Ayn Rand Basics

Who is Ayn Rand?

Ayn Rand was a twentieth-century novelist and philosopher. She wrote several popular novels and developed a philosophy known as "Objectivism." A brief overview of Objectivism can be found at the website of the Ayn Rand Institute.

When/where was Rand born? When/where did she die? Etc.

Rand was born on February 2, 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia. She moved to the United States in 1926 (arriving February 18) and became a naturalized US citizen on March 13, 1931. She died of heart failure on March 6, 1982 in New York City.

See pictures of St. Petersburg as Rand knew it.

Why are people interested in Ayn Rand?

Millions of people have read Ayn Rand's work, especially her novels. 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. The specific things that Rand's readers take from her work vary. However, few people read her work without some strong reaction -- even if it is a negative reaction.

Perhaps the thing that Ayn Rand appeals to most strongly is something she described in one of her non-fiction essays:

There is a fundamental conviction which some people never acquire, some hold only in their youth, and a few hold to the end of their days -- the conviction that ideas matter. In one's youth that conviction is experienced as a self-evident absolute, and one is unable fully to believe that there are people who do not share it. That ideas matter means that knowledge matters, that truth matters, that one's mind matters. And the radiance of that certainty, in the process of growing up, is the best aspect of youth.

Its consequence is the inability to believe in the power of the triumph of evil. No matter what corruption one observes in one's immediate background, one is unable to to accept it as normal, permanent or metaphysically right. One feels: "This injustice (or terror or falsehood or frustration or pain or agony) is the exception in life, not the rule." One feels certain that somewhere on earth -- even if not anywhere in one's surroundings or within one's reach -- a proper, human way of life is possible to human beings, and justice matters. ... And if justice matters, then one fights for it: one speaks out -- in the unnamed certainty that someone, somewhere will understand.

Rand found that understanding from at least some of her readers, and they in turn find their own needs reflected in her vision and commitment to ideas.

How is 'Ayn' pronounced?

It is a single syllable that rhymes with 'mine' and 'fine'. Some people pronounce it like 'Ann' or so that it rhymes with 'pain' and 'gain.' These alternate pronunciations are mistaken.

Is 'Ayn Rand' her real name?

'Ayn Rand' is not her birth name, but it is the name she used most of her life. She adopted that name when she left the Soviet Union.

Rand's Russian birth name can be transliterated into English as 'Alisa Zinovievna Rosenbaum.' (The first name is also sometimes transliterated as 'Alissa' or 'Alyssa,' or translated into 'Alice.') In a letter to a fan, Rand wrote that "'Ayn' is both a real name and an invention. The original of it is a Finnish feminine name." This Finnish name is pronounced in Russian as "I-na" and would be written as 'Aino' in English. Rand shortened this to the single syllable 'Ayn'.

How she came to choose 'Rand' as a last name is less clear, partly because of the many contradictory speculations about it:

• Barbara Branden repeats a story from a cousin of Rand's, who claimed that Rand took the name from a Remington-Rand typewriter while living with relatives in Chicago in 1926. Although widely repeated, this story contains an impossible anachronism: Remington Typewriter did not merge with Rand Kardex until 1927, so Rand could not possibly have owned a "Remington-Rand" typewriter in 1926. Nor could it have been a Rand Kardex typewriter, because that company did not make typewriters. Also, evidence has been found that Rand's relatives in Russia knew of her new name prior to her arrival in the US.
• Jeff Walker suggests that she chose 'Rand' because of its association with South African gold currency ('The Rand'). Like the story Branden tells, this suggestion is also an anachronism: that name for the currency was adopted years after Rand chose her new name. In 1926 the South African currency was denominated in "pounds" and "shillings." (Walker also dismisses Rand's own account of the origin of her first name as a "flimsy legend," although he provides no evidence for this claim.)
• Researchers at the Ayn Rand Institute's archives have pointed out that characters from Rand's original name, when written in the Cyrillic characters used for Russian, resemble the letters of 'Rand' when it is written in English.

This last seems the most likely explanation, because it is consistent with statements in media profiles that Rand's American name was a version of her Russian surname. Unfortunately, without some firmer confirmation, this suggestion remains somewhat speculative. It has, however, been given a tentative endorsement by the Ayn Rand Institute in its newsletter and on its website.

After her marriage, Rand also used the names "Ayn Rand O'Connor" or "Mrs. Frank O'Connor" in some settings.

