diplomacy? When Ayatollah Khomeini issued a death decree against author Salman Rushdie, for daring to offend Muslims, was our response one that we should emulate? Is it true that responding to aggression with “flexibility” and diplomatic talks will soften the aggressor and bring lasting peace, whereas retaliation only aggravates conflict?

What kind of foreign policy will protect the lives and freedom of Americans?

Tragically, Americans have continually been offered a false alternative in foreign policy: self-sacrificing, “idealistic” policies (such as Bush’s crusade) or unprincipled “practical” policies (such as appeasing Iran) — a choice between two fundamentally selfless, and thus self-destructive, approaches. What America needs instead is a practical, principled approach to foreign policy, one informed by Ayn Rand’s revolutionary morality of rational egoism. (Recorded September 10, 2007.)

About The Author

Elan Journo

Senior Fellow and Vice President of Content Products, Ayn Rand Institute

In today’s America, our laws do little to protect U.S. property owners from either dictators abroad or government bureaucrats at home. How did this come to pass in a country founded on the principle that all men have the inalienable right to life, liberty and property? This lecture will answer this question by tracing the rise and fall of property rights in America. Professor Mossoff will first discuss the intellectual history of the right to property, explaining how the Founders turned seventeenth-century theory into eighteenth-century practice. He then describes how early-twentieth-century Progressives sought to destroy the right to property in order to remove this fundamental obstacle to their implementing the modern regulatory and welfare state. The result has been the disintegration of property rights at both the constitutional level and in basic legal protections.

Ultimately, the lesson to be learned is that a renaissance in the protection of property rights cannot occur solely through political or legal action — such a renaissance as its essential precondition requires the justification of property as a fundamental moral right. (Recorded May 16, 2007.)

In 1776 Thomas Jefferson announced to the world America’s plans for independence. For the first time in history, there was to be a nation and a government dedicated to the individual’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But from inception, and from both within and without, the ideals of the new nation were under attack. Without a full justification of an individual’s moral right to pursue his own life and happiness — not serve his neighbors, God or country — the nation was vulnerable, and its founding principles were slowly chipped away. In 1957 the missing justification came with the publication of <em>Atlas Shrugged</em>. On this, the book’s 50th anniversary, we will examine the moral revolution launched by Ayn Rand, without which the political revolution of the Founding Fathers had to remain incomplete. We will see what this moral revolution has meant for America so far, and what it promises for the future. We will see why <em>Atlas Shrugged</em> should be considered America’s second Declaration of Independence — a declaration not of political but of moral independence. (Recorded March 1, 2007.)

About The Author

Onkar Ghate

Chief Philosophy Officer and Senior Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute

From the teaching of “Intelligent Design” in the classroom to federal prohibition on the funding of stem cell research to the Terri Schiavo case, religion is playing an increasing role in America’s public life. The advocates of religion claim that only religion can restore values to America — by combating moral skepticism and relativism with an absolute view of right and wrong, applicable to everyone. If God is dead, it is often thought today, then everything would be permitted. But does morality rest on religion? Can it rest on religion? Are moral absolutes possible with religion? Without religion? What approach to morality can actually bring values to American culture? These are the questions this talk addresses. (Recorded October 18, 2006.)

About The Author

Onkar Ghate

Chief Philosophy Officer and Senior Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute

After September 11 the Bush administration declared that we must go on a mission to bring freedom to the Middle East nations that threaten us; thus, the Forward Strategy of Freedom. According to this strategy, establishing democracies in key Muslim countries, starting with Afghanistan and Iraq, would spur a revolution in the rest of the Muslim world — a revolution that would bring free, pro-Western, anti-terrorist governments to power.

But the strategy has failed. With the rise of the religious Shiites in Iraq, of Hamas and of Hezbollah, and with the electoral victories of Islamic radicals elsewhere in the Middle East, the Muslim world has grown more militant.

Why has the Forward Strategy of Freedom failed, and why was failure inevitable? What are the flaws inherent in the strategy? How does it necessarily undermine victory? What motivates it and what strategy should replace it? These are the questions Dr. Brook addresses in this talk. (Recorded September 12, 2006.)

About The Author

Yaron Brook

Chairman of the Board, Ayn Rand Institute

The Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad have sparked a worldwide controversy. Death threats and violent protests have sent the cartoonists into hiding and have had the intended effect of stifling freedom of expression. The reaction to these cartoons raises urgent questions whose significance goes far beyond a set of drawings.

Recorded on April 11, 2006 at the University of Southern California, this unflinching discussion, which includes an unveiling of the cartoons, addresses key questions, including:

• Why is it so important to hold events like this?
• What is freedom of speech? Does it include the right to offend?
• What is the significance of the worldwide Islamic reaction to the cartoons?
• How should Western governments have responded to this incident?
• How should the Western media have responded?

(Recorded April 11, 2006.)

About The Author

Yaron Brook

Chairman of the Board, Ayn Rand Institute