Category: Media Citings

Don Hauptman’s article “The ‘Lost’ Parts of Ayn Rand’s Playboy Interview” makes for interesting reading, and includes some unpublished passages from the original interview.

Conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh gave a lengthy monologue today titled “The Smallest Minority on Earth,” in which he talked about the importance of individual rights.
Along the way, he paid due homage to the “brilliant writer and novelist, Ayn Rand.” Here is a key excerpt:

As I said, we have a gigantic new audience to this program, the tune-in factor is just through the roof. For those of you who are new to the program, I want you to please understand that the criticism of the Obama administration here and the disagreement with practically every element of his agenda is based on one thing.
We do not want to lose the liberty and freedom that we were born with in this country and that has made this the greatest country on earth, that has given us the greatest, most prosperous lifestyle any of population of human beings in the history of the planet. It has been liberty; it’s been freedom; it has been the ambition and desire to use that freedom in the concept of self-interest.
I want to spend more time on this in a future program. But this notion of sacrifice that the president talked about yesterday is just over the top. Liberals always talk about sacrifice, Obama, every time he opens his mouth, mentions the need for people to sacrifice. We all must suffer. We all have to jointly suffer in order for all of us to somehow be the same, and self-interest, selfishness is condemned. And self-interest not selfishness. Self-interest is what built this country.
Somebody starting a business did it in his self-interest. He didn’t start a business so that there would be jobs and health care in the community. He started a business because he loved the business that he was in. He loved the business that he wanted to build. He had a product or a service that he thought would improve the lives of people. He wanted to sell it to them; he wanted to make it available to them. Everybody wins when everybody’s acting in self-interest. Selfishness is a different thing.
Self-interest is excellence; self-interest is what’s desired; self-interest is what makes people want raises; self-interest is what makes people want their families to be secure; self-interest is what makes parents want their kids to be properly educated; self-interest is what propels the United States military to victory. Not sacrifice. Not the concept of sacrifice.
Sacrifice is giving something to somebody you don’t know to make yourself feel altruistic. You’re not sacrificing. It doesn’t make you great. But giving something to your family because you provided it for them, that is good. But if you run around just giving people who do nothing for you, who are just worthless, don’t have anything to do with you, you’re cheating them out of their own self-interest.
When you vote for politicians who take from your back pocket to give to others, you think it’s compassionate, you think it’s caring? It’s not. It’s depriving the recipient of his own quest for self-interest.
The brilliant writer and novelist, Ayn Rand, has written about this. Let me give you a couple quotes from Ayn Rand on this. “It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.” That is President Obama.
“Where there is sacrifice, there’s somebody collecting the sacrificial offerings.” What does it mean? President Obama says, “We all need to sacrifice,” for this reason or that reason. What it means is we all need to pay more; we need to have less affluent lives; we need to dial down our prosperity, and we need to give the money to him, not a charity. He’s going to eliminate, for all intents and purposes, the tax deductibility, it’s going to be 28 cents for every dollar, charitable donations. He wants to be the distributor of the charitable donations. He wants to be the distributor of the goods because he wants the glory.
“So it only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s somebody collecting the sacrificial offerings.” Who is it that’s talking about sacrifice? President Obama. Who’s going to collect your sacrificial offerings? President Obama and his government. And “where there’s service, there’s somebody being served.” There’s no sacrifice in service. The president who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters. He intends to be the master. You’re the slave. You must sacrifice.

See the full transcript for much more. You can also listen to the audio clip in Windows Media Player or RealPlayer.
(Thanks to Robert Bidinotto for the heads-up about this.)

Some choice quotes from Reason editor Nick Gillespie’s interview with NPR:

Let’s put it this way: Ayn Rand’s work, I think, is popular for the same reason Prometheus has always been popular with humans. It’s about somebody who dares to struggle against great odds and, you know, steals fire. …
Virtually every CEO of every major company will list Ayn Rand as a major influence. A bevy of Hollywood stars, ranging from Brad Pitt to Angelina Jolie to Vince Vaughn – a director like Oliver Stone, who is fond of Castro, says that Ayn Rand is one of the most important figures in his intellectual life. Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King, Hugh Hefner – I mean, the reach of this author is pretty astonishing….
She gives egoists a positive case for why the world should revolve around them and around their efforts. If you are the person who is creating value, if you are the star, the sun really does revolve around you. And not only should it be that way, but that’s the moral order of the universe….
How many characters from Saul Bellow novels, how many characters from Don DeLillo novels, inarguably great writers, how many of them have penetrated the American cultural consciousness in the way that a Howard Roark or a John Gault [sic] has, to a degree where these are shorthands for an entire system of ideas?
I think that that speaks pretty highly of her power as a writer. She is a great author because she has a phenomenal audience, including a lot of people who go through a worshipful phase with her. And, you know, here we could be talking about Alan Greenspan, the former head of the Federal Reserve, as well as any number of pimply-faced adolescents who decide to grow beyond her.

Listen to the full interview (15 min) for much more.