 Career

What did Rand write?

Novels

• We the Living (1936) -- Her first novel. The first edition was given a limited printing by the publisher and never reprinted. After the success of her later novels, a revised second edition was published in 1959.
• Anthem (1938) -- In length this work is closer to a very long short story (or novella, as these are sometimes called) than a novel. The first edition was published in England, and a revised second edition was published in the United States in 1946. The 50th anniversary edition includes the text of the revised edition and a facsimile of the first edition with Rand's editing marks.
• The Fountainhead (1943) -- Her first bestseller.
• Atlas Shrugged (1957) -- Her last, longest, and best-selling novel.
  

 Short stories

"The Simplest Thing in the World" was her only short story published during her lifetime. A collection of unpublished stories, plays and other items was published after her death under the title The Early Ayn Rand.

 Plays

Two stage plays by Rand were produced during her lifetime:

• Night of January 16th -- Written under the title Penthouse Legend, this play was originally produced in Los Angeles as Woman on Trial in 1934. The name Night of January 16th was adopted for the Broadway production in 1935. An off-Broadway revival was done in 1973 under the original title. Significant variations in the text of the play exist among the original version, the produced versions, and the published versions.

         The Unconquered -- This play was an adaptation of her novel, We the Living. It had a brief run in New York in           1940 and was never published.

Rand also wrote two other plays, Ideal and Think Twice, which were neither produced nor published in her lifetime. They are both included in The Early Ayn Rand, and in a collection of Rand's plays called Three Plays.

 Screenplays

Three screenplays by Rand were produced during her lifetime:

• Love Letters (1945) -- An adaptation of a novel by Christopher Massie.
• You Came Along (1945) -- Rand was credited as a co-writer for revising a script originally written by Robert Smith.
• The Fountainhead (1949) -- An adaptation of her own novel.

In addition to these three, Rand also worked on the screenplay for The Conspirators. However, several other writers were also involved in multiple re-writes, and not enough of Rand's work survived for her to be listed in the credits.

Rand also began unproduced screenplays for four other movies. One was called Red Pawn and was written the 1930s. It was her first professional writing sale. Three others were written while she was under contract with Hal Wallis in the 1940s:

• The Crying Sisters, based on a novel by Mabel Seeley
• House of Mist, based on a novel by Maria Luisa Bombal
• Top Secret, an original script about the development of the atomic bomb

Before her death, she began work on a screenplay for a mini-series version of Atlas Shrugged. (This script is not the basis for the mini-series projects that have been attempted since her death.)

Non-fiction

Six non-fiction books by Rand were published during her lifetime:

• For the New Intellectual (1961)
• The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
• Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)
• The Romantic Manifesto (1969)
• The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971)
• Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1979)

These books are largely collections of previously published essays. A number of additional books of Rand's non-fiction writings have been published since her death.

Besides writing, what did Rand do?

After graduating college in Russia, Rand worked briefly as a tour guide at the Peter and Paul Fortress in Leningrad, then emigrated to the United States.

In the US, prior to her success with Night of January 16th, Rand worked in various jobs in Hollywood. Shortly after arriving there, she met, by accident, the famous director Cecil B. DeMille, who offered her a job as an extra in The King of Kings. As the movie was being completed, DeMille offered her a job preparing synopses of works that might be adapted for films. In 1927 she left DeMille's studio and for a time worked odd jobs, such as waiting tables and selling newspaper subscriptions. In 1929 Rand took work as a filing clerk in the wardrobe department of RKO, eventually becoming head of the department. In 1932, while still running the wardrobe department, she made her first professional writing sale, a movie screenplay entitled Red Pawn (which was never produced). With $1,500 (equivalent to over $20,000 in 2005 dollars) in hand from that sale, Rand quit the wardrobe department. From that point forward she worked primarily as a professional writer.

In 1934, when Night of January 16th was to be produced on Broadway, Rand moved to New York City. While there she primarily lived on the royalties from the play and her first two novels (her husband's earnings during this period were only sporadic). At times she took work as a reader for RKO and MGM, similar to her earlier work for DeMille, in order to survive when other income was sparse. Also, during her research for The Fountainhead, she worked for several months without pay in the office of architect Ely Jacques Kahn, in order to learn about the business. The royalties from The Fountainhead freed her from the financial need to do any work other than writing.

