>> anne heller and jennifer burns offer their ideas on ayn rand. she focuses on the allies and foes and ms. heller researchers the author's childhood and upbringing. the cato institute in washington d.c. hosted our 15 minute event. >> today we are going to talk about two major new books on ein rant and the fact that they testified to the continuing impact of america's most influential novelist of ideas. in the past 66 years, more than 25 million copies of radiance books have been sold. sales have surged recently perhaps in response to the financial turmoil in the

takeovers and bailouts and expansions of government. rand remains a libertarian and these two new studies illustrate the growing scholarly interest and her work. stephen cox wrote in liberty magazine recently, rand remains america's most influential libertarian with the possible exception of milton friedman and america's most influential novelist of ideas. in that second category, there is no contest because there is no runner-up. now, i know -- [laughter] now i know that some of you wince when i say that rand was a libertarian. she insisted that she wasn't in many of her fans maintain that point even now. when i published my book, the libertarian reader which is a collection of writings on liberty from the bible to milton friedman and beyond. of course i wanted to include a

couple of best buy's vice ayn rand. but the high priest of her estate would not allow that. they wouldn't allow ayn rand to allow any book with libertarian as the title. but anybody who believes in individual rights, free enterprise, and strictly limited government is a libertarian. and ayn rand certainly did. or as i said, once a rand fan who didn't want to admit with libertarian quoting an other great women of the 1940's, bette davis, but you are blanche, you are. [laughter] she had a major impact on the libertarian movement in two ways. first, is just the numbers. as any libertarian book ever sold as many copies? may be the declaration of independence would you consider that a book. more than 50 years after it was published, i was in selling more than 200,000 copies a year. ayn rand has brought more people

to libertarian ideas than anybody else in our time. and second, the passion, the people who read ayn rand, the people who read ayn rand and got the point didn't just become aware of costs and benefits incentives and trade-offs. they became passionate advocates of liberty. they believed in reason and individualism and individual rights and justice. and sometimes their passion got the better of them. i think one of the reasons libertarians are sometimes scoffed at in academia is that the typical libertarian that the typical professor knows is a 19-year-old male who is just red atlas shrugged and believes he is the only rational person in the classroom and will not let you forget that. but most of them grow out of it and become stalwarts of the libertarian movement, not to mention the goldwater reagan

movement. it's fashionable even among libertarians to disdain rand to disdain the subtlety of hijacked or rigor of the friedman. and it's even more fashionable among the literati to sneer at ayn rand with her massive books and purple prose. the highbrow reviewers would rather read books about which no one would ever say, i couldn't put it down. [laughter] well, i guess i'm the prototypical philistine. i don't know much about literature but i know what i like. i picked that alice schrag and read its 1168 pages in four days. it was the most fascinating thing i have ever read. add plot and characters and narrative force along with powerful ideas. today there are no ad campaigns for alice schrag, no literary critics recommending ayn rand. she just keep selling by word-of-mouth and through the efforts of a few institute devoted to her ideas.

and now these two books provide further evidence of the growing impact, the growing interest in the lifetime of the ideas and the impact of ayn rand. both of these books are available in every bookstore and of course we have copies here and the authors would be happy to sign then after our formal session ends. ivillage is both others and let them speak of them will open the floor to questions before the book signing. in goddess of the market, ayn rand in the world she made. jennifer burns, a professor of history at the university of virginia looks at the development of ayn rand's ideas and her alliances and clashes with other intellectual and political figures. in "ayn rand and the world she made," and holler a writer in new york draws on original research done in russia, dozens of interviews with rand's relatives and acquaintances and other stories to develop the first complete and independent

biography. to begin our program today, please welcome the author of goddess of the market ayn rand and the american right. goddess of the market that date and the american right, jennifer burns. [applause] >> thank you. first of all, can everyone hear me? i have a lapel mic and a masher or if it's working. no, it's not working. okay, so i'm going to go back to this mic. so it's great to be here. as i'm sure many of you are aware, there is a direct line that can be drawn from ayn rand two k. doe. and there's a certain weightiness and a certain importance to being invited to speak here. and i can't imagine a better or more informed audience. and because this is an unusual crowd, i'm going to do a somewhat unusual talk.

typically in my book talks about make sure to give a lot of background about ayn rand in the details of her life. i still do that. but i want to spend most of my time laying out three arguments about the influence and impact of ayn rand on the american right. "the prohibition hangover" of the the primary arguments i want to lay out our: in terms of how she influenced the rights. first of all that we should consider her the ultimate gateway drug to life on the run. as david said, she had this incredible impact on her readers, true than men, when they moved on from her often the residue, the impact him in the basic framework of her ideas stayed with them. secondly, i want to argue that she was a major reason for the emergence of an independent libertarian movement of which cato is the fullest flowering. and i want to argue that her

