"The Age of Mediocrity" by Ayn Rand

Thank you. Before I start, may I ask, please, no photographs, so don't flash. I. I am not young enough for that. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I shall begin by anticipating the question period, at least to the extent of answering one question I know I will be asked. The answer is no. I do not approve of the Reagan Administration. Thank you. I'm glad that you agree on this point. I didn't know whether you would all be enemies by now, but I'm glad to see that it isn't so. I did not vote for Mr. Reagan. I did not vote for any presidential candidate in the last election. There is a limit to how much I can shrink the object of the idea of voting for the lesser of two evils. At present, I can say that the Reagan administration will probably be better than the Carter administration in some respects. But in other respects, it will have disastrous consequences. The improvement will be short range. Still, it's some value because the country does not have much of a range left ahead. If today's trend continues. The disaster is long range and it will wipe out any victories. The short range warriors might accomplish the improvement, if any will be in economics. The disaster is intellectual. I have no opinion of the Reagan Administration's domestic policy except for a generalized agreement that it is desirable to cut government spending and to cut taxes. But this was desirable long ago, so let us hope it is not too late. I am also in favor of spending more on the fence, as much more as possible in the field of foreign policy. I like the tone and style of Mr. Reagan's and Mr. Haig's statements about Soviet Russia. It was a shocking and wonderful surprise to hear an American President speak of the Soviets as they really are, as a gang of thugs, instead of the disgraceful appeasement of Russia that has been going on for some 60 years. And observe that the Russians responded by starting to appease America by asking for a summit meeting to talk things over, which has always been the response of bullies, thugs and communists at the first sound of a firm statement. But these are merely statements. We have not seen as yet any significant actions taken by the Reagan administration in foreign affairs. So it is too early to judge. The reason of my distaste for Mr. Reagan in the role of President is the philosophy he hasn't got. I do not mean that I disagree with his philosophy. I mean that he hasn't any. Judging by his appearances and statements on television, he is a pragmatist who leans to the right, which is more contradictory opposition than a pragmatist who leans to the left. The worst thing I can say about him is that he appears to be sincere. He seems to believe that the awful populist religionist hodgepodge of stale patriotism and foxy sentimentality which he utters is sufficient to set this country on fire and turn it back to its original principles. Speaking of fuel shortages, no one has pointed out to him that this country is perishing from a shortage of intellectual energy and that there are no Arabs to help us out in this crisis. No. I beg your pardon. I take it back. There are the kind of Halloween like creatures who are trying to take over Today's intellectual arena are not created by the Reagan administration. They exist in any period in the dark and ventilated corners of his of history, but in the periods of philosophical default they come crawling out into the full open moonlight. Today they are organized under many pretentious names and slogans. The most presumptuous of the names is the Moral Majority. And the falsest of the slogans is the claim that they are pro life. What they thank you. What they all have in common is that they are militant mystics who have learned to be arrogant by encountering no opposition. Their common though unacknowledged ideal, the embodiment of their philosophical goals, is the man who has succeeded in uniting religion with politics and establishing a religious dictatorship. He is not an Arab, but a close neighbor of the Arabs. He is known as Ayatollah Khomeini. No, the Reagan administration did not create those militant creeps, but it sponsors and supports them to an embarrassing extent. Mr. Reagan has been declaring that he agrees with some of their ugliest demands, such as the anti abortion issue and the creationism issue. It is embarrassing to hear a President of the United States endorse the plain, crude, illiterate superstitions of the populace of the Middle Ages. To the great credit of the American people, the public opinion polls show that a significant majority supports a woman's right to abortion. So the militant mystics who had wanted a constitutional amendment for beating abortion are now resorting to a new and unconstitutional gimmick. They are seeking to have Congress pass a law to determine metaphysics, specifically the nature of life. This law is to declare that human life begins with conception, that an embryo is a person, and therefore that an abortion is murder. It does not look at present as if this law will pass, but it might eventually, if it does not, evoke better opposition than is heard at present. The mere notion of Congress as a philosophical authority