Khalling: Thanks for posting this. In 1965 I was in the audience at Ford Hall listening to this presentation live. You could hear a pin drop as Rand read the speech. It was preceded and followed by raucus applause. What a night! Thanks for bringing that memory back to me.

Very good questions. How to make the "groups not feel like there unilaterally disarming by calling for limited gov't"? Pondering this question made me think pf Harry Browne's campaign line: "Would you give up your favorite government program if you never had to pay income taxes again?" Perhaps that sort of "grand bargain" is the only way to stop the slide toward bigger and bigger government. But what politician today would have the courage to even make such an offer?

Unicameral systems quickly become the "tyranny of the majority." The wheels came off the wagon with the 17th amendment, when senators stopped being chosen by state legislators. The Federal judiciary shouldn't be a lifetime appointment. A ten year term should suffice in avoiding too much emphasis on politics, and limiting the damage one extreme judge can cause.

I can remember reading this powerful speech way back in '65. As I re-read it in 2016 I realize that it is more relevant now than it was even then. As a reader of science-fiction, I am disappointed that we are not on Mars, we don't have self propelled flying cars, there is no sign of a Star Trek world, and Ayn Rand is more needed today than 51 years ago.

We are fortunate that we have a complete record of almost everything Any Rand thought about, I say almost because with her death she could not think anymore, but while she was alive think she did and commit it to paper so we have it. This is an example of how timeless her thoughts were, 1965, and like everything she committed to paper we have it so we can know if we read her writings what I believe tragically is taking place in our, if it still is our country.
khalling thank you for publishing this information.

Each time I listen to Ayn I am more impressed with what she saw. From what it appears we will finish the last step in becoming a facist country in the next election. Hope I'm wrong. Thanks for sharing this K.

Not having a working framework that ensures respect for individual rights is the normal historical condition of humankind. Is most of human history civil war sometimes with guns sometimes without? That question is actually moot. I don't want ancient human power struggles covered by a thin fig leaf. I want a constitution or some other framework that actually works.

it is still not sensible and should be called what it is. Civil War without guns

"Congress must also play their role. "
Basically you say the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches should all play their role, but they don't. This makes me think we need some other structure, something like our Constitution but that has some sort