popularity among libertarians, particularly her emphasis on capitalism and ensures that this independent libertarian movement when it emerged remains more to the right side of this that john, instead of becoming a left-leaning ideology as it had the potential to do. now this brings me to the title of my book "goddess of the market" ayn rand in the american right. throughout the book i juxtaposed ran to circumvent that i don't call her a conservative and i don't identify her as a conservative because there are a multiplicity of reasons why she doesn't fit in that category. the most obvious one would be hurried the assam but there's a whole host of other reasons which i'm sure i'll think it is now, which make her really incompatible with the synthetic modern american conservative son we know today. so i place her instead on this broader category of the american

right. and when i use the term american right, i'm not being pejorative. this isn't a code word for fascism. i'm simply choosing the term the right to draw our attention to this broader ideological field that includes conservatives but is not limited to them, that includes other groups, libertarians, anarcho capitalists, regular capitalist, classical liberals, all those who are interested in limited government and the promotion of capitalism as a social and economic system. so, some readers of my book have objected to the fact that i put her on the right, saying she really transcends all political categories. now, i definitely get the point of this line of argument. my feeling was, this is my first book. i'm going to work with a political categories we all know and understand and perhaps hate.

[laughter] may be in my second book i'll get around to attacking the categories themselves. but it may not need to because i think they are shifting already. and one reason i think this is because of the extraordinary surge of interest in rand though we've seen in the last year. i think of rand as a canary in the ideological coal mine. she is a sign that things are changing, and interest in her is a sign that tectonic plates are shifting under the surface. people are going back to the fundamentals and asking what really matters, what really counts, what do they really believe. now this happened first and most notably in the 1950's, when the conservative verdict on rand came out and it was mostly negative. and this is why i was

first-round to study in rand because i was really interested in conservative son in the 1950's in this critical decade as it developed, as this fusion is ideology which linked christian morality to free market capitalism was developed. in rand played this critical role as the sort of joker in the deck, the one that might upset the cart. and so, she had to be pushed to the side. but the point is that in periods of critical ideological formation rand emerges as a factor, a person, and influence that has to be dealt with, that has to be considered. and so i think that something along those lines is happening right now. so, i want to encourage you tonight to think with me about what does it mean that we're all talking about rand so much right now. and given this crowd, it might not just be an academic

exercise. we might not be thinking. we might be deciding. so, let me just back up and start with the basics, the big question, who is ayn rand? she was born alisa rosenau and petrograd, russia in 1905. and when she was 12 years old her family lived through the russian revolution. i want to read you now the opening scene in my book, where i describe this experience. it was a wintry day in 1918 when the red guard pounded on the door of the novy rosenbaum's chemistry shot. the guards were a seal of the state of russia which they nailed upon the door signaling a tad and seized in the name of the people. the novy could at least be thankful for not world of revolution had been taken only

as property, not his life. as eldest daughter, lisa, 12 at the time burned with a donation. the shop was her father's. he had worked for it, studied long hours at university, dispensed valued medicine and advice to customers. now in an instant it was gone, taken to benefit the nameless, faceless, peasants, strangers who could offer her father nothing in return. the soldiers had come into, carry handguns, making clear that resistance would mean fast. yet, they have spoken the language of fairness and equality. their goal to build a better society for all. watching, listening, absorbing, alisa knew one thing for certain. those who invoke such lofty ideals were not to be trusted. talk about helping others was only a thin cover for force and power. it was a lesson she would never

forget. so, i'll fast forward from this point on because it's all in the book. her decision to leave russia to come to america. her early years of struggle in hollywood vomited beginning of her success as a screenwriter, her early try and with the fountainhead. her career making book publisher in 1957. and what i do when the bug as i return to these very well-known novel and i show how deeply we david boas understood the political text.

>> here i want to focus not so much of the luminaries but the rank-and-file, the libertarian movement or american right. but what impact did she have

on those people whose names we do not remember today? the metaphor i like to use is rand was said gateway drug to life of the rights. i to set deliberately because there is a feverish ms. and intensity to reading ray and that david alluded to that the singular and unique and an important part of her appeal. this is part of what day quote from the book is from a young fan that said "about one months ago i noticed how much i was talking about your books to my teachers and classmates. as a result of my enthusiasm i have lost two friends. [laughter] i am beginning to realize how an important these people are. [laughter] what i want to stress is this type of encounter with

rand, and this the platt mini -- many explained as a experiences lead to immediate lead to political awareness and consciousness and political activism. here i turn to another excerpt from the book. >> from the founding days rand haunted young americans for freedom back the one of the first conservative organizations. of the brainchild of william f. buckley, the group a trip the founding principles and the statement during an of beating during buckley is a state in 1960. like rand he wanted to form of cod rate of young activists to form the political future. buckleys and intellectuals would swear allegiance to god and country rather than reason and capitalism. although buckley intended the new organization for consensus of "national review" but not all members were willing to go along.