prescribing official dogma to rewrite the nature of reality, such as equating a bit of protoplasm with a human being should have caused a march on Washington in protest. But who would march? Who understands the philosophical precedent being set? Some lawyers do understand the viciousness of the legal precedent and have spoken out in protest. But philosophers? This is an example of the power of philosophy over our daily lives. Since philosophers have abdicated declaring that reality is unknowable, the militant mystics can assume that anything goes, that anyone's guess is as good as anyone else's, and that man's nature might as well be determined by a politician's vote. Observe that the proper, philosophically valid definition of man as a rational animal would not permit anyone to ascribe the status of person to a few human cells and would not serve the militant mystic's purpose. The word healers and demagogues seem to know how crucial the crucial importance of definitions the PhDs in philosophy do not. If any among you are confused or taken in by the argument that the cells of an embryo are leaving human cells, remember that so are all the cells of your body, including your hair, your fingernails, or your ruptured appendix, and that cutting them is murder. According to this particular idea, Remember also that a potentiality is not the equivalent of an actuality, and that a fetus may be regarded as a human being only when it is capable of surviving outside of and independent of the mother's body. The question of abortion is much wider than the termination of a pregnancy. It is a question of the entire life of the parents. As I have said before, parenthood is an enormous responsibility. It is an impossible responsibility for young people who are ambitious and struggling but poor, particularly if they are intelligent and conscientious enough not to abandon their child on a doorstep, nor to surrender it to abortion. For such young people, pregnancy is literally a death sentence. Parenthood would force them to give up their future and condemn them to a life of hopeless drudgery, of slavery, to a child's physical and financial needs. The situation of an unwed mother abandoned by her lover is even worse. I cannot quite imagine the state of mind of a person who would wish to condemn a fellow human being to such a horror. I cannot project the degree of hate hatred required to make those women run around in crusades against abortion. Hatred is what they certainly project. Not love for the embryos, which is a piece of nonsense no one could experience, but hatred, a virulent hatred for an unnamed object. By the degree of this women's intensity, I would say that to Them it is an issue of self esteem and that their fear is metaphysical. Their hatred is directed against human beings as such, against the mind, against reason, against ambition, against success, against love, against any value that brings happiness to human life. In compliance with the dishonesty that dominates today's intellectual field. They call themselves pro life. But what right does anyone claim the power to dispose of the lives of others by dictating their personal choices? The only alleged justification for it is the theory of collectivism which claims that man is the property of the state or of the tribe. So an anti abortion stand would be consistent if advocated by a leftist politician. But Mr. Reagan is an advocate of capitalism and of men's rights. That is what I find shocking. Many people are saying that he won't go through with it, that the anti abortion gangs will not win. I hope this is true. But such a hope is very fragile. It rests on nothing better than the President's inconsistency. Now observe another instance of philosophies power. Observe that the mostly liberal opposition to the anti abortion gangs is extremely weak. For many years it is the liberals who were aggressive, eloquent and confident on any issue. It is the conservatives who had no arguments. Today on the abortion issue their positions are reversed. The conservatives are militantly self righteous. The liberals argue in terms of uninspiring non essentials. The reason the liberals have lost their moral base. The only defense against anti abortionists is a woman's individual rights. But this clashes with the liberals political philosophy. As for the conservatives, their pseudo moral fervor is derived from their religious tenets which they are now flouncing in public. If the anti abortionists chief concern were the embryo, they would be in the vanguard of the advocates of contraception in order to prevent the necessity of what they call murder. In instead most of them are against contraception. And this stance includes more than the Catholics. For a discussion of that issue I refer you to my article of Living Death in the Objectivist magazine. Those same militant mystics are against sex education in schools. And this at a time when the category of pregnant teenagers start quite at the age of 11 or 12. It is as if those mystics were deliberately seeking to create sexual disasters and to spread them as widely as possible. I had always thought that housewives as a rule were merely uninteresting women. I did not know that they were monsters. Well, some