After the publication of Atlas Shrugged years later, Rand was in demand as a public speaker. She delivered annual speeches at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston, and also spoke at colleges, universities and other forums. From 1961 to 1976, she acted as editor and publisher for a series of magazines devoted to discussing Objectivist ideas, for which she also wrote numerous essays.

Did Rand organize a cult?

No, although the accusation is sometimes made against her. To address the issue at length would take more room than is reasonable in this FAQ. However, for the purposes of this FAQ, some quotes from Rand herself seem relevant. After the dissolution of the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), which had provided lectures and other services promoting Rand's ideas, she specifically disclaimed any desire for an organized Objectivist movement:

I regard the spread of Objectivism through today's culture as an intellectual movement -- i.e., a trend among independent individuals who share the same ideas -- but not as an organized movement. The existence (and the later policies) of NBI contributed to certain misconceptions among some of its students and the public at large, which tended to put Objectivism in an equivocal position in this respect. I want, therefore, to make it emphatically clear that Objectivism is not an organized movement and is not to be regarded as such by anyone.

Several years earlier, in response to a fan who wrote her offering cult-like allegiance, Rand wrote the following:

My philosophy advocates reason, not faith; it requires men to think -- to accept nothing without a full, rational, firsthand understanding and conviction -- to claim nothing without factual evidence and logical proof. A blind follower is precisely what my philosophy condemns and what I reject. Objectivism is not a mystic cult.

Rand's writings repeatedly stress the importance of individualism and independent thinking. Whatever one thinks of her otherwise, it is inappropriate to brand her a cult leader.

Relationships

 Who were Rand's parents? Did she have any brothers or sisters?

Rand was the eldest daughter of Zinovy Zakharovich Rosenbaum and Anna Borisovna Rosenbaum. She had two younger sisters, Natasha (born in 1907) and Eleanora (born in 1910 and know as 'Nora'). All of her immediate family except Nora died during World War II, and Rand was not even aware that her sister was still alive until 1973. After they rediscovered one another, a brief visit to the US by Nora and her husband went badly and left the two sisters estranged. Nora returned to Russia and survived her sister's death until March 15, 1999.

 Was Rand married? Who was her husband?

Rand married actor Charles Francis (Frank) O'Connor on April 15, 1929, having first met him when they both worked in Cecil B. DeMille's movie The King of Kings in 1926. O'Connor was born on September 22, 1897 in Lorain, Ohio. They remained married until his death on November 9, 1979. Although O'Connor was an actor when he and Rand met, he did progressively less acting work throughout the 1930s, and was unemployed for much of the Great Depression. Over the course of his life he dabbled in various jobs, including running the couple's California ranch (when they lived there) and designing floral arrangements. Later in life he was an amateur painter. His painting "Man Also Rises" has appeared as the cover art for The Fountainhead. (Rand's husband should not be confused with the Irish writer known as "Frank O'Connor," whose real name was Michael Francis O'Donovan.)

Did Rand have any children?

No. Barbara Branden described Rand's attitude towards having children thusly:

It was a responsibility that she was not interested in assuming. When she was writing Atlas [Shrugged], she would sometimes say that she was "with book." The only children she wanted were her books.

 Who are Nathaniel Branden and Barbara Branden? Did Rand have an affair with Nathaniel Branden?

Nathaniel Branden (then known as Nathan Blumenthal) was a fan of The Fountainhead who first met Rand in person in 1950. He introduced Rand to his girlfriend, Barbara Weidman. Blumenthal and Weidman soon became close friends with Rand and her husband. After a name change and a marriage, the Brandens would go on to found the Nathaniel Branden Institute to deliver lectures on Rand's ideas. In 1962, Rand and Nathaniel Branden began co-publishing The Objectivist Newsletter (later The Objectivist), with Barbara Branden as the managing editor.

In 1968, Rand publicly broke all ties with the Brandens. She accused Nathaniel of "deliberate deception of several persons," failing to keep up with his duties at The Objectivist (which had fallen behind schedule), and financial impropriety regarding loans of money from The Objectivist (which Rand and Branden co-owned) to NBI (of which Branden was the sole owner). She also referred to unspecified "ugly actions and irrational behavior in his private life." Against Barbara, Rand said that she had issued "veiled threats and undefined accusations" when Rand had refused to endorse Barbara's plan to replace NBI with a new lecture service, and then refused to come to a meeting with Rand and others involved to explain herself. The Brandens issued denials of many of the accusations against them, and Nathaniel suggested that the break had come because he refused romantic advances from Rand.