the organization first student head one yale law student had written rand a gushing fan letter one year earlier telling her i was filled with a literary and fulfill the promise i only began to see in the fountain head. the promise of a logical view of existence based on experience. a few which i it was always held but never able to verbalize. now the secular the return it -- libertarian is them. was part of the white af. they prevailed against the us suggested movement and had a libertarian cast. the pro capitalist philosophy was exciting and the fee is a remarkable so this type of conviction that could hit like a thunderbolt might take students first to a group like yaf but also

more than likely would take them to the 1964 presidential campaign of barry goldwater. rand herself but the beginning of the presidential campaign the avid goldwater fan a broker traditional stance of neutrality to urge readers of her news later to register in a primary as republicans to vote for barry goldwater. she felt that passionately about him winning the nomination. after he entered a the campaign her enthusiasm began to fade just as her enthusiasm had flagged down about the same moment. rand wanted him to talk about capitalism and fundamental principles and make clear the importance of the separation of church and state. she felt he began to muddy

the message and lose his own appeal and in said she blamed him for losing the election. but before she had her final disillusionment she plant cold water in the newsletter and a number of first data followers were about as enthusiastic about cold water as they were about rand. so here read another excerpt that speaks to this. young goldwater enthusiast quickly noticed he seemed to perfectly embodied the idea of the independent man the hero. one avid libertarian remember "more important than his message was the fact that goldwater managed to look the part as though he had been made for it. one look at him and you knew he belonged to in the gulf gulch surrounded by striking he rose as blazing eyes and heroines with swirling tapes. the campaign stood arm was

saturated with rand fans as one m.i.t. student remembered. he joined it yaf aniston's for goldwater only to find most of the key people in both groups which overlap her object and day's objective is that i kept getting into into her ideas about reading of books close quote. the direction the campaign came from a dedicated nb i still am one of cold waters chief speech writers. spot writing liberalisms and his bosses beach. there echoes of romantic capitalism ayn rand noted of one cold water speech. so after a cold water failed campaign for the presidency, this intensity and enthusiasm both he and rand aroused on mr. wright continued to build and the 1960's were really rand heyday in many ways. she spread her ideas

primarily through the end of an co-branded institute which was an educational organization formed by her right hand man and secret level at the -- secret lover the stand co-branded. in combination with a newsletter and a steady stream of nonfiction she produced a commentary on current events really made in the eye and objectivism into its own subculture. and rand was the first to do a successful run around the mainstream media she got terrible reviews for atlas shrugged and nobody took her seriously so she said a per on infrastructure that and went from there. the dissolution of the nathaniel branded instituted in 1968 for recrimination and scandal and deep dark secrets that meant all of the ideological energy that

was concentrated in the objective is to movement and mbi had to find other outlets progress i find in the book is that it found the moderate libertarian movement which broke away from your and -- young americans for freedom in the late '60s. i will give you a prelude of this break as i describe how rand i.d.'s became sort of freak purpose and reclaim and used in different ways after she was no longer around as the figurehead of the organized institution. rand ideas became a powerful current in the tide of the right reference by a popular new symbol. the black flag of anarchy modified they cold dollar sign. a broad reference to radical libertarian is of the flag had multiple meetings

meetings -- meanings. at less shrug was a clear allusion to rand the juxtaposition of the flag of anarchy however indicated allegiances beyond rand but nearly two anarchy. whenever the meaning the black flag looked menacing to conservatives as it spread beyond the subculture into the conservative movement. in southern california young americans for freedom conference held with the modern libertarian college gary north the writer for the conservative newsletter was dismayed by what he found. instead of conservatives affirming face have god and country it was filled with eccentrics levying the black dollar sign flag. enthusiastic libertarians accretive proposals for offshore tax havens and argued over the finer points of objective is to doctors and the " when they drifted

into a debate whether or not you was a true hero of atlas shrugged it i left. [laughter] he concluded "i think it is safe to say that yaf is drifting. drifting it was. and it was drifting in the direction of it rand objectivism and the anarchist a blend of both of those. and in this combustible mixture of traditionalist conservative is of and liberalism will be rough dan fury of the 1969 st. louis convention of young americans for freedom which is a great way to date in the emergence of modern libertarian is some. a lot of my research and the later stages of the book is drawn from records of the movement from the hoover institution library in california and when i went into the i felt that rand

was important and i was right she was so important i take a serious challenge of what you put into the book because there was so much material and so much to choose from. here i will draw out the influence of the moment and pick up the story right after the idea that the libertarians have been defeated. this was a prank of draft resistance. not only was the plank condemning the draft defeated by the larger conventions of the draft resistance itself was condemned. in the face of insult the libertarians could allow a result the and a temples to challenge authority. a small pack of students gathered. one of the group had a facsimile of the draft card program a the conservative within him look showed he

was unwilling to sacrifice the actual draft garn. [laughter] another sees the microphone and announced in a person had a right to defend himself against violence including state of violence. then he raised the card and touched it with the flames and lifted over his head while it blamed freely" closed quote. the symbol of yaf eye hand holding the torch of liberty had been openly mocked. after a few moments of shocked silence pandemonium erupted on the convention floor. kill the economy is. [laughter] and did shoving the trader facsimile draft card burners were ejected and around a 300 others brother and followed them out of the convention and out of the for freedom. the chasm now separated the