of them are. Quite apart from the issue of abortion. A large number of militant mystics disapprove of childless couples, people who do not want to have children. They claim are selfish. This is true. You can can bet your boots they're selfish. Here the word selfish is used with the proper objectivist meaning. It does not mean the conventional brute who sacrifices others to himself. It means the man of self esteem who refuses to be a sacrificial animal and wants to live his own life for his own sake. When you bring children into the world, you sacrifice your own sovereignty and become a means to an end. The end. The primary concern are the children. There is nothing wrong in having children if both parents choose it consciously and know what they are doing. But to accept procreation as a moral duty is to accept the role of an animal in a breeding farm. For whose sake. Here the official motive of the anti abortionist comes out in a pretty and reverent tone of voice. For the sake of the family. Since I do not keep track of Mystic's publications, the first time I encountered the word family in that queer, artificial, exaggerated sense was in reading the last Republican platform. Their family was given the status of some sort of political value or gold, something to uphold and fight for on the barricades. Some home loving religionists had always pottered about the family in that manner, but not quite so seriously. I thought that it was a ghastly touch in the platform, a promise of a future ideological campaign, an attempt to make family and individual inspirational issue like Mother's Day or a cross stitch embroidered motto Home sweet home in order to fill the conservative's moral vacuum. Well, the campaign is here. I do not think that that campaign is succeeding or will succeed. The American people, including the American families, are too clean and wholesome for that. But this type of propaganda is a valuable revelation of the militant mystic soul. The worship of the family is mini racism. Like a crudely primitive first installment on the worship of the tribe, it places the accident of birth above a man's values, the unchosen ties of physical determinism above a man's choices and duty to the tribe above a man's right to his own life. Family devotion is a calm game by means of which the stronger members of a family are milked for the support of the weaker ones. The conscientious ones are exploited by the irresponsible ones, and any sign of rebellion or independence is cut down the moment it appears. Family in that sense is a way to break a man's or a woman's spirit by means of unchosen obligations and unearned guilt. Speaking culturally, not politically, the worship of the family is un American. Observe the fact that in this country young people used to leave home and go to college or look for work in another town. According to one of the best American traditions, a person had to be on his own in order to prove he his value and independence. Independence from what? From his family. You owe a certain concern and financial help, when possible, to your parents, but the notion of a special duty to uncles, cousins and third cousins is a piece of vicious nonsense. Another basic issue of the militant mystics is creationism, creation the climax of today's cultural bankruptcy. Complaining that the theory of evolution clashes with their religious beliefs, the creationists demand what has been called equal time for God in public schools. That is, they demand the teaching of the biblical story of the creation of the universe on equal terms with the theory of evolution as an equal, equally valid alternative. This incredible act of impertinence is being perpetrated by people who in a million years would not be able to grasp the historical meaning of what they are doing. Creationism is the ultimate embodied, concretized triumph of Immanuel Kant. If you want to see the essence of Kantianism, take a look at the creationists who appear on TV talk shows. They are, however, handicapped in a way. The looks of some of them could be used to fill certain gaps in the theory of evolution. Kant did not seek to subordinate science to religion. He merely sought to establish their epistemological equality. Wishing to save religion, particularly religious morality, from the onslaught of science, he gave his followers the intellectual ammunition that enabled them to claim that the discoveries of science were no better, no more certain, no more valid than their mystic revelations. That is all he had to do. That is all. The creationists demand just equality, the equality of science and religion, the equality of reason and faith. It is a law of economics that bad money will drive out good money. It is a law of man's survival that reason will not argue, bargain or share the same. Excuse me. Or share the same stage with space, the severe discipline, passion, devotion to the pursuit of knowledge that is of truth. Motivating irrational men has nothing to say to and cannot cooperate with the blind whims and fantasies of mistakes. Their relationship necessarily is either. Or. Could you teach people a healthy diet by telling them that food and poison have equal value? Could you preserve the honor of