Years later, the Brandens would detail in biographical accounts that Nathaniel had a romance with Rand starting in 1954, which had been sexual from 1955 to at least 1959 (with the knowledge and consent of both their spouses). Rand had tried to resume this aspect of their relationship in 1964. By then, Nathaniel was secretly having an affair with a third woman, without telling either Rand or Barbara. Branden did not admit his new relationship, nor did he outright refuse to resume his romance with Rand. Instead, he made up various excuses for not renewing his sexual relationship with Rand, going so far as to ask for her help in counseling him to overcome his supposed problems. Branden has described his own behavior toward Rand in this period as "erratic ... my absentmindedness, my elusiveness, my coldness -- alternating, as always, with expressions of passionate devotion ... ." Rand's personal journals from 1967 and 1968 indicate that she initially believed in many of Branden's manufactured problems, and spent considerable time and effort attempting to understand and resolve them. This behavior on Branden's part, which extended over four years, is clearly a large part of what Rand meant in accusing him of "deliberate deception" and "irrational behavior in his private life." Because these accounts were written several years after Rand's death, she was never able to respond to them directly.

Nathaniel Branden and Barbara Branden are divorced. She is a writer and lecturer. He is a therapist and author of a number of books on psychology and improving one's self-esteem, including The Psychology of Self-Esteem, Honoring the Self, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, and Taking Responsibility.

Who is Alan Greenspan?

Alan Greenspan was born in New York City on March 6, 1926, just a couple of weeks after Ayn Rand's arrival there from Russia. The two first met in the early 1950s. The introduction came because Greenspan was briefly married to a childhood friend of Barbara Branden. Although initially skeptical of Rand's ideas, he eventually became a lecturer for the Nathaniel Branden Institute and a contributor of articles to The Objectivist Newsletter. He received a Ph.D. in economics from New York University in 1977. After serving on various commissions and councils for Presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, Greenspan was appointed by Reagan in 1987 to be chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. He was repeatedly re-appointed to this position by succeeding presidents, until his retirement in early 2006. The significant events of Greenspan's life are recounted in the ORC's Alan Greenspan Timeline.

For many years it was not clear to what extent Greenspan still accepted Rand's ideas. Some reports suggested he was still loyal to the beliefs he held in the 1950s and 60s years ago, but many critics said his work at the Federal Reserve was incompatible with Rand's political and ethical philosophy. In his 2007 autobiography, Greenspan wrote that although "the broader philosophy of unfettered market competition [is] compelling," he believes there are contradictions within Rand's ideas, and therefore he agrees with them only with "qualifications."

Did Rand "excommunicate" friends because they liked Beethoven's music?

No, she did not. Tales that Rand ended relationships with people over disagreements in musical tastes seem to stem primarily from Barbara Branden's book The Passion of Ayn Rand, in which Branden gives a brief account of several arguments between Rand and her longtime friends Joan Mitchell Blumenthal and Allan Blumenthal, over differences of taste in music and painting. According to the information in Branden's book, these arguments were part of a generally worsening relationship between Rand and the Blumenthals over several years in the 1970s, which culminated in the Blumenthals breaking with Rand (not vice versa) in 1978. Even if one believes that Rand ran a cult from which she excommunicated people, it is hard to see how these disagreements could be interpreted as instances of excommunication, since the Blumenthals remained friends with Rand for several years while these arguments were happening.

Other accounts of how Rand dealt with artistic differences also fail to support the "excommunication" interpretation. Alan Greenspan is reported to have disagreed openly with Rand's opinions on music, and even convinced her to moderate her negative opinion of Mozart. At least one person who remained Rand's friend until her death was an admitted lover of Beethoven's music: Leonard Peikoff, who was Rand's closest friend for over a decade and the heir to her estate.

 What was Rand's relationship with Frank Lloyd Wright?

Rand first attempted to contact the famous modernist architect when she was working on her novel The Fountainhead, in which the main character, Howard Roark, is an architect. She wrote Wright a letter asking for an interview. This and her other efforts at an interview were rebuffed, even after she was introduced in person to Wright at a dinner for the National Association of Real Estate Boards. However, when the novel was finally published, Wright read it and wrote a letter to Rand praising it.