libertarians and traditionalists by the end of the year is substantial number of chapters had either left the organization nor had charter's rescinded. california alone lost 24 chapters. so here is the moment where i think we see rand as the inspiration of course, really inspiring and encouraging the libertarians to break away from conservative islam to say no to the alliance in the context of the late sixties the draft was the breaking point* and the vietnam war. most see that as a draft as the imposition of personal freedom and senseless adventures in vietnam and many see it as necessary to maintain u.s. position against communist tyranny across the globe. i guess in the aftermath that rand influence on libertarianism becomes most

obvious and most easy to trace. and here is where i think rand influence is key because through her affection for capitalism she keeps it more to the right side of the spectrum. and let me just read a final passage. immediately after the convention they tend to pull the exodus of libertarians to the left but rand emerged as the more decisive influence. calling for the ideological movement was soundly rejected by caucus organizers and in the open letter distributed in st. louis the small group of new york was called and told him "join the left if you will dr. brigid not hand us the crap of the forces of freedom being there. your view is pure vacation. they put together a few

conferences in the year following st. louis but the radical alliance was short lived. more durable was the objective is to -- objective is to groups. involved against yaf ucla chapter put out real napolitano stuff of 71 california libertarian. it has black signs and dollar signs of record university of san diego and others to reported the local leader has changed her chapter and to open an objective best group and has intents is a big moves in the area and has been sponsoring speakers on campus. what is the significance among the new libertarian movement? it was significant because it kept libertarians from becoming just another wing of the new left. many libertarians

looked, sounded an even smelled like the new left. they were hippies. they did not like the draft. but their encounter with three and come with their vision of kolff grolsch wants envisioned could never be forgotten ensured that they remained a capitalist and not interested in collective solutions to problems and not interested in the socialism. but in trade and free markets. so i think this is really a significant because rand keeping it libertarianism on the right too rather than the left is what made possible the libertarian political alliance with the republican party fora the past 37 years. capitalism became the touchdown allowing g.o.p. rhetoric of low taxation and markets and business friendly policies to win the day no matter what else they did or talked about.

this brings us back to the question of her place in the culture today preposition on the book the alliance between libertarians and conservatives have always been uneasy. a marriage of convenience as it were. discontent got louder during the bush presidency and quieted by the need unified against a liberal administration. but the ubiquity of rand makes me think it is a temporary peace and i think it tips us off that something fundamental is changing prime particularly intrigued by the question that keeps coming up which is why are today's conservatives not so concerned about rand 80th 80th -- atheist and a way that buckley was? there are several answers to this question but on the whole i think it has to do with the shifting balance between conservatives and

libertarians. i think what we're seeing now in american politics is the unfolding of a new kind of culture war predicate and not on issues of sexual morality your religious beliefs, the economic issues. of the kind of things that was tackled in "atlas shrugged" production and redistribution and she fix this perfectly and offers us heroes and villains. whether she offers a way out of the current crisis remains to be seen. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you jennifer now please welcome the author of ayn rand and the world she made comity 15. [applause] >> hello everybody. i am glad to be here tonight. can you hear me?

i will come from a different perspective and briefly because i would like to hear questions. i always love to hear questions about rand. my interest is how her ideas were influenced by her personal history and how that personal history reveals itself in her novels. her ideas developed logically and worse self-evident and nothing more needed to be known then what she thought. she was careful not to reveal much about her background. nobody knew her real name

except for her husband and his brother. no reader knew that she was russian and in the after words to "atlas shrugged" she said don't ask me about my friends are my hobbies are my interest relatives or where was born or what i do. asked me about my ideas. i wanted to ask where her friends and family and the motions are day-to-day texture of her life. and put some flesh on the bones of those ideas. she did put flesh on the bones of those ideas that is what we love her for, but to some degree her characters can be seen as the avatar of idea. some people said characters that participate in the plot in order to a dance and

represent an advance the revelation of her ideas in one way or another. what i found was very interesting. like the rest of us, ayn rand it took what she lived thorough and put them in the middle of her novels fed on an interested ayn rand from a literary point* of view because that is my particular interest but to her novels that she developed her ideas. the speech at the end of the fountainhead and "atlas shrugged" formed the basis on which nathaniel brandon particularly systemized her ideas into objectivism. one example is her first hero. you probably know about this character and his name is cyrus. he appeared and eight

children adventures story much like kipling but ayn rand fell in love with him. she remembered him all of her life. she never forgot it anybody that made an impression on her. as it turned out, the translation of that has been published. if you look at the illustrations which she was not able to look after the age of 12 you will see frank o'connor, howard york, and john wright of to the place where they roll up their sleeves and then hair hangs over there i. some other the when you think about hank and his response to the response to get him to sign away the patent and their reared in metal, you see the re-enactment corrected of what happened to her father