virtuous women by declaring that morally they are the equals of prostitutes? To claim that the mystics, mythology or inventions or superstitions are as good and valid as scientific theories, and to offer this claim to the informed minds of children is a moral crime. Is the child expected to make a choice. Only a very unusual, very intelligent and self confident child will make the right choice in such a case, and he would despise his teacher as a fool or a liar. But to the extent that the child trusts his teacher, he will be inclined to accept him on face and to doubt his own mind. Which of course is the result sought by Immanuel Kant, by the militant mystics and by the creationists. I must state incidentally, that I am not a student of biology and am therefore neither an advocate nor an opponent of the theory of evolution. But there is quite a lot of valid evidence to support it and it is the only scientific theory in the field. So one may properly granted the status of a very likely hypothesis. The issue, however, is not the theory of evolution. This theory serves merely as a rape arousing excuse for attacking science by howling that it regards us all as monkeys, etc. For attacking reason, for attacking man's mind. The creationists are not a new phenomenon. Their ancestors originated the scopes trial in 1925. They even won it, but it did not do them much good. Why then are they an ominous phenomenon today? Because the ground has been prepared for them. Because they are cashing in on every dishes tenet of modern philosophy. Because they are riding on the horrible helplessness of today's intellectuals who have no answers and no defense to offer. The creationists are proclaiming that school textbooks must declare that the theory of evolution is only a theory, not absolute knowledge. But of course, yell the defenders of science. Everything is only a theory. There is no such thing as an absolute. How do you know? Asked the creationists. There is no such thing as knowledge, answered defenders of science. On a recent television debate, two members of the moral majority were pitted against two liberal professors. The mystics presented their case confidently and almost condescendingly. They did not engage in personalities and and did not attack the professors. But the professors kept hammering on a single subject. Would you call me immoral? How can you call me immoral? And how can you be so certain? Nobody can be certain. It was embarrassing to watch. How often, for how many years had I seen conservatives and businessmen trembling before? Trembling before professors of that kind, afraid to antagonize them, surrendering those academic, excuse me, surrendering this country's freedom and their own rights. And here were his academic ogres, unable to defend their schools against an invasion of primitive cavemen, anxiously begging for the caveman's approval. The great miscalculation of the 20th century, of its liberal intellectuals is the notion that evil is the product of a Self confident mind, while doubt and uncertainty protect society from the ambitions of tyrants. A forthcoming book, the Ominous Parallels by Leonard Peacock, offers an example of this error and of its consequences on a monstrous scale. I quote, we are told insistently to remember the Holocaust. Eloquent, horrifying books describe the facts to us in every detail. The truth about a monstrous historic evil virtually screams out from hundreds of thousands of of pages, but few, including the authors, seem to hear the scream. Hannah Arendt, the best and most philosophically inclined of the commentators, is also in regard to her ultimate conclusions, the worst, that is the most perversely wrong. Headed in a final warning, she singles out for special attack the attitude which she regards as a major source of the Nazis evil and of their success, an unswerving commitment to logic. The Nazis, she says, and the masses attracted to them were too consistent in pursuing the implications of a basic premise which she identifies as racism. They gave up the freedom of thought for the straight jacket of logic or the tyranny of logicalism. They did not admit that complete consistency exists nowhere in the realm of reality, which is pervaded instead by fortuitousness. Like the other commentators, but Even more so, Ms. Aaron moves in the modern intellectual mainstream, accepting without challenge all basic ideas, including the conventional derogation of logic. Thus she can fail to see that her own books makes all but inescapable. Excuse me, what? Her own book makes all but inescapable. That the essence of Hitler's theory was not consistency, but unreason, that fortuitousness is a property not of reality, but of Nazism, and that logicality is not tyranny, but the weapon against it. Close quote. The author of that very brilliant book is here. I can't claim the authorship, apart from the obscenity of ascribing logic to the Nazis. The terrible error is to assume that undercutting man's self continence will turn him into a mild, humbly benevolent citizen, and that destroying his confidence and reason will make him peacefully tractable. The exact opposite, of course, is true. A profound sense of self doubt or an inferiority complex is