re: #4 Lidane

re: #7 HappyWarrior

Maybe. Maybe not. It’s also a libertarian viewpoint. At the very least, the bit about overpopulation.

If you have an hour to spare, take a listen to one of the last interviews with Ayn Rand by Phil Donahue, the granddaddy of audience-participation-style talk shows.

Here’s part 1 of 5. If it doesn’t come up below, search Youtube or double click the video. I believe this was recorded in 1975. She would have been 80.

Youtube Video

Rand comes off as a cute little old lady and the audience kind of giggles at her remarks. Then it gets a little hairy. I don’t recall which of the 5 videos, but she starts going on about how we pay too much attention to the disabled. In the 70s, disabled children were just starting to be mainstreamed into public schools. In fact, there was a huge push to do so and this was a hot topic at the time this aired.

Rand was vehemently against it which did not go over well with the audience. She very visibly (words, tone and facial features), showed her disdain towards spending money to train people she viewed as pointless to society. She didn’t feel the disabled should be taught at all, especially since there were so few schools for the gifted (that has only recently changed). At one point, she ponders her own belief system as to people who are paraplegics - lost use of their legs - with their minds still in tact, but then blows the notion off altogether as like “so what” or “who cares”.

The audience does not view her as a cute little old lady by the end.