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hmmm I'd be more upset if it wasn't the Ayn Rand institute. Ayn Rand is a nut and I can't imagine anyone in an institute named after her would be any better. >>
Huh? I take it you've never read Atlas Shrugged?
From an Objectivist Ayn Rand Bio:
"Millions of people have read Ayn Rand's work, especially her novels, and many have found them to be a great source of personal inspiration. Her focus on reason and individualism appeals to many people, some of whom have adopted her specific philosophical ideas as their own. Even among those who do not accept her philosophy as a whole, there are still many who find inspiration and support. Conservatives applaud her anti-communism. Libertarians appreciate her anti-statism. Young people respond to her idealism. Women appreciate her strong-minded (and sexually liberated) heroines. Non-conformists like her defense of individualism. Etc. These are all generalizations, of course. The specific things that Rand's readers take from her work vary. Rarely, however, does one go away from her work without some strong reaction -- even if it is a negative reaction."
A excerpt from her famous testimony about the movie Song of Russia at the McCarthy hearings:
Rand: Incidentally, I must say at this point that I understand from correspondents who have left Russia and been there later than I was and from people who escaped from there later than I did that the time I saw it, which was in 1926, was the best time since the Russian revolution. At that time conditions were a little better than they have become since. In my time we were a bunch of ragged, starved, dirty, miserable people who had only two thoughts in our mind. That was our complete terror -- afraid to look at one another, afraid to say anything for fear of who is listening and would report us -- and where to get the next meal. You have no idea what it means to live in a country where nobody has any concern except food, where all the conversation is about food because everybody is so hungry that that is all they can think about and that is all they can afford to do. They have no idea of politics. They have no idea of any pleasant romances or love-nothing but food and fear. That is what I saw up to 1926. That is not what the picture shows.
Now, after this tour of Moscow, the hero -- the American conductor -- goes to the Soviet village. The Russian villages are something -- so miserable and so filthy. They were even before the revolution. They weren't much even then. What they have become now I am afraid to think. You have all read about the program for the collectivization of the farms in 1933, at which time the Soviet Government admits that three million peasants died of starvation. Other people claim there were seven and a half million, but three million is the figure admitted by the Soviet Government as the figure of people who died of starvation, planned by the government in order to drive people into collective farms. That is a recorded historical fact.
Now, here is the life in the Soviet village as presented in Song of Russia. You see the happy peasants. You see they are meeting the hero at the station with bands, with beautiful blouses and shoes, such as they never wore anywhere. You see children with operetta costumes on them and with a brass band which they could never afford. You see the manicured starlets driving tractors and the happy women who come from work singing. You see a peasant at home with a close-up of food for which anyone there would have been murdered. If anybody had such food in Russia in that time he couldn't remain alive, because he would have been torn apart by neighbors trying to get food. But here is a close-up of it and a line where Robert Taylor comments on the food and the peasant answers, "This is just a simple country table and the food we eat ourselves."
Then the peasant proceeds to show Taylor how they live. He shows him his wonderful tractor. It is parked somewhere in his private garage. He shows him the grain in his bin, and Taylor says, "That is wonderful grain." Now, it is never said that the peasant does not own this tractor or this grain because it is a collective farm. He couldn't have it. It is not his. But the impression he gives to Americans, who wouldn't know any differently, is that certainly it is this peasant's private property, and that is how he lives, he has his own tractor and his own grain. Then it shows miles and miles of plowed fields.
Stripling: Miss Rand, may I bring up one point there?
Rand: Surely.
Stripling: I saw the picture. At this peasant's village or home, was there a priest or several priests in evidence?
Rand: Oh, yes; I am coming to that, too. The priest was from the beginning in the village scenes, having a position as sort of a constant companion and friend of the peasants, as if religion was a natural accepted part of that life. Well, now, as a matter of fact, the situation about religion in Russia in my time was, and I understand it still is, that for a Communist Party member to have anything to do with religion means expulsion from the party. He is not allowed to enter a church or take part in any religious ceremony. For a private citizen, that is a nonparty member, it was permitted, but it was so frowned upon that people had to keep it secret, if they went to church. If they wanted a church wedding they usually had it privately in their homes, with only a few friends present, in order not to let it be known at their place of employment because, even though it was not forbidden, the chances were that they would be thrown out of a job for being known as practicing any kind of religion.
Testimony before HUAC hearings
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