the outstanding characteristic of Nazis, communists, gangsters and criminals in general. The evasion of reason leads leads either to despair and violence or to hopeless apathy. Who would fight against evil and tyranny when he can be certain of nothing, neither of what is evil nor of his own value? Observe that with the accelerating destruction of philosophy and therefore of reason, in the past few decades our cultural atmosphere has not been acquiring a tone of joyous benevolence and liberation from the straight jacket of logic. It has been growing progressively grayer, duller, and more desolately empty. We have entered an age of mediocrity, not of terror, or rather not yet of terror. The puppeteers on Kant's destruction of the mind are the envious, pretentious mediocrities who swoop down on the positions vacated by the proscribe described men of first rate ability. The monsters come later, after the mediocrity have cleared the way for them by making life unlivable. Today's swarms of militant mystics are doing their share of movement in that direction, and believe it or not, they are trying to acquire a philosophy of their own. One cannot really call it a philosophy, so its identification will have to be that which happens when philosophy vanishes. Somebody called Gilder has written a book defending capitalism. I shall not read that book, but I will quote from an article which will tell you the nature of the book and why I will not read it. The article is entitled the New Right by Peter schwartz. In the September 15, 1980 issue of his newsletter the Intellectual Activist, he writes, quote, the Old Right was content to rely on utilitarianism for a moral defense of capitalism. Its adherents acknowledge that capitalism is based on and encourages the pursuit of self interest, but maintains that this evil is tolerable since it leads ultimately to the greatest good for the greatest number. They found themselves continually retreating, justifying ever more diluted versions of capitalism, losing battle after battle to the liberals who argued persuasively that moral ends could not be achieved through immoral means. To the new New Right, however, with its greater emphasis upon duty and obedience to authority, and its refusal to separate church and economics, the contradiction is more acute. One New Right advocate proposes a novel solution. Altruism, declares George Gilder in a recent speech, is the essence of capitalism. Yeah, believe it or not. The fact is, says Mr. Gilder in another talk, that capitalism thrives on religious faith and the case without it. And further, capitalist progress is based on the acceptance of risks that cannot be demonstrated to pay off in any one level lifetime. Thus it relies on faith in the future and in providence. The essence of giving is not the absence of all expectation of return, but the lack of a predetermined return because the vast majority of investments fail. The moment of decision is pregnant with doubt and promise and suffuse to some degree with faith. To interrupt for a moment and this is me speaking now. Any man who thinks that one succeeds by having blind face and that it's all A matter of luck or a gamble is miserably poor in two respects. Factually and intellectually. Now to continue. Thank you. To continue quoting from Mr. Schwartz's article. Socialism presumes that we already know most of what we need to know to accomplish our national goals. That's quoting Mr. Gilder. Capitalism is based on the idea that we live in a world of unfathomable. Unfathomable? Is that a word? One that you cannot fathom. Complexity. Of that kind of complexity, ignorance and peril. And that we cannot possibly prevail over our difficulties without constant efforts of initiative, sympathy, discovery and love. One system maintains that we can reliably predict and elicit the outcomes we demand. The other. That's socialism. Remember the other. Assert that we must give long before we know what the universe will return. It's the universe who determines the return on your investment or give. The socialist economy proceeds from a rational definition of needs or demands to a prescription of planned supplies. In a socialist economy, one does not supply until the demands have already been determined and specified. Rationality rules in a socialist economy, mind you, and its rules are out. The awesome uncertainties and commensurate acts of faith that are indispensable to an expanding and innovative system. Capitalism depends not on greed, but on giving investment without a contracted return. The workers under capitalism are motivated not by crude economic rewards, but by love, family. The entrepreneurs succeed to the extent that they are sensitive to the needs of others and to the extent that others succeed. The pursuit of self interest would lead not to the always risky and unpromising ventures of capitalism in an uncertain and perilous world, but to the quest for success, safety and security in an ever growing welfare state. When faith dies, so does enterprise. It is impossible to create through the mechanism of rational self interest a system of collective regulation and safety that does not finally deaden the moral sources of the willingness to face danger and