in the russian revolution. this is what should have happened. you should have been able to say no. he couldn't. but in ayn rand world, he does. it is the details of her life i was most interested did and i discovered many things that i hope you ask me questions but i think i believe that that. thank you. [applause] >> they give bracket we will open it up to questions. please wait for the microphones we can get you on the tape and i do not immediately see a hand saw no ask the first question. one of the things that i found interesting in your book and i have spread both of these books and i learned things from both of them and they're both very well put

together i knew a lot about ayn rand but i still learning things. one of the things that i learned from your book anne heller, i got a better sense of her marriage from frank o'connor. i always wondered what is going on? why is he being dragged back and forth across the country why does she want them and who is good-looking but not the intellectual equal? i got a better sense of the connection. can you talk about the marriage? >> i call this the romantic life of ayn rand and other aspects. my life as a man. she married a wife and a good wife who was loyal, followed her wherever she went and gave up his own interest of acting primarily and guarding in order to promote her career because he believed that she was a genius and she had to be supported. that unfortunately is not

what ayn rand would say so she said frank o'connor, her husband was much like our word york and wrote to this many times, but a hero who was on strike against a corrupt world and the world was not good enough him for to participate in it. and she said this over and over. i picture him cringing as she talks about this. and in other ways come machine misrepresented their real character of frank o'connor which was a gentle ellen ghent, a gracious and fannie mae and to herself and others. she went on to have the life nathaniel branded could be looked at as a mistress.

and she came to america to write with a purpose and mission and she accomplish that and put everything else aside in order to do that and her marriage had to conform to that pattern. >> there's a question way in the back wall the microphone is getting their last jennifer a question one of the things i found interesting with your discussion of the manifesto of individualism and project related changes it went through from the first draft a through the second draft and can you talk about that? >> then manifesto was something that rand roche immediately after her first period of political activism which was on a campaign of 1940. so she had joined through the willkie club and

eventually they dissolved but rand thought we have so much happening less form our own group a profession started to look around for recruits. she found one partner and he needed a statement of principles. she spent an entire weekend and two days straight working 36 hours straight pounding out the 32 page document which was meant to be in the first communist manifesto. what really struck me of the document is that it did not include the word culture is some more than twice. it was missing a lot of several components that she later added to her work. once a rand like to claim there was no development or a change in her thought and it came out fully formed and here she sounds much more like a classical liberal with individual rights and quoting patrick henry and

not pushing against morality it was intended to bring people to her side. that will proceed the idea is that turn up in the fountainhead of by that time you see more emphasis on now tourism and the beginning of the support team coming to the surface. i hope that gets at what it you were asking. >> river question in the back. >> i was one of 1019 year-old's to read the fountainhead and thought i was the only rational person on the earth. but what put me off from the objectivism is the thought of the religious fervor and dedication to her ideals which seems contradictory to the idea of the individual list but rand seemed to encourage or demand this from her followers. how does she justify this

dissidents as it were? >> how did she justify this? i think one reason for the title of my book is picking up on the themes of the intensity around her were, i spent a lot of time figuring out why does this happen? she provided in answer to every question in the system so it hits people with the force of revelation because they can no answer almost any possible question. she definitely insisted on conforming to herb views from an early point* but you see this changing throughout the forties and it really changes in the fifties vinci forms the alliance with nathaniel and barbara brandt and become her best friends she gets the unquestioning loyalty and affirmation from someone she considers her intellectual equal and that

is a longer will 98 asian willing to tolerate dissent prodigy justify? between her and the philosopher, the last independent election rules she had a peer relationship and went to an early mbi lecture and was horrified that he called being in a church and tried to argue with her what is going on? and if you read the letter closely assumes that if people read "atlas shrugged" and disagree they just did not understand it. so if you would trim the understand her work, you would agree because there is no fought and she did not accepted a method of reasoning other than a rationally derived mathematical equations. you just don't understand and if you understood the would agree with me.

she is the real figure in 20th

century culture. so many people of reading and loving her and you can definitely read through people's letters notes and diaries and excavate that but it was the selfishness, capitalism stood as a barrier. to have to make up your mind are you going to bite as part of her if you work you are not going to be on the left anymore. >> on understand most of rand's papers are in the ayn rand archives. can both of the authors say something about their dealings with the ayn rand institute archives? >> let me begin because i was denied access to the ayn rand papers which are separate from the archives as i understand it. and i am told now, after my book is published, that i could have had access to the ayn rand archives if i had asked in a different manner or at just the right moment. i'm not sure to read it doesn't make sense to me.

