By Ayn Rand
For several years in the 1960s, Columbia University’s radio station WKCR hosted a program called “Ayn Rand on Campus,” featuring Rand and her associates lecturing and answering questions on a wide array of subjects.
In this radio interview from the 1960s, Ayn Rand responds to questions about the nature of rights. Subjects addressed include Ayn Rand’s definition of rights, whether or not the government has rights, popular misconceptions of rights, the handicapped in a free society, and “public relief” in temporary emergencies.
Here are Ayn Rand’s views on:
- How rights are a moral principle required by man's nature for his proper survival
- God- and society-granted accounts of the source of man’s rights;
- Why the “right to basic sustenance” is not a right;
- What it means to survive as a human being qua human being;
- What would happen to the handicapped in a laissez-faire society;
- The danger of temporary exceptions to rights in times of emergency, particularly in the case of FDR’s New Deal programs in 1933.
(MP3 download; 25 min., 17.80 MB)
The description of this product was written and/or edited by ARI staff.