fight without faith and love. Self concern brings an obsession with security, an envy of wealth and an aversion to risks that destroy the gifts of creative capitalism. Capitalism can be summed up in the language of Give and you will be given unto. Search and you shall find. Cast your bread upon the waters and it will return to you many fold. The deepest truth of capitalism is faith, hope and love. Close quote. Mr. Schwartz summarized. In other words, Mr. Gilder's philosophy is to follow one's own judgment about an uncertain future requires blind face to follow. A dictator's five year plan represents rationality. To desire the freedom to live and to produce is altruistic to desire the security of a jail cell is selfish. Presumably the countless millions who escape or try to from socialism are all zealous philanthropists yearning for the opportunity. Opportunity to cast their bread upon capitalist waters. Mr. Schwartz, he's here also. The applause is yours. Now you can see why I would not be able to read through stuff of that kind. If some liberal wanted to write a devastating satire on a conservative thinker, he could not make it quite so bad as this because nobody would believe him. Yet Mr. Gilder has written a book and I am told the book is worse than this excerpt. It would be funny except for the fact that Mr. Gilder was one of Ronald Reagan's speechwriters for the acceptance speech at the Republican convention, that David Stockman, the allegedly hard headed budget cutter, was the editor of that book, and the fact that a number of prominent members of the Reagan administration are endorsing it. Well, God help America. To digress for a moment to a more cheerful subject, I want to recommend to you as antidotes to today's irrationality, two publications which have been consistently Objectivist. Peter Schwartz is the Intellectual Activist, which you can reach at 131 Fifth Ave, New York City, 1003 and Harry Vinswanger's the Objectivist Forum which you can reach at FDR Station, New York City. I will repeat this because I really want to sell those two publications. The Intellectual Activist at 131 Phipps Avenue, New York City 1003 and the Objectivist Forum at FDR Station, New York City. You can see now what I hold against the Reagan administration. I would be happy if I were proved to be wrong, if that administration took a more rational course. But I do not think that I will be. All the signs are dismal. The liberals and the Carter administration were not much better intellectually, but they had been thoroughly discouraged, discredited as collectivism and the welfare state have been discredited all over the civilized world the road was cleared for a renaissance of reason, freedom and capitalism. The people were ready for it. That is what they thought they were voting for when they voted for Reagan. If instead they will get faith, family and a self sacrificial Wall street, it will be more terrible, a betrayal than any in our history. No, a president does not have to be a philosopher, but there ought to be a moral limit on his ignorance of the subject. The Republicans and the advocates of capitalism have been regarded for years as anti intellectual, predominantly with justice. If the Reagan administration brings us four years of grotesquely mindless fantasies as it has Done so far, the disaster might be irreparable. The road will be open for a liberal collectivist reverse. By default, the anti intellectual reputation will cling to the advocates of capitalism for another two or three generations, as the ghosts of Hoover and the Great Depression had clung to the Republicans. It will be harder to exercise because the sickly homey smell of small town mindlessness will linger. So the battle for capitalism will be harder to fight. I do not believe that the Reagan administration will accomplish much even in the field of short range economics, because nothing can be accomplished by men who disc guard the mind. Irrationalists succeed occasionally by sheer luck and not for long. But nobody should count on so much luck as this country needs today. But hard or easy, we have to continue to fight. It will be harder, lonelier and more necessary than ever. We cannot give up this much magnificent country to nothing, to drowning, mediocrity, scared power lusters and trembling professors. That is the most uninspiring, demoralizing kind of battle and perhaps the most heroic. I gave you an indication of it in a passage about the start of Dagny's career in Atelstrand. Quote. The adversary found herself forced to fight was not worth matching or beating. It was not a superior ability which she would have found honor in challenging. It was ineptitude, a gray spread of cotton that seemed soft and shapeless, that could offer no resistance to anything or anybody, yet managed to be a barrier in her way. Close quote. When I speak of fighting, I mean of course an intellectual battle. Stick to the advocacy of reason. There is no other way to lead a successful life. Spread your ideas as widely as possible. Don't give up and above all, don't cooperate with or compromise with or endorse the mystics and the weirdos. Don't give them the sanction of the victims. You still have a chance to win. Thank you.