>> [inaudible] >> i was granted access. i was granted access under the agreement -- i signed a researchers agreement with them that i would be writing what was called a special study. they told me at a time somebody else was riding an authorized biography and for that reason they were not letting projects that could conflict with this authorized biography proceed. i assume that's one of the reasons they provide to anne heller. >> it wasn't the only one. [laughter] >> i think the whole thing is in motion and in play and i was very anxious about this and i think blogging about it in a series of postings at my website which is jenniferburns.org because so many people have been asking how this happened and i don't know how it happened. i'm delighted it. fi produced a manuscript that

focused on the brandon affair at the centerpiece i would have had trouble publishing what i did see. so i think the tenderness is about the personal aspects of rand, and i don't really know what their policies will be going forward. >> let me say one more word about that. jennifer, i think you were a graduate student when you first asked to look at papers in the archives. i think that makes a difference. graduate students are encouraged to come and look at the materials and know more about ayn rand. people writing books as i assume you were not then on not. >> i think that's true. >> a question on the aisle. >> john hopkins university and new america foundation. and i like the image of rand as a kind of religious figure rather than profit. the other thing i was thinking

of when i think of rand sometimes i think of the movie semi tough where one of the things of the core is they are going to this project called pyramid power so they go to this pyramid power and people keep asking did you get it? people are like i don't know if i've got it or not. and one of the other metaphors is not that it's a religious figure but a kind of leader of a personal potential kind of cult and i use this in a very neutral cents but this is a phenomena that we see starting in the 50's and going all the way to the president of self-help organizations that involved arguments about people's personal potential that almost always have certain kind of qualities that in common the attribution that there is weak people who are trying to hold you down and you need to be able to stand up against those weak people, you can call them second hampers, whenever you want and i guess i would be interested in both of your senses of how rand fits into the pantheon of

self-help profits as well as clause five religious profits. >> i will give you one answer because so many people at such a young and tender age i think they reacted very viscerally to her defiant, one of her favorite words is arrogant in her early writings and singular heroes and much of the philosophy is rolled up especially in howard work and so i think the people who joined her in the 50's and 60's were particularly susceptible to that kind of emotional reaction to her and i think they didn't go away. they were told not to read certain things. more and more they were isolated, and so they made themselves a cult.

>> one of the things the journey to the project when i was considering it was actually nathaniel branton's post rand career as a guru of the self-esteem movement. and he actually was someone who several of my friends right to great profit and great benefit and i felt we'd a second. he's connected to ayn rand? how weird is that? that is not something that i was able to fool the trees out. i think there is good work coming out now about 70's self actualization. is very much in the american individualist tradition and even mystical encounter in the south. i think there's a lot you can do. the other thing i would say is libertarian's kind of tend to these mystical self naturalization and self exploration ideas and there is a lot of the libertarians who encountered ayn rand in the 40's in hollywood by the 50's were some of the earliest people to start taking lsd. these are business conservatives

and they go off the deep end and get into that. is their something about her work and individualist tradition that can put people out. i didn't focus on that. i think it's interesting and what brand and drew out of her work and how he popularized that became psychology in the 70's is interesting. i would love somebody else to write about it so i can learn more about it. >> we will take a question here and in the microphone we in the back corner. >> and hutchins from the atlas society. my question for both authors concerns what you see in terms of the separation of ayn rand's personality from the progress of ayn rand's objective is to ideas because she was a novelist course she inspired many including myself with a vision of the world, an exciting vision of the world. however you can also look at the ideas as it were separate from the novels.

though i find her nonfiction essays to be very exciting as well and insightful. what do you see in terms of the future of a lot of the ideas that rand focused on her philosophy such as the awareness of the producer and of his own virtues, things of that sort that certainly you see in politics and other areas. >> i think they will go forward. i think they can stand alone very well. but i don't think that they will be part of an integrated ayn rand philosophy that is sent worked upon one another's. i think that the libertarianism that we see today has been influenced by milton friedman and by many others and it is in that context i think that ayn rand's ideas will be used and will live on. >> it may be a benefit she has less control over them now and not the inheritors of her work seem to be loosening some of the

country. i think that synthesizing her ideas with other perspectives may create an even more powerful brew than what she came up with herself. >> okay. back there. >> john, george mason university. what can you say about rand's relationship with the other great women of her era, rose wilder wayne and rose patterson, personal relationship if any and influence one way or another. >> this is a sort of pet project of mine and i almost stopped writing about ayn rand and writing about these through my dissertation advisers for. and i have now been working on the rudiments of the article that kind of brings the three together. i think that patterson's influence on rand has been underestimated and under appreciated because their initial counter is lost to history because it was mostly verbal or oral. i see so much in paterson that

is in rand. she used to say a equal say and reason being important. all the ideas about the philosophers go right into rand. in terms of leyna i find they had a long epistolary relationship and had a long argument about religion in part of the ways. on a detailed this in some depth in the book. what's interesting to me about leyna and rand the of different ways of looking at the world. lamb is a committed libertarian but has this strong belief in human interdependence and connection and rand didn't get that and they couldn't see ytoy and after some friendly letters this quickly emerged as a flash point and then in their meeting it took the form of religion and then they never met again and lane would criticize rand and felt some of her ideas were good but, you know, she said this alien worship of man is no answer to the kirks. that was her freeze in fact. so i think there is a lot of really interesting parallels

