When was ayn rand on donahue

Look it. If you take Jesus Christ as an ideal human being, and that is properly the view of Christians, what do you do with your ideal being? You put him on the cross, you torture him, and murder him for the sake of those less virtuous. Is that a proper example to set? AR: I think that is a monstrous idea.

If I were a Christian, I would resent it enormously. The ideal men are to be appreciated and followed. AR: Yeah. Incidentally, my philosophy includes free will , that you have the choice.

AR: Only the free will consists of your capacity to think or not. If you think, you made the right choice. You graduated form the University of Leningrad. Per month! Even today. Audience member: Miss Rand, in your novels, you portray very strong women. Women are human beings, so they need leaders just like men.

They need leaders who are men or women. As the leaders have learned, there is no such thing as specifically a leader of women, just as it would be ridiculous to say you have leaders of only men. PD: But, the point is that women feel because of the cultural inhibitors that have been placed on women, some sort of woman leadership is needed, to compensate and break those barriers, and to make good all the grievances of the past.

AR: You can do it only by education. If women feel there is prejudice against them, you do it by spreading the right idea that women are not intellectually the inferior of men, physically they certainly are….

They are standing up and educating. AR: No. They are asking for government power and government handouts. They go around depriving men of jobs because you have to have quota of so many women. PD: Well, what should they do, be nice little girls, and not say anything, and stay home and break bread? AR: Go into any career of their choice, except longshoremen or professional football player [unintelligible] and fight for their career as every man has to fight.

PD: …that they should be long-suffering and nurturing instead of a composure. AR: Not in this country. Here, you can get anything regardless of your sex because all you have to do is show your ability. Audience member: I want to change the topic and go back to what you said about history. Fifteen years ago I was impressed with your books and I sort of felt that your philosophy was proper.

Today, however, I am more educated and I find that if a company…. If she says today she says she is more educated….

Audience member: I am more educated now than I was 15 years ago when I was in high school and before I read the newspapers. If a company is permitted to do what it wants to do like ITT. You wind up with ITT in Nazi Germany doing whatever it damn well please, and any other company in the United States doing the same thing.

Conglomerates are not monopolies. They can do whatever they want. ITT owns everything from baking companies, to telephone companies, to munitions plants.

AR: I do not sanction impoliteness and I am not the victim of hippies. PD: You are equating someone who disagrees with you with impoliteness. AR: Oh, no! To show you that I am not evading the question, if anyone wants to ask the same question politely, I will be delighted to answer. PD: But, there was nothing impolite. You are punishing this woman for the energy and vigor that she brought to the dialogue.

This is the kind of woman we spend a long time trying to attract to our television audience. AR: I heard what she said. PD: Now she has a different view. Audience member: Do you see any reason at all for giving social aid to people? Do you not care or? AR: Only private charity, not through government and not through force, not with tax money. But, I want to answer the preceding question.

PD: Yes. Your question asks this audience to agree with the assessment of the questioner. AR: I can answer you. I came here to answer questions. PD: How do we keep ITT from developing too much power, or any multinational conglomerate, in your world of objectivism?

All monopolies such as ITT is sanctioned by government. All these tings that this lady cited as example, I have covered before by simply pointing out that the free market does not produce monopolies, and never has in history.

If you look at any monopoly you will see that it is held in power by an act of government, by government privilege. And, what we have today is a mixed economy. Audience member: The Illuminati are the international bankers: Rothschild , the Rockefellers , and all the Bilderbergers …. AR: Certainly not. Certainly Rockefeller is hardly an example of capitalism. And, what Atlas Shrugged gives you is a blueprint for how to be free.

AR: Right now? I think the United States foreign policy has been disgraceful for years, for decades. I would say roughly since the New Deal, and in part even before that. But, if you mean whose side should one be on, Israel or the else, I would certainly say Israel because it is the advanced, technologically civilized country who meets a group of almost culturally primitive savages who have not changed for years, and who are racist and who resents Israel because it is bringing industry and intelligence and technology into their nation.

Audience member: Miss Rand, am I correct to assume that according to your philosophy, that you are a perfect being? AR: I never judge myself that way. I judge myself in the following way. Have I absorbed and practiced all of the principles and behavior that I preach? And, I would say, yes, resoundingly. Audience member: Miss Rand, at this time are you planning or writing a new book? Audience member: Apropos your atheism, how do you account about the millions of people of the Christian religion, who have validated the philosophies of the goddess of alive?

