By Ayn Rand
This mp3 features two unrelated talks by Ayn Rand: “The Foreign Policy of a Mixed Economy” and “The Rebellion at Columbia.”
The Foreign Policy of a Mixed Economy
This speech discusses the relationship between America’s contradictory, self-defeating foreign policy and non-objective law. Rand observes that “the public interest” is a vague, undefinable term that “the wisest man in the world, with the purest integrity” cannot honestly use to make decisions. In the absence of valid legal principles, legislators open themselves up to pressure-group warfare domestically and foreign lobbyists internationally. The institutionalized buying and selling of political favors, given to some at the expense of others, allows America’s course in the world to be steered by the “manipulations of little lawyers and public relations men.”
The Rebellion at Columbia
In this talk, Rand analyzes the 1968 student rebellion at Columbia University. Throughout her talk, Rand gives voice to a different group of Columbia students that she believes should be heard—the Committee for Defense of Property Rights—by approvingly reading a series of statements they issued. These statements describe the thuggish activities of the student rebels in great detail, argue why they are indistinguishable from the tactics of fascist groups of the 1930s, and critique the response of the university administration as appeasing and ineffectual.
Rand then adds her own observations and analyses, placing the Columbia protests in the context of other student rebellions in the 1960s. Assessing the philosophical principles of the rebellions’ sympathizers, Rand suggests that fascism is in fact the political system advocated by the so-called New Left.
“The Foreign Policy of a Mixed Economy” is 26 minutes long and was later published as a chapter titled “The Pull Peddlers” in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. “The Student Rebellion at Columbia” is 30 minutes long.
Listen for free here: https://courses.aynrand.org/works/the-student-rebellion-at-columbia-university/
(MP3 download; 55 min., 39.82 MB)
The description of this product was written and/or edited by ARI staff.