between them and the fact three women play this role in the to the limit of libertarianism as a historian is fascinating to me. so that is something i am still pursuing. >> which is about patterson i think the too had a long epistolary relationship. it came down to the fact is bill paterson wanted to reserve judgment a is a and a is everything. she wanted a possibility there were little things we don't know. >> let me ask a double pronged follow-up to the question. it is my impression rand isn't much studied in women's studies class is and here is a woman who was the most influential lot list of ideas, a woman whose books sell for ever bigger than anybody else's. a woman who wrote strong

heroines, runs a railroad, twists businessmen around her finger. am i right they don't talk about her in women's studies courses and why not? and second i will ask the question most people in the audience are men but both of you are women and so is the authorized biography we are waiting to hear from as well as the original supply authorized biographers such talk to some of those gender issues. [laughter] first of all feminists tend to be liberals, and feminism and socialism share some assumptions and i think it's very difficult for women's studies professors to accept, to take what they need and leave the rest. but the second thing is ayn rand herself did not agree that she was a feminist.

she wrote a famous column in "the los angeles times" about maybe it was cosmo, about how a woman should not be president because women should be manned worshipers, and by that she didn't mean they should subjugate themselves to men but they should look up at the values men have in comparison to women. and if they were not looking at them they were missing something. >> i would add that feminists have addressed her. susan brown called her a traitor to her sex. [laughter] and there's a lot of difficulty moving past the rape scene in a fountain head, the depiction of sex and this idea of man who worshiping. that doesn't mean you couldn't talk about rand as someone who express's mabey prudhoe feminism and a very richard gate id is

engender. it hasn't happened yet. maybe it will. >> i will take a question from a very well-known randian feminist on the corner. >> follow up to that question to things. one, as one of the founders of the national women's history museum in fact we talk about the fact rand will be coming in. really what it comes down to is most women's studies and most women historians are victimhood proponents, which rand is antivictimhood and that is one of the reasons she could never be studied in the women's studies because would be a contradiction to the basic core of their approach. but beyond that, what you say there about her not being a feminist joan kennedy tayler if she would still be with us would tell you that is not correct and in fact in june's word reclaiming the main street should make the case rand in fact is the quintessential

individualist feminist. >> one could say she insisted all of her life she wasn't a libertarian but that doesn't stop us. [laughter] why can't the feminists have the same independent in sight. i don't understand that. okay. we have lots of fans in the air now. i will take a question right here and then right here. i'm dana with the u.s. bill of rights foundation. going back to being allowed into the archives of ayn rand, if rand were alive at the time that you came looking for that do you think she would have agreed with their position of not letting you have access because they might disagree with there's? and the other question that tax on to that is, you know, i came back and remember when they

would not export anything beyond her written words and now that they've gone into this what they've done is driven more out of business. you have to admit that is a business out there and the need to make money just like anybody else so now they are not as pristine i think as they would like to claim to be. and i was wondering if i could have your thoughts on that. >> in spite of the fact i think the ayn rand institute wouldn't approve of either of our books, they are probably glad to have been published because they can't help but increase sales of her books and that is a large source of income for the ayn rand institute. i don't think she would want me to look at her papers. she was very much against giving sustenance to the enemy. not that i'm the enemy but i'm sure she could find something about me. [laughter] -- that was in in the like. [laughter]

and she was very private. she wanted to leave her papers as understand it to the library of congress. that was her stated wish. it wasn't in her will, and so it didn't happen. but i'm very surprised by that given that she wanted to give them to the library of congress perhaps i'm wrong. but i don't think she would reveal much while she was alive. >> i read ayn rand as a freshman in high school, and of the picture in "the new york times" book review, the greenspan's and the rand's in the oval office, could you talk further about her influence on alan greenspan etc. and also she was rushing before she was american. how much did her ideas get to the russian underground or

something, u.s.s.r., and are there any literary russians that admire her? >> i will say one thing about greenspan. in 1963 he contributed an essay to the object of this newspaper against antitrust regulation and he argued businessmen who must have their long-term interests at heart have to be honorable and maintain their reputations in order to succeed. i heard him i don't know whether anybody else did what track the statement last october before the congressional committee. almost word for word and it was interesting to me that he kept that idea for so long. >> i would say greenspan was a member of the collective which was the small group that gathered around new york in the 1950's. he had an unusual place in the collective. he was struck by her philosophy

in a way like many of the other people i described in the book. but rand treated him with an unusual amount of respect she actually provided a lot of research that went into atlas shrugged in terms of how the economy works. he was older, successful. she did have the ability if you start on your own 2 feet when you interacted with her to kind of be okay with that it was the younger students who put her in the position of power that she developed these unequal relationships with. this is a question we will argue about forever. the connection i see is the faith in human rationality and human integrity and honesty that yes people than speed dee dee to ayn rand's capitalist do care about their reputations. when we stood outside of that fictional world films can be very different. >> you interviewed a lot of people for your book.