PD: Oh, I see. AR: It has not been done. The nearest anyone came to it was Thomas Aquinas , and he was a very great philosopher, but he could not prove it. Nobody has ever proved it. Do you believe that there is some powerful good like degrees that always has to come back to good?

Audience member: What do you think is going to make them stop the monopolies, or…? AR: I have already made clear. Money is not power in the political sense. You cannot buy control. AR: Not necessarily. I would support the Americans who educate their own children. And, some of the most successful men of the 19th Century never went to college. Incidentally, her latest book is titled Introduction of Objectivism Epistemology. I should have had this at Notre Dame. I would have impressed all the girls.

It is a rather multi-syllabic, high-sounding title, which speaks to your philosophy of objectivism. Your characterization of the situation in the Middle East came down rather gratuitously and in a very angry way on the Arabs and without discussing the merits of either side in a most complicated and painful collision of cultures and peoples in our world.

That is what I have against the Arabs. That takes the conflict out of the sphere of civilized conflict, and makes it murderous. And anyone, private citizens, who resort to force is a monster. And, how do you feel about that? AR: For many reasons. The magazine is The Objectivist. Audience member: Would you not vote for a woman even if she was better qualified than many men? AR: Let me answer this.

It puts her in a very unhappy position. Oh, no. The President is not the only leadership position. OK, I'll assume I don't know if you do or not. Do you or do you not and why?

Really, your mode of argument and continual refusal to answer direct questions fails to come to terms with the issues I've raised. Of course no one doubts that Rand's claims are admissible as evidence of some sort and might be reliable. How seriously we should take them without corroboration from other people is the question I've raised. If you're willing to take the views of someone who was known to revise her memory of events in order to place herself in a good light as an infallible source for objective facts, go ahead.

OF course, in general, memory has its limitations, so I'm not accusing her of something that I would not accuse others of. But in her case, we have a record of how she remembered things like the Branden affair or conversations with Mises and I would be careful taking someone who forced her philosophy on such a common sense issue as an older woman being spurned by a younger man for a younger woman as an infallible source of facts on her childhood.

Children of extremely high IQ have been known to possess some remarkable abilities. I personally have known a child with a measured IQ of who, at a very young age, possessed a level of verbal acuity that most adults lack. It's possible, if Rand's IQ was high enough, that she could have had the instinct or sense-of-life, which eventually developed into her worldview, at the age of 3, and perhaps even some early thought-patterns.

But could she as an adult remember that far back? I can't, but if someone like Rand had at least 60 IQ points on me, I wouldn't say it was beyond their ability. Too bad her philosophical abilities weren't up to the same level as her novel-writing abilities. Rand: From the time that I remember myself which was two and a half, the first incident I can remember in my life I was two and a half I've never had to change.

CW, Maybe my presentation of Rand's claim might have lead to a response you wouldn't have provided. Do you still think that Rand's statement is accurate? Again, while I maintain some skepticism about the abilities of 2.

I just wish we had more people to corroborate Rand's achievements as a child. Read the exact quote and maybe you'll get a better handle of why I find Rand to be such a problematic source of objective viewpoints about her childhood. Ha ha, is that the same Rand who also claimed "no one helped me"? She must have had some memory problems We want to believe that as a 2. Ayn Rand was not an average child. I don't recall that. CW, The diamond point was directed at people who don't seriously appreciate that the brain must grow for intellectual abilities to develop.

Some people like to talk as if 2 year olds and 4 year olds are equally smart and it's all just about experience. Yes, people don't develop at the same rate, but there are many individuals with more significant intellectual achievements than Rand who were not childhood prodigies per se.

The evidence that Rand was not an average child is that she was a very smart adult. My point was that apart from her stories, where is the evidence of her precocity as a child? Recognizing a diamond shape requires intellectual ability.

Your example of drawing , not just recognizing, a diamond makes no sense in light of the fact that drawing one requires more than just recognition of what a diamond looks like. It requires small-muscle strength and hand-eye coordination, as well as intellect. Your opinion that there is no evidence of Rand's childhood precocity makes about as much sense as your diamond example.

What evidence of her childhood precocity? Her own statements? I don't think these are very reliable, she was a master in rewriting her own history to fit her ideal curriculum vitae and perhaps believing her own confabulations.

Your example of drawing, not just recognizing, a diamond makes no sense in light of the fact that drawing one requires more than just recognition of what a diamond looks like. If I have not described the test properly and you have issues with it, I recommend that you consult the referred work and if you have any further issues, take it up with the author. When I say diamond, I really mean the playing card shaped diamond.