Wright and Rand met in person on a couple of other occasions, and corresponded about the possibility of Wright designing a country home for Rand and her husband. Drawings were done of the proposed home, but it was never built. When The Fountainhead was made into a movie, Rand hoped that Wright would be hired to do the drawings of Roark's fictional buildings. Unfortunately, Wright demanded a fee so exorbitant that it amounted to a refusal of the project.

One final note: it is sometimes suggested that the character Howard Roark is actually based on Wright, but Ayn Rand denied this.

 Was Ayn Rand a lesbian?

One of the numerous unsupported allegations about Rand that is occasionally encountered is the suggestion that she was either lesbian or bisexual. If any justification is given, it is typically that she was not traditionally "feminine" in her mannerisms and had a more aggressive personality than was expected for a "feminine" woman. Aside from relying on stereotypes of what lesbians are supposedly like (aggressive and man-like), no evidence is ever offered that Rand had a romantic or sexual interest in other women. The biographical evidence is entirely to the contrary: she was married to a man, had an affair with another man, and wrote fiction that clearly shows her interest in the male body and heterosexual sex. No assignations with women have ever been documented or even credibly alleged.

 Ideas and Education

 What is Objectivism?

'Objectivism' is the name Rand gave to her philosophy (she rejected some other possibilities, including 'Randism' and 'Rationalism,' before settling on the name). The Ayn Rand Institute offers Rand's own brief summary of the basics of Objectivism from an article entitled "Introducing Objectivism."

 What were Rand's views about ...

 Abortion

Rand believed women had the right to choose an abortion. She wrote about this issue in several articles for Objectivist periodicals. In one essay for The Objectivist, she wrote:

An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, but only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not yet living (or the unborn).

Abortion is a moral right -- which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?

 Criminal Punishment/Capital Punishment

Rand's general views on criminal punishment were summed up in a letter she wrote to philosopher John Hospers:

But you ask me what is the punishment deserved by criminal actions. This is a technical, legal issue, which has to be answered by the philosophy of law. The law has to be guided by moral principles, but their application to specific cases is a special field of study. I can only indicate in a general way what principles should be the base of legal justice in determining punishments. The law should: a. correct the consequences of the crime in regard to the victim, whenever possible (such as recovering stolen property and returning it to the owner); b. impose restraints on the criminal, such as a jail sentence, not in order to reform him, but in order to make him bear the painful consequences of his action (or their equivalent) which he inflicted on his victims; c. make the punishment proportionate to the crime in the full context of all the legally punishable crimes.

She specifically did not believe that criminal punishment should aim primarily at reforming criminals:

What punishment is deserved by the two extremes of the scale is open to disagreement and discussion -- but the principle by which a specific argument has to be guided is retribution, not reform. The issue of attempting to "reform" criminals is an entirely separate issue and a highly dubious one, even in the case of juvenile delinquents. At best, it might be a carefully limited adjunct of the penal code (and I doubt even that), not its primary, determining factor.

With regard to the death penalty, Rand did not write about the subject herself, but she did publish a brief article by Nathaniel Branden responding the the question, "What is the Objectivist stand on capital punishment?":

There are grounds for debate -- though not out of sympathy or pity for murderers.

If it were possible to by fully and irrevocably certain, beyond any possibility of error, that a man were guilty, then capital punishment for murder would be appropriate and just. But men are not infallible; juries make mistakes; that is the problem. There have been instances recorded where all the available evidence pointed overwhelmingly to a man's guilt, and the man was convicted, and then subsequently discovered to be innocent. It is the possibility of executing an innocent man that raises doubts about the legal advisability of capital punishment. It is preferable to sentence ten murderers to life imprisonment, rather than sentence one innocent man to death.

5.2.4 Drug Abuse

In her essay, "Apollo and Dionysus," Rand describes drug addiction among hippies as follows:

Is there any doubt that drug addiction is an escape from an unbearable inner state, from a reality one cannot deal with, from an atrophying mind one can never fully destroy? If Apollonian reason were unnatural to man, and Dionysian "intuition" brought him closer to nature and truth, the apostles of irrationality would not have to resort to drugs. Happy, self-confident men do not seek to get "stoned."

Drug addiction is the attempt to obliterate one's consciousness, the quest for a deliberately induced insanity. As such, it is so obscene an evil that any doubt about the moral character of its practitioners is itself an obscenity.