you interviewed the jewish cousins in chicago and the housekeeper. was their anybody you couldn't interview that he wanted to? >> there were two people wanted to interview and could not, one was alan greenspan. i contacted him multiple times with multiple mr. lang recommendations from friends of his, and each time i was told he was too busy to talk with me. once the secretary told me he would get right back to me in a day and a half later i got an e-mail saying that he was very busy right now and he couldn't talk to me. the other one was leonard. >> okay. up there in the purple shirt. >> will wilkinson of the cato institute. jennifer burns, you had mentioned at one point in your talk that nathaniel brandon was responsible for part of the

systemization of the randian philosophy. i wonder what system delivered as a complete coherent whole, how much of that was a product of nathaniel brandon and how much of it was a product of >> is brandon the paul two ayn rand's jesus? [laughter] >> good. [laughter] >> mike understanding is that ayn rand had her system pretty much set even be before she met brandon. there is a lot of people who met her in california, young college students. she was already trying to bring them over. she already knew what it was and was crying to be trying to convert them. what branton did is that the psychological component, and i think that was one of the most destructive elements of organized objectivism. he took objective is some and brought it into psychology and to eckert characters not as

idealized projections of qualities we might want to further develop and ourselves but as examples of psychological health and john would be cited as an example of psychological health both in brandon's counseling sessions and lectures so i see that as the major thing that he added and i think it was an unfortunate detour. the first person to say that would be nathaniel brandon himself, who has pretty much retracted a lot of what he taught people in his lectures and he describes his later career as an effort to do dependants for about and help heal people from the attitudes he feels that he encouraged them to at bat. >> right there in the back row. the back row of this section. >> al mulken, a m media. what did what eckert chambers consider the weakness of atlas

shrugged when he wrote about the book in the "national review"? >> you know, the wickedness was rand's if the sum which was an occupational chambers. he was a communist in the 1920's. he had been a spy ring he had been close enough to the communist party to know people who were purged and murdered and he ultimately chose to interpret this communism most famously as a man without god and therefore man needed god and without god man became convinced of his own power and created despotic schemes like communism so when he looked at rand's if you stick fully integrated phyllis of buckles system he saw the same thing happening again. he saw a few bursts, pride, the danger of man trusting and rationality and achievement without the tempering influence of a spiritual side or emphasis on man's in a sinfulness, so

that review has to be read and understood in the context of the cold war when we were facing bought less communism and chambers looked at this and thought here is godless capitalism. this isn't going to do at all. >> i would add to that many people have read atlas shrugged and confuse the tone of voice, the authoritarian tone of ways with the ideas themselves, and i think whitaker chambers fell into that trap to some degree. >> right here. >> george mason university. this is a question aimed primarily for jennifer burns. i read your book and i found a majority of extremely persuasive one area i was not entirely persuaded was your contention that it was ayn rand's support for katulis and that prevented a libertarian leftist alliance and it is support for capitalism that caused this almost all libertarians had this defining characteristic including those

like rauf barb who wanted to have the alliance with the left, he was actually even more opposed to the government regulation than rand was and another factor here also is i'm not sure there was overarch interest on the left in this kind of coalition so i wonder if you could elaborate on that further and am on a long? was there a genuine interest in this on the left in the 70's? and in particular what are people on the left willing to make some sort of concession to the libertarians to make the alliance work? >> so, i do think that capitalism commitment to markets remain fundamental stumbling block. rothbardt was more willing to than rand. he was focused on state power, he was an anarchist and whatever way you could attack the state was welcomed to him. i think it a lot of history about the libertarianism there

is rothbardt, quote, mr. libertarian. i just don't see it. i went into the archive and i felt this was a pr campaign on rothbardt's behalf. what i thought was a lot of criticism and not a lot of references to him. so, were there other factors that kept libertarian is among the right for sure? i think my focus is on the movement, so there is libertarians, thinkers, writers and the movement by sliding the pamphlets and are doing in the conventions. it seemed to me rand is a they pointed to when they talked about where does libertarian go next and they pointed to rand because she offered populism as a system and then this rationally as a moral system. so i see her as a huge piece of flying into default. could libertarianism have found allies on the left? if the drought capitalism, yes.

but that wasn't going to happen. so, work leftists looking around for new recruits in the late 60's the new left was having enough trouble staying sober enough to figure out what it actually wanted. so,. >> okay. i'm going to take the last question right here. >> i'm from nowhere in particular. i was reading "the new york times" book review and one thing that struck me here where the riders is to preserve her vision no genuine capitalist would have done the following, which was to give up a part of the proceeds from each book sale in order to obtain the entirety of the speech that seems to fundamentally misunderstand rand -- >> would you repeat the question? i'm not sure that your mic is working. >> the author of "the new york times" book review on your book talks about how rand the above 7

cents for her book sale to retain the speech. and he goes on to say that no genuine capitalist would have done this and that seems to completely misunderstand rand. >> i agree. it is a rare book review of who understands rand -- [laughter] [applause] she was making an investment and it paid off. >> i'm going to call things to a close. i want to thank jennifer bonds come author of god is on the market rand delete the ayn rand and the american right and anne heller ayn rand and the world she made for being here. [applause] >> jennifer burns is a history professor at the university of