[Music] I was 14 years of age when I discovered the Fountain Head my sister had been reading it and she left him at the table and I picked it up and I I read it within two sentences I felt hypnotized that I have no other way to explain that I had the sense of an instantaneous deep I'll even say spiritual connection with the author of this book a few years ago decided to take a walk through town and they had a bookstore there so like all authors are curious to know you know is do they
got any of my books out there I went there I no longer remember whether they got any of my book or not because I was so stunned when I saw they had a stack of but a yard long if not longer of iron Ram books fiction and non-fiction and I the manager came over and she she could see that something had some interest in this and I said hi let me ask you a question is this normal to have this I see you really carry a lot of Rands here and that's I'm have made a
great admire myself but does this have any particular significance and she said yes a whole new generation that's just discovered iron Rand and every few years there's a new wave ion gave a sense of human possibility that was exactly what they were not getting at home or in their culture young people that is to say she gave people the sense that they could be effective that if they would persevere stick by your standards work hard you can achieve something that you'll be proud of find that part in you find she would say the hero in
your own soul and work toward [Music] that a is a is of course ER st's law of non-contradiction it's a way of saying you know identity existence is identity quoting iron ran that which is is quoting iron ran and a few other people so it's a way of asserting simply that a fact is a fact objectivism is the is a philosophy defined by Iron ran which holds reason as the sole source of reliable human knowledge that insists that a rational code of ethics is possible is achievable by human beings but the emphasis in that statement
is rational what is rational probably philosophers would have different opinions about that I would understand it to Simply mean in an almost Common Sense basis would mean supported by available information facts and the respect for information that is to say resp respect for facts as they are made manifest to us so it's not the rationalism as the term is used in philosophy where a person can divine all the secrets of the universe from reason false reason is a process of achieving knowledge it is not itself the knowledge the idea that a highly rational person is
not at the same time a passionately emotional one is completely false in fact almost the opposite is true in my work as a psychotherapist I tell clients feel deeply to think clearly it is through emotions that we are able to experience the significance of various facts or events or perceptions as they pertain to our well-being or the lack thereof so emotions are means of experiencing the joy of life and the pain of Life the pleasure of love and the pain of love when it is lost and so on my point being that when we give
up our defenses and our pretenses and our worry about how people will perceive us or interpret into what we've just said if we are willing just to be simple and uncomplicated or put it out when it's relevant to express one's thoughts or feelings then you have a mind you can talk to then you can understand the other person better and vice versa Rand liked Paradox she enjoyed saying things that she s she thought would shock or surprise a little but she certainly she thought it was funny to call this group of alleged individualists uh the
collective she thought it was funny because it was a paradox at a party in my Endeavors of my home we had a small dinner party among the guests with M Mike Wallace I at a certain point in the evening was trying to explain to the people there why she did not regard the Soviet Union as a serious military threat to the United States and they were kind of surprised at that and she said look it's almost impossible for an American to understand the level of incompetence which is the norm in the in the Communist Society
end of [Music] story with regard to drugs in general Rand would have been opposed to the kind of the recreational use of drugs she would also be opposed to the government arrogating to itself the right to make it illegal She would argue that people certainly have a right about what they put into their own bodies so uh we may say well we think a rational person wouldn't do this but um that led me to show her an article which I've been reading which which was suggesting that marijuana could confer some very interesting mental results that
are worth experiencing if you smoker we're going to take it in a biscuit and I showed her the article or I summarized her I forget which and I don't know what mood she was in that night but she said well let's get some and try it I almost passed out I mean this this this this is this is too I tomorrow she won't remember this let it be right now because this is I can't believe nobody will believe [Music] me I was bothered there was no way to name who am I we didn't have objectivism
yet you know and then somewhere how I not I have no idea how I came across the word libertarian and I gathered that that man like a minimalist view of the proper functions of of of uh of state of the government and I said to aan I think that could be a very good name for our political philosophy because it's not a word in general use now uh and we like to have something for us to call ourselves so I says we're Advocates of lazy Fair capitalism I said I am that doesn't do it because
two on two grounds number one it puts the emphasis on business as though the most important thing about libertarianism is business or the freedom of the marketplace but we need something more broad something like what it basically is philosophically globally not where it stands politically but she was were still using conventional language like a republican a conservative not and I would say to her why do you commonly tell people you're a conservative you're no more a conservative than than than my pussycat you know you're I said none of us are we're not Republicans and we're
not conservatives why do you use that language I can't understand that and she thought and she said well you're absolutely right what we really are is something like radicals for capitalism [Music] if you are going to offer a a new and Global code of ethics as ran saw herself doing every code of ethics has to include something about Redemption has to include something about people making bad choices even immoral choices but pulling their life together correcting whatever they did wrong as best they can and getting on with their life there is no treat M of
regeneration of your life there is no treatment of the motion from failure to success in the moral sphere in errors of knowledge we would say well of course we can always correct errors of knowledge but errors of morality for example somebody would say um Rand doesn't have any kind of truck for per people who make mistakes and there another person there says well that's not yester look at Hank Reen in out the shug he made mistakes I said yeah but they were not moral errors they were errors of knowledge and he was willing to pay
the full price for those errors but we're not talking about errors of knowledge we're talking about errors of morality that would have been such a great thing to put into that novel if if you had a a bad guy who was almost as bad in some ways as the good guys and then you show Redemption now you're talking about something because everybody in this planet has done things they wish they had done differently and thus things may be a little bit ashamed of now or embarrassed by now so what welcome to the human race the
real things the separates in my books the good guys and the not so hot guys is what do you want to do about it [Music] now