In a passage from a different essay, Rand says that "drug addiction is nothing but a public confession of personal impotence." Her published comments all refer to addiction, and do not include any explicit reference to the idea of using illegal recreational drugs without abusing them or being an addict.

 Gun Control

Rand never published a written statement about gun control. Her comments about it in response to questions suggest that she was skeptical of the idea but not strongly opposed to it. In a question and answer session in 1971, she stated:

I do not know enough about it to have an opinion, except to say that it's not of primary importance. Forbidding guns or registering them is not going to stop criminals from having them; nor is it a great threat to the private, noncriminal citizen if he has to register the fact that he has a gun. It's not an important issue, unless you're ready to begin a private uprising right now, which isn't very practical.

In a similar session in 1973, she said:

It's a complex, technical issue in the philosophy of law. Handguns are instruments for killing people -- they are not carried for hunting animals -- and you have no right to kill people. You do have the right to self-defense, however. I don't know how the issue is to be resolved to protect you without giving you the privilege to kill people at whim.

 Homosexuality

Rand's only known public comments on the subject of homosexuality come from question and answer sessions following speeches. In answer to a question in 1968 about "laws prohibiting homosexuality," she said:

All laws against homosexual acts should be repealed. I do not approve of such practices or regard them as necessarily moral, but it is improper for the law to interfere with a relationship between consenting adults. Laws against corrupting the morals of minors are proper, but adults should be completely free.

In 1971, the exchange was as follows:

Q: This questioner says she read somewhere that you consider all forms of homosexuality immoral. If this is so, why?

A: Because it involves psychological flaws, corruptions, errors, or unfortunate premises, but there is a psychological immorality at the root of homosexuality. Therefore I regard it as immoral. But I do not believe that the government has the right to prohibit it. It is the privilege of any individual to use his sex life in whichever way he wants it. That's his legal right, provided he is not forcing it on anyone. And therefore the idea that it's proper among consenting adults is the proper formulation legally. Morally it is immoral, and more than that, if you want my really sincere opinion, it is disgusting.

 Privacy

Rand mentioned privacy as a significant value occasionally in her writings, most notably in The Fountainhead:

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

She did not discuss the concept of a right to privacy in any detail in her public writings, and made only a brief mention of it in a personal letter:

An issue such as "the invasion of privacy" cannot be discussed without a clear definition of the right to privacy, and this cannot be discussed outside the context of clearly defined and upheld individual rights.

It seems clear, however, that Rand did believe there was some type of right to privacy. In addition to her comments above, she also allowed her lawyer to invoke it on her behalf in an article in The Objectivist. She did not, however, expound on the scope or implications of this right.

 Race Relations

Rand was strongly opposed to racism, which she described as "the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism." However, she was also opposed to civil rights laws that interfere with the right of private citizens to discriminate with their own property:

No man, neither Negro nor white, has any claim to the property of another man. A man's rights are not violated by a private individual's refusal to deal with him. Racism is an evil, irrational and morally contemptible doctrine -- but doctrines cannot be forbidden or prescribed by law. Just as we have to protect a communist's freedom of speech, even though his doctrines are evil, so we have to protect a racist's right to the use and disposal of his own property. Private racism is not a legal, but a moral issue -- and can be fought only by private means, such as economic boycott or social ostracism.

Beyond racism as it is commonly understood, Rand was also opposed to biases based solely on the ethnic heritage of a smaller group, condemning both racial and ethnic bias as examples of "tribalism."

 Taxes

Rand opposed compulsory taxation. In an essay on "Government Financing in a Free Society," she said that payment for governmental services (police, etc.) should be voluntary. She suggested a couple of possible methods for voluntary financing of government, and indicated that there were also other possibilities.

What was Rand's educational background?

Rand entered the University of Petrograd on October 2, 1921, when she was just 16. (Petrograd was the new name of her birthplace, St. Petersburg.) Just over three years later, she received her degree on October 13, 1924, from the newly renamed University of Leningrad. (The city had changed names again as well.) Her study was with the "Department of Social Pedagogy." As researcher Chris Matthew Sciabarra describes it, the course of study with this department was an "integration of the historical and philosophical disciplines [which] sought to prepare students for careers as social science educators." Rand specifically majored in history, and minored in philosophy.