Kids who can draw rectangles may not be able to draw diamonds, so it is unlikely to be a case of motor skills. Just show them the shape and ask them to replicate it. They will often be able to draw rectanges at 5, but can't draw diamonds till the age of 7. Well, since I have read multiple biographies on the internet of Rand and I possess the biography by Branden, and neither of them cites any sources other than Rand's memories of her childhood, let me know what I have missed.

If there were any relatives who corroborated Rand's stories, let me know and of course, I'll adjust my judgments as necessary. The reason why we find it easy to believe that Rand was an incredibly intelligent child is that she was an incredibly intelligent adult.

However, it is easy to overestimate intelligence or IQ based on adult achievements. For example, we know Garry Kasparov was a world champion, greatest chess player ever, and a bright child, but his IQ is not ridiculously high and most of his talent is based on his prodigious memory, which makes sense to almost anyone who seriously plays chess.

Being first in your class at a young age is nothing special unless we know what kinds of classmates Rand had, though there are reasons that Rand might have been special. My point again is that the support for Rand's claim that she was a brilliant child is that she was a brilliant adult and not anything we know about her childhood apart from stories which she told. There is good reason to be skeptical about stories Rand tells.

Dragonfly, Don't take CW too seriously. He's just trying to get under my skin. I never thought you meant drawing real diamonds, just diamond-shapes. And I will take it up with any author who believes that a child's IQ can be measured that way. Drawing figures is not used in any IQ test and for good reason: it requires more than just intellectual capability. Let Mr. Jensen step one foot onto this forum if he dares.

But typically they don't because they are afraid of their work being critiqued. If there is an intellectual difference between drawing squares and diamonds then let's see it demonstrated without relying on a small child's drawing skills.

What you have missed is the empiricist rationalization you begin with as your basic assumption, from which you draw a crude smattering of conclusions leading to zero intellectual knowledge. For example, when you or anybody else say that Rand rationalized this or that, it does not bring us anywhere nearer to understanding her philosophy.

When you doubt the veracity of Rand's statements concerning her childhood, it is based in simple skepticism which is a game that anybody can play and teaches us nothing. For example, I could say that you, Xtra Laj, are nothing more than a computer algorithm programmed to generate responses on forums. There is, after all, no empirical evidence to refute me.

All it involves is a fallacy known as Ad Ignorantium. That is a different topic. However, I use certain clues from her biographies and her writings that tell me she had, for good or bad, a prodigious intellect. It's "good" reasoning as long as you avoid calling it what it is: the fallacy of Ad Ignorantium. CW, Let Mr. All IQ tests require more than just intellectual capability - many require decent eyesight, possibly the ability to read, others require the ability to hear, and some even require the ability to write.

Arthur Jensen is one of the most experimental distinguished psychologists of the 20th Century, notorious for his research into the Black-White IQ Gap in the late 60's and early 70's.

Again, if you have issues with his research, feel free to take it up with him or with any psychologist familiar with the research surrounding mental testing. I generally don't waste time arguing when there is no means to resolve the debate other than rabid asseveration, a poor tool if I've ever seen one. Now, I suspect you are trying to show that you are capable of rhetorical flourish, but honestly, the argument is infantile.

I think quite a few people who have read what I have actually written and your gross caricature of it can tell the difference. I never simply claimed that Rand rationalized anything - I provided reasons which everyone can evaluate to their own satisfaction as to whether my claim that Rand was guilty of rationalization is plausible or not and at least one person, Dragonfly, agrees with me.

That is how people reason in practice and for the most part, it has worked for human beings pretty well. I don't agree, but you might have a different understanding of empirical from me.

For me, empirical understanding can be informed by information and testing. All that we would need to do was to figure out some mutually acceptable test of your proposition.

And if we can't agree upon one, that is fine too. The idea that knowledge must command assent amongst all people is not one that I subscribe to.

But what I would do, upon hearing your statement, would be to try to understand what you mean by it. Are you saying that there is no human being typing my statements? What reasons do you have for claiming this? These are questions about my position similar to those that I have repeatedly raised to your objections about my position. I don't have to command your assent for me to understand why you made such a claim, which can be pretty insightful.