If you have questions for Ms. Rand, it will be helpful if they are interrogatory and brief. Since there are so many of you in the hall Now, I'm going to move away from the microphone and shout into the hall. Repeat those questions so that they can be heard throughout the auditorium as you answer them. Thank you. Is there a question in this area?

Yes.

The question is why do you never speak of or to libertarians, of which thousands are loyal leaders to me?

Because I do not speak to or of cranks unless I have to, and because libertarians are a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people. Let me give you my reasons. Who plagiarize my ideas without giving me credit. When it fits their purpose and denounce me in a bort more vicious manner than any communist publication when it defeats their purpose because they are lower than any type of pragmatist and what they hold against me or Objectivism is morality. They would like to have an amoral political program. Well, that is just as bad as this Mr. Gilder here, and perhaps even worse.

Our questioner asks if you wrote Atlas Shrugged as a rebuttal to Lost Horizons.

In part, the answer is no. I hadn't even read Lost Horizons at the time I was writing Atlas Shard. Nor would any one book of that nature be worthy of a book like Atlas Shrugged. To answer.

On the aisle in the rear in blue. I don't hear the question is for the balcony. I really need to repeat this. The question is that in the Objectivist you state that utilitarian objects such as furniture and clothing cannot be called works of art. How do you then determine that architecture could be be a work of art?

I define that very clearly in the Fountainhead. In what aspect of architecture is artistic? And it is not the purely utilitarian aspect, but the way that utilitarian functions are expressed in terms of general fundamentals, metaphysical human values. That is the difference between architecture and the other utilitarian objects. I've even said that the utilitarian objects such as lamps or furniture can be very artistic. They have a very strong artistic element when they are good. But it is in the nature of a work of art that it does not serve any other purpose. It is an end in itself.

The question is, what do you think of the work of Beethoven?

Well, I would have to say that he's a very great composer, but that I cannot stand him out there again. Let me tell you why. Because music expresses what I call a sense of life, an emotional response, response to metaphysical issue. And Beethoven is great because he can make his message so very clear by means of music. And his message is malevolent universe, man's heroic fighting against destiny and man's defeat. That's the opposite of my sense of life.

In your speech you mentioned that you are an advocate of increased defense spending. How could you justify a comment of increasing defense spending in the light of the method of collecting the money for that spending which coerces people who may not want to be giving that money into supporting it?

In a very general sense, I oppose taxes generally, and you can read my alternative in capital, the unknown ideal. But so long as you do have taxes, those who do not want to pay for defense, if they were at all honest men of integrity should leave this country immediately. Because by what right do you live in this country if you. You do not want to spend money for a primary necessity, protection against military conquest and a monstrous kind of military conquest, and to deny that we need defense today, well, then I think those people should be recommended for an asylum.

In the railroad. If the United States States and the Soviet Union are able to destroy the world some eight or ten times over, why do we need to spend more money on defense?

First of all, because with the discoveries of science, nuclear weapons, like any other kind of weapons, become obsolete very fast. Second, so long as Russia is having new inventions and manufacturing new weapons, we. We dare not, and I mean it, dare not stay behind. We should be ahead as we were originally. One of the real historical crimes of this country's governments is that they allowed our superiority to deteriorate. But we can't complain about that now. We have to do something to correct it. So long as you have a threat of the kind that Russia represents and nuclear weapons whose secret, incidentally, was stolen from us in their possession, we have to expand our ability to 20 times over. And I would add something more. I would say, I hope they blow up the world rather than surrender it to Russia. Thank you. Thank you very, very much for this. Now, that was an American response.

Is there any hope for a film project of Atlas Shrugged? And have you thought about how such a film would be cast?

Yes, there is some hope. I have just signed a new contract with the same producers, But it is all very much happening. There are all kinds of difficulties, including financial, and it is not at all sure when he will be able to go into production, but he seems to be anxious to. Now, the question of casting is, of course, I've thought about it, but it's quite too early yet. We wouldn't know who is available or when there would be a script for them to add.

