These interviews are a rich source of commentary, available nowhere else, on the practical implications of Objectivism’s political and legal principles. Ayn Rand discusses such topics as government’s form (democracy vs. constitutional republic), federalism, separation of powers, the role of geography in representation, filibuster, standards for selecting Supreme Court justices, freedom of the press, the military draft, environmental laws and antitrust law.
In the interviews, Rand also discusses such topics as the purpose of law in a free society, the characteristics of objective and non-objective law, flaws in the U.S. Constitution (including slavery, eminent domain and the Commerce Clause), judicial discretion, legal competency, ignorance of the law, preventive law, rules of evidence and a constitution’s fate in an era of philosophical decline. There are fascinating asides on Roman law, how businessmen can fight bad laws and why she regards Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. as the “worst philosophical influence on American law.”
As an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, Ayn Rand was constantly asked to address common objections to a system that includes complete economic freedom. In these interviews, Rand refutes the historical account of great industrialists as “robber barons” (“The so-called robber-barons created the wealth they are accused of having stolen”), explains why monopolies are not a threat on a free market (“Any large company, or combination of companies, can be destroyed in a free market by any competent newcomer”), and discusses the cause of business cycles (“government manipulation of money and credit”).
Laissez-faire, Rand observes, is universally scapegoated: “Whenever anything goes wrong in some industry, it is capitalism that is blamed. Yet if you investigate, you will find without exception that the source of the evils is government intervention, not free enterprise.”
Ayn Rand was frequently asked to explain her moral opposition to altruism, which is widely associated with benevolence toward others. Most people “believe that if you give a dime to a beggar, you are an altruist,” Rand observes. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Altruism does not claim that you should help others when and if you can. It claims that you should subordinate your own interests to the interest of others and that others should take first place in your life as a moral duty.”
In these conversations, Rand discusses altruism’s origins, definition, contradictions and negative impact on self-esteem, motivation and career pursuit. She also touches on ideas that obscure altruism’s influence (such as psychological egoism, the idea that everybody is selfish), the relationship between altruism and the 1960s drug culture and the question of risking one’s life in wartime.
Ayn Rand was a tireless champion of art’s life-serving value. In these interviews, Rand speaks not only of her own approach to writing (“The role of a fiction writer is to present things, not as they are, but as they might and ought to be”) but also of particular works’ merits (Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, a “great work of art” that is also “the most evil novel in world literature, at least among the majors works that I have read”) and of her personal responses to art (“My favorite painting is Dali’s The Crucifixion”).
Among topics addressed are: Romanticism and Naturalism as differing in their treatment of man’s free will — the character of Javert in Hugo’s Les Misérables — the meaning of “escapism” — objective standards for evaluating art — film as a “composite art, made up of an integration of other arts” — and an entire interview devoted to Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, “the greatest play in the history of Romantic literature.”
This book contains Ayn Rand’s most extended public discussion of humor, beginning with the facts of reality that give rise to man’s need of humor, and including her distinction between moral and immoral types. “The worst type of humor, psychologically and morally,” Rand observes, “is the type that hides malevolent, antagonistic statements — ones that a man does not have the courage to convey openly — under a laugh.”
Along the way, Rand discusses puns, slapstick, satire, stand-up comedy, theater of the absurd, sick jokes, “Romantic humor” and intelligent humor. She also talks about particular humorists — including Charlie Chaplin, Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward and the director Ernst Lubitsch — and notes that she can’t stand Jerry Lewis or “any comedian whose style consists in making man look ridiculous, in appearing grotesque or in satirizing the essence of man.”
