Audio Interview about Ayn Rand's Ethics


merjet

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This sort of thing is probably good for the un-initiated, especially college students. I want it in writing and need five or ten minutes. Nice, calm and rational sounding voices. What they need is someone with a Russian accent. I may have first heard of and heard Ayn Rand on radio in New Jersey sometime in 1960, 61 or 62. Even twice. Can't swear to it for that memory, such as it is, was looking backwards when I heard her again, if it was again. But I'm sure she was on the radio a few times in the NYC area in that era. There was an FM station that specialized in that sort of thing--constant talking about ideas and things, commentary. WBAI? The accent grabbed you more than what was being discussed. I also remember a Jewish kid in my high school class packing a paperback copy of Atlas Shrugged. I first read it in 1963 in my sister's house in Flagstaff, Arizona on summer break from college--she had a paperback copy. Took me about 5 days; I skipped the speech. Today I open a paperback and I can't believe I read it in paperback. Even the hard cover isn't a big font, just bigger. They got a little worse with the modern pb binding in that the text is too close to it. Oh--the cover price of the pb in the early 1960s was 95 cents. I think I still have all those paperbacks with Rand inside from back then. I hauled them around in the army until I went to Vietnam and they were there in Tucson with my momma when I returned.

--Brant

what else are mothers for?

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I may have first heard of and heard Ayn Rand on radio in New Jersey sometime in 1960, 61 or 62. Even twice. Can't swear to it for that memory, such as it is, was looking backwards when I heard her again, if it was again. But I'm sure she was on the radio a few times in the NYC area in that era. There was an FM station that specialized in that sort of thing--constant talking about ideas and things, commentary. WBAI?

Good memory Brant...

During the 1960s, Ayn Rand would be heard on New York radio over WKCR-FM, WRVR-FM, WINS-AM, WNYC(AM/FM), and WBAI-FM. The WNYC broadcasts were limited to recordings of speeches delivered to auditorium audiences elsewhere. At WINS she spoke live to that station’s audience. WRVR carried a recording of a speech and had her once as an interview-show guest. (These last three statements are made on the basis of information I have, and may fail to take into account information unknown to me.) However, non-commercial stations WKCR and WBAI carried both (a) recordings of Ayn Rand speaking to a packed auditorium and (b) broadcasts which Ayn Rand made from these each station’s studio.

Ayn Rand’s having broadcast over WKCR for several years has been mentioned in some accounts of her. This was the station of Columbia University, and the station would have some of the university’s graduate students ask Miss Rand questions for the half-hour of a program. Some programs were Ayn Rand reading one or more of her essays for the length of the program. The views expressed by her in a program could then become the subject on which the PhD candidates would ask her questions in the subsequent program. Allan Gotthelf was one of these students, and later became a professor of philosophy who advocated for her philosophy. He also prepared indexes for her books. His recollections of her are published in the book 100 Voices: an Oral History of Ayn Rand (New American Library, 2010). He mentions his being with her at the WKCR studio on page 332 of that book.

I remember hearing her on WBAI and since I was very close with a woman at Columbia, I remember a few of their broadcasts.

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I did not know that this article even existed!!

The following article appeared in Human Events magazine, issue dated September 1, 1960. The illustrations are from a different periodical and dated 1957.

J.F.K.—High Class Beatnik?
by Ayn Rand

I love the way she would start a point, or, an article...with "first principle statements," she was so far ahead of her time in the utter simplicity of her arguments...

The first question to ask of a Presidential candidate is: does he regard the American voters as adult, responsible human beings who need all the specific knowledge he can give them, in order to pass judgment on crucial issues—or does he regard them as blind masses, incapable of connecting two paragraphs within the same speech, seeking to be taken by any leader who’ll relieve them of the responsibility of decision?

The keynote of Senator Kennedy’s acceptance speech is that there exists a “New Frontier” which requires that we elect him to the Presidency of the United States. It is, therefore, important that we understand the exact nature of that New Frontier. Here is his description of it: “We stand today on the edge of a new frontier—the frontier of the Nineteen Sixties—the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils—the frontier of unfulfilled hopes and unfilled threats.”

Forgot that Kennedy mentioned Woodrow "The Democratic Racist President" Wilson...

“Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom,” says Senator Kennedy, “promised our nation a new political and economic framework. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal promised security and succor to those in need. But the New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises—it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer to the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, it appeals to our pride, not our security—it holds out the promise of more sacrifice, instead of more security.”

Sacrifice—of what and to whom? Senator Kennedy does not specify.

http://www.dhwritings.com/jfk.html

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1968, on the Democratic Party Candidates after Lyndon "50,000 + deaths on my hands" Johnson had shaken the planet with his pathetic pussy faced announcement that he was too much of a coward to run on his miserable record...

Campus Or Battleground: A Report on the Events at Columbia University in late April of 1968, by Ayn Rand with guest Dr. Robert Hessen. SERIES: Ayn Rand commentary no. 3 - Rand presents her views on the world, international politics, current affairs, and human thought. BROADCAST: WBAI, 15 Oct. 1968.(25:00min) BB3777.03

The Invasion Of Czechoslovakia, Ayn Rand. SERIES: Ayn Rand commentary no. 2 - Rand presents her views on the world, international politics, current affairs, and human thought. Series 2 focuses on the quietly aggressive tactics of Communist Russia, as a wolf in sheep's clothing. BROADCAST: WBAI, 30 Oct. 1968. (29:30min) BB3777.02 Pacifica Radio Archives.

Some other amazing radio tapes in this collection...

A...

Brant led me here - thank him...

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