Why does this.

For healthy children to use handicapped materials. I quite agree with the speaker's indignation. I think it's a monstrous thing, the whole progression of everything they're doing to feature or pamper or favor the incompetent, the retarded, the handicapped, including, you know, the kneeling buses and all kinds of impossible expenses. I do not think that the retarded should be allowed to come near children. Children cannot deal and should not have to deal with the very tragic spectacle of a handicapped human being. When they grow up. They may give it some attention if they're interested, but it should never be presented to them in Childhood. And certainly not as an example of something they have to live down to.

You're being asked for your recommendation of the musical composers of today.

Buy yourself some classical letters. I cannot listen to to modern music. I literally think that I can't hear is anything but music.

The questioner ascribes a number of beliefs to you. The end is whom do you think should take care of those who are unable to take care of themselves?

I would like to hear the latest ideas of my beliefs. I don't believe in housewives. Is that a form of belief? You see, you would do much better to begin with to ask your question and not attempt to summarize my beliefs about which you have no idea. But to answer your question, I'll have to borrow an answer from which I unfortunately didn't originator would have liked to. It was a very good answer given by a person I knew in answer to the question who should take care of the helpless people in the world. Her answer was if you want to help them, we will not stop you.

Are you at present writing or contemplating the writing of another book?

I'm contemplating, yes. But I'm in a very difficult situation at present and I cannot promise you when I will give you another book.

The questioner sees the libertarians as providing intermediate steps toward your goal. And how do you see your philosophies and goals being a conflict?

Please, please do not say that they are after my goals. I have not asked for and do not accept the help of what I consider cranks intellectually. What I am after is philosophically educated people, people who understand the idea ideas, who care about ideas and spread the right ideas. That's how my philosophy will spread, just as philosophy has through all history, by means of the people who understand it and teach it to other people. And if it's a philosophy which is true to reality, as mine is, it will win. But neither I nor anyone can predict the time. But I hope I have written enough to make it clear that I do not believe in the filthy slogan of the end justifies the means that I believe was originated by the Jesuits and accepted enthusiastically by the communists and the Nazis. The end does not justify the means. You cannot identify achieve anything good by evil means. And I would just let me dot my I the libertarians are most unworthy of being the means to any end, let alone to the end of objectivism.

Two questions. What? What suggestions do you have for raising children in today's society? And do you plan to write an autobiography?

On the first one I could not Make a suggestion in a question period. I couldn't make it even in a whole speech. That is a subject that would require a book, a very long treatment, and I'm not a speaker specialist in that, nor am particularly interested. I would refer you to a very good person, the only good name I know in the field of education, and that's Maria Montessori. She's of the turn of the century and actually lived into the 20th century. She has the beginnings and the very good formulations and applied techniques for the proper education of a child, specifically focused on the development of the child's mind. As to the second question, Will I write my autobiography? I don't think so. It would bore me.

Do you have a potential president who is either currently in politics or in the public eye or not?

No, not at present. Why? Because. Are you there? You mean an actual candidate whom I would know that I would support?

Is there something about politics that makes.

It impossible in today's politics? Yes, because it is complete pragmatism, anti consistency. A president who would tell country the truth would not be understood. That is why I think it's too early for a political campaign. The country has to be educated culturally. And the battle, as I've said many times, is in schools and colleges, not yet in politics. But I couldn't project, look at someone and say, I know that he would be a great president. I would have to see him in political action. And. And I have not seen any such person.

The questioner says that in the light of your absolute refusal to surrender to Soviet Russia, is there not a way for intermediate surrender before the end of the world?

Well, there might be if there were an intermediate state of pregnancy, an intermediate immorality and intermediate irrationality. In all the basic and important and crucial issues, there are no intermediacies. That's where you have to stand with me and Aristotle saying it's either or. And I apologize for the presumption it's Aristotle and me.

There's a hand up over there. Look at that hand. Go right ahead. One last question.

I would be the last person to give it to you because I am a man, male chauvinist. You have heard novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand address the Ford hall forum. The moderator was D. Corsell.