Shortly after graduating from the university, she enrolled in the State Institute for Cinema Arts (also in Leningrad), with the intention of studying screenwriting. Her enrollment in the two-year course of study was to be cut short, because in late 1925 she was given permission to leave the Soviet Union. As a result, she did not actually get to study screenwriting at the Institute, because that subject was not taught until the second year. Rand left having taken courses on make-up, dance, art history, etc., but no writing courses.

Did Rand say, "The cross is a symbol of torture"?

In 1960, an article in Time magazine covered a speech by Rand at Yale University. In the article, Rand is quoted as saying "The cross is the symbol of torture; I prefer the dollar sign, the symbol of free trade, therefore of the free mind." No such quote can be found in the published text of the speech. However, in a letter to the editor published in the March 21, 1960, issue of the same magazine, Rand corrects a different quote, and then writes, "As to the rest of your report, the direct quotes were selected perceptively and fairly, ..." Her letter makes no specific mention of the "cross" quote, at least not in the version published by Time.

An article in another magazine the next year identified the comment as part of an interview with Mike Wallace "for his column in the liberal New York Post," and provides a more extended quotation of the exchange.

In an interview with Playboy magazine, the interviewer asked the following of Rand:

You've been quoted as saying "The cross is the symbol of torture, of the sacrifice of the ideal to the nonideal. I prefer the dollar sign." Do you truly feel that two thousand years of Christianity can be summed up with the word "torture"?

Rand's response explicitly denied making the statement quoted:

To begin with, I never said that. It's not my style. Neither literarily nor intellectually. I don't say I prefer the dollar sign -- that is cheap nonsense, and please leave this in your copy. I don't know the origin of that particular quote, but the meaning of the dollar sign is made clear in Atlas Shrugged. It is the symbol, clearly explained in the story, of free trade and, therefore, of a free mind. [...]

Now you want me to speak about the cross. What is correct is that I do regard the cross as the symbol of the sacrifice of the ideal to the nonideal. Isn't that what it does mean? Christ, in terms of the Christian philosophy, is the human ideal. He personifies that which men should strive to emulate. Yet, according to the Christian mythology, he died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the nonideal people. [...] And it is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used. That is torture.Based on these sources, it is not clear whether Rand made the exact statement attributed to her by the press accounts, but she did agree with the ideas expressed in that statement.

What political candidates did Rand support?

Rand is known to have taken the following positions on candidates for President of the United States:

• 1932 - Rand voted for Franklin D. Roosevelt on the basis of his stand against Prohibition and limited knowledge of his overall platform. This was Rand's first vote as a US citizen. She later felt "a little guilty" about this vote when she learned more about his political positions. She was not a pubic figure at this time and did not issue public endorsements.
• 1940 - Rand and her husband worked as a volunteers for Wendell Willkie. Rand made public speeches on behalf of the campaign. She subsequently expressed great disappointment in his approach to the campaign.
• 1952/1956 - Rand did not support either Eisenhower or Stevenson, and did not vote for either.
• 1960 - Although Rand later criticized President John F. Kennedy on several occasions, she is not recorded as taking a public stance regarding his candidacy in 1960.
• 1964 - With some reservations, Rand endorsed Barry Goldwater, both for the Republican nomination and for the presidency, in several articles in The Objectivist Newsletter.
• 1968 - Again with reservations, Rand endorsed Richard M. Nixon in an article in The Objectivist.
• 1972 - After writing several articles critical of President Nixon, Rand nonetheless encouraged her readers to vote for him, in order to prevent George McGovern from winning the election. She subsequently wrote more articles criticizing Nixon.
• 1976 - Rand endorsed President Gerald Ford in one of the last issues of The Ayn Rand Letter. Her longtime friend Alan Greenspan worked in the Ford administration, and Rand had personally met Ford. She specifically disapproved of Ronald Reagan, who was challenging Ford for the Republican nomination, on the basis of his opposition to abortion rights
• 1980 - Rand did not endorse or vote for any candidate. She continued to oppose Reagan and his "mixture of capitalism and religion," calling him "the representative of the worst kind of conservatism."

 What did Rand read?

The accusation is sometimes made that Rand did not read philosophical or intellectual works from other writers. One critic went so far as to declare that she "read almost nothing but detective novels." Such claims are exaggerated at best. Although Rand apparently did not read extensively in contemporary academic philosophy, she clearly read much more than "detective novels." Nor can it be said that she did not ready any contemporary academic philosophy, since she read such works by Brand Blanshard, John Hospers, John Herman Randall, and W.T. Stace.