William R Thomas

Ayn Rand supported a laissez-faire capitalist economic system and defended the morality of making a profit through private business. The heroes of her novels include business owners and business executives. Her villains include government bureaucrats and Communist apparatchiks. She wrote an essay entitled “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business.” All this has lead many critics to claim that Rand held that big business was right at all times on all issues.

Many people still think Ayn Rand advocated a take-what-you-want-and-damn-everyone kind of selfishness.  

For example, Chicago Tribune movie critic Michael Phillips shared this impression on April 14, 2011 while reviewing Atlas Shrugged Part 1:

Ayn Rand has been a major inspiration for the Tea Party movement, which has swept a new generation of Republicans and self-described conservatives into power. Rand herself is often called “right-wing.” And her most famous defender, Alan Greenspan, was a consultant to Republicans and was nominated to chair the Fed by President Reagan.

On August 2nd, 2009, The New York Times profiled BB&T’s John Allison, who put Ayn Rand’s principles to work at that bank when he was CEO. In that article, the influential blogging philosophy professor Brian Leiter was brought on as an anti-Rand voice.

Editor's Note: David Kelley is the executive director of The Atlas Society (TAS), and film producer John Aglialoro is a trustee of the Society. TAS is the publisher of The New Individualist. This interview first appeared in the Spring 2011 print edition of The New Individualist.

TNI: What was your role in preparing the script for the Atlas Shrugged movie?

THERE’S A CIVIL WAR RAGING IN MY TOWN. On the Public School Front, my side (call us the “Alliance for Choice”) was recently crushed by the Egalitarian Axis in the Battle of the Universal Pre-K Lottery. Before the battle, well-meaning educated, liberal urbanites were able to say they were committed to public schools, while escaping from the worst urban school blight through competitive magnet schools and the like.

Ayn Rand rejected the dichotomy between mind and body and correlate dichotomies such as theory vs. practice, the moral vs. the practical, reason vs. emotion, and love versus lust. In Atlas Shrugged, she illustrated the unity of mind and body in speeches and thrilling scenes such as the first running of the John Galt Line. Explore how this principle shows up in Rand's treatmen of work and love, and in her exalted view of technology and industry.

This audio program addresses the themes of reason and logic as against irrationalism in its various forms, including faith, whim, and emotionalism, as they are developed in Atlas Shrugged. Why do reason and logic matter? Is a rational person without emotion or passion? Apparent contradictions drive the mystery plot of the novel. Unraveling them is the key to solving the mystery and understanding the radically objective world-view of Ayn Rand and the strikers.

The audio program covers:

This audio program discusses the meaning of the term "philosophical novel" and explains the essentials of the powerful combination of plot and ideas that make Atlas Shrugged a remarkable achievement. It concludes with an overview of the fundamental ideas of Ayn Rand's philosophy and the three-groups-to-two overall plot structure of the novel. (Originally presented at The Atlas Society's 2006 Summer Seminar. The first of a six-part series.)

Outline

Spring 2009 -- The Declaration of Independence states that the purpose of government is to secure the rights of man. Most Americans know and assent to the stirring words:

"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."