Ayn Rand Scholar Meets With Philosophy Students

Nick Provenzo and Andrew "Howard Roark" Haynes

Nick Provenzo of the Ayn Rand Institute and The Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism recently met with Philosophy students. Mr. Provenzo presented the philosophy of Ayn Rand by discussing her speech with West Point cadets from 1974 and applying her views on various student questions. Below are more pictures and quotes from Mr. Provenzo's presentation.

The right to agree with others is not a problem in any society; it is the right to disagree that is crucial. It is the institution of private property that protects and implements the right to disagree.

To rest one's case on faith means to concede that reason is on the side of one's enemies- that one has no rational arguments to offer.

America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to "the common good," but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.

If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose- because it contains all the others- the fact that they were the people who created the phrase "to make money."

Every movement that seeks to enslave a country, every dictatorship or potential dictatorship, needs some minority group as a scapegoat which it can blame for the nation's troubles and use as a justification of its own demands for dictatorial powers. In Soviet Russia, the scapegoat was the bourgeoisie; in Nazi Germany, it was the Jewish people; in America, it is the businessmen.

Men have been taught that the highest virtue is not to achieve, but to give. Yet one cannot give that which has not been created. Creation comes before distribution- or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary.

Businessmen are the one group that distinguishes capitalism and the American way of life from the totalitarian statism that is swallowing the rest of the world. Businessmen are the symbol of a free society- the symbol of America.