This is a related topic. I'm saying that your methods are simply variants of the point I made in a much earlier post that all we can tell about Rand's intelligence as a child is based upon how we view her intelligence as an adult. I'm showing that there is room for error here and that relying on her writings is not enough. And I initially raised this skepticism in a context unrelated to Rand's intelligence. Xtra wrote: I never simply claimed that Rand rationalized anything - I provided reasons which everyone can evaluate to their own satisfaction as to whether my claim that Rand was guilty of rationalization Total straw-doggery.

I never said you didn't provide reasons or that you simply claimed etc. Here is what I wrote: For example, when you or anybody else say that Rand rationalized this or that, it does not bring us anywhere nearer to understanding her philosophy. True or not? I don't know where you got the idea that I made an inference about Rand's childhood intelligence from her adult writings. I inferred her adult intelligence from her adult writings and intellectual abilities.

The idea that Rand was a child prodigy comes from Rand's own words. If you meet enough people in life and gain knowledge of their IQs, it is a simple mind-reader's trick to guess the IQs of new people that come along, within a few points. Cavewight: "For example, when you or anybody else say that Rand rationalized this or that, it does not bring us anywhere nearer to understanding her philosophy.

In fact, I would say the opposite view is closer to the truth, that Objectivism only becomes comprehensible when one realizes that it is a rationalization.

Otherwise, a great deal of it, from a strictly logico-empirical point of view, seems little more than a series of unaccountable arbitrary assertions. Where on earth, for example, did Rand come up with the notion that the failure of modern philosophy to solve the problem of universals "invalidated" conceptual knowledge and led to the intellectual bankruptcy of the modern world?

This view is so far removed from anything real that only if it is taken as rationalization does it begin to make sense. I would further note that one has to be particularly naive to take the views of most philosophers at face value.

There is the "formal" i. And this real meaning can only be uncovered through understanding what sentiments and interest the philosophy is trying to rationalize. Spoken like a true rationalist! CW, I have other commitments and I think I've explicated my position pretty well.

Best wishes to you. Daniel Barnes, you wrote, PS: It's also worth noting her strong denial of Donahue's claim that he has "innate" tendencies. If man had to predispositions, why could entrepreneurs by just motivated without the profit motive? If our thinking is based only on our ideas, why not? Why should socialism in practice never work?

If all our thoughts and all our behavior was learned, why wouldn't the one factor determining a nations wealth, be its resources? But obviously that's not the case, and Rand would agree with me there, but ironically that fact, weather she would accept it or not flies in the face of her idea that we have no innate predispositions.

Also every dictatorship that I know of, may preach altruism and collectivism to a large degree, but they all, also, do everything they can to make it sound like you'd be better off, doing what their ideology told you to do, than if you did not.

Just about every piece of Communist propaganda, that I have ever seen would make me think that I would be better off under communism if I actually believed what it told me. There are socialist propagandists that claim that Cuba and North Korea are utopias with free health care. One of the biggest reasons Rand thought the way she did and opposed socialism, was that she once lived in the soviet union, and she realized that it was no worker's paradise, as soviet propaganda would have liked her to believe.

Not to mention that they make it sound like capitalism only benefits a small minority that most people are never going to be a part of. The same is true of Nazism. Based on vile antisemitic Nazi propaganda, you could also argue, that it would in the interest of every non Jew, to kill every Jew on the planet.

Even much of Jihadists propaganda, does everything it can to make it sound like you'd be better off living under an Islamic state. Of course, Communist, Nazi, or Islamists, propaganda, does nothing to make me think that I'd be better off following any of their ideologies, but that's mostly because, I don't believe their lies. Also, even in the most extreme slave states, someone has to pay the slave drivers.

Someone also has to pay the slave drivers. Sorry about those last lines, what I meant to say was, "Also, even in the most extreme slave states, someone has to pay the slave drivers. Someone always has to pay the slave drivers. However, the interesting study you cited regarding drawing the figures states that muscular control is not a factor. I guess if it looks like a circle then its a circle. Greg: Your explanation is not grounded in Rand's errors or inadequacies or incoherencies.

Your explanation is grounded in the fact that you hold all philosophies not just the "evil" ones per Rand to present nothing more than systems of rationalizations.

Thus despite the alleged problems inherent to Objectivism or any other philosophy , they all reduce to rationalization anyway. Proving they are all rationalizations would be very difficult. However, I would say that the basic logic behind your theory consists in argument by intimidation which consists in assertions of a more psychological type and commonly appeal to someone's real or alleged mental states.

Xtra: The evidence that Rand was not an average child is that she was a very smart adult. The evidence is Rand's own testimony which you claim inadequate on "empirical" grounds citing lack of evidence. This is known as the fallacy of the Moving Goalpost. It consists of setting your standard of proof so high that it will always or very likely be unattainable.

Cavewight: "Your explanation is not grounded in Rand's errors or inadequacies or incoherencies. It is because Rand and most other philosophers commit all kinds of silly errors, stumbling into one embarrassing philosophical faux pas after another, that I suspect them of being guilty of rationalization, so that, as Nietzsche point out, most of philosophy is a kind of involuntary confession or unconscious autobiography—mere wishful thinking filtered and made abstract.

How else can we explain the exceedingly strange phenomenon of very intelligent people believing and propagating so many absurd notions as we find in philosophy? But I don't hold that "all" philosophies are product of rationalizations. There are a handful of exceptions: mostly those philosophers derided as "skeptics,"--derided, I say, because they dared to suggest that knowledge was conjectural right from the start and can only be "justified" either scientifically or, if that proves impossible, pragmatically, thus challenging the "classical" and doltish view that equates knowledge with "justified" true belief and seeks to justify this knowledge by "reason.

Greg wrote: How else can we explain the exceedingly strange phenomenon of very intelligent people believing and propagating so many absurd notions as we find in philosophy? Do you have any examples outside of the Objectivist realm? Hegelian idealism which dominated philosophy in the 19th century. Kant's doctrine of the ideality of time and space. Phenomenological versions of idealism that equate "experience" i.

Positivism, which may have started out as worthwhile reaction to the excesses of idealism and rationalistic speculation, but which quickly degenerated into a scholastic cult of scientism.

Sociology of knowledge, which at least in its more subjective orientations often confuses communally derived knowledge with reality and too easily degenerates into the view that reality is a "social construct.

The "non-existence" of philosophical problems, a belief held by Wittgenstein. Epiphenomenalism, which, regretably, is held in whole or in part by many "naturalist" and "realist" philosophers nowadays that is, it's held by the better sort of philosophers, those closer allied to common sense.

Various forms of "deconstructionism," which are little more than the dishonest use of skepticsm for ideological ends. Friedman acted more as a popular economist answering various ill-informed, socialist-mentality-era questions; Rand's interviews were much less suited to presenting her philosophy in any reasonably detailed form. So they have her answering shit questions about monopolies forming under capitalism or the Bilderbergers or the unspecified proofs from the church fathers that God is "alive" and some other stupid, inane stuff.

Hippies wasted her time by being rude in their questions. The '80 interview wasn't quite as bad in this regard, as I recall. So the interviews are definitely nice for purposes of seeing her in the action of discussion, but not too helpful for finding out about her philosophy which can't be conveyed in minute infomercials. Those who are familiar with the philosophy will have fun; those who aren't won't really learn much except that she's a fiery personality with strongly-held views.

Many mainstream folks with no idea as to how to think about ideas will probably regard her as virtually an alien.

What, no monopolies form under capitalism? The '80 interview highlights as I'm sure you'll all see include her explanation that if she believed for one second in an afterlife she'd kill herself right then to go testify for Frank at the pearly gates, and her response to the "cult" questioner with, "I am not a cult. It's unfortunate that there's not a ton more widely-available footage of Rand in interviews. Seeing her conduct some kind of seminar akin to the epistemology workshops would have been primo material.

On a side note to Luke No I don't think the user had legal permission. But there's a suit being brought against Google you tube's parent company which will likely set the tone for much of the site's future use in reference to copyrighted work.

In the first interview she wears a red dress and the interview takes place in a big concert hall type place. In the second interview she wears a blue dress and the interview takes place in a more intimate sound stage kind of thing. The "cult" question was in the second Donahue interview. The one BB wrote about was in the first. Discussed in my Objectivist Rage speech. Subject: altruism. Poorly delt with. I remembered that it had something to do with the woman who "grew up" from Objectivism.

I was a little shocked to find that the actual question was far from innocent. It begins with the words, "Yes, Ms. Rand I was one of those people who belonged to your cult Is this the first interview or the second interview the one after Frank's death?

Adam Buker. Do I dare ask whether the YouTube user named Porelseco who posted these clips had permission to do so? I assume they still have international copyright protection. This above all, to thine own self be true. Home » Blogs » JulianP's blog. Who's Online There are currently 0 users and 7 guests online.

Linz's Mario Book—Updated! JulianP's blog reads Printer-friendly version ShareThis. So, no, he doesn't belong to this thread. Hey Marcus! I don't think Kiwis have heard of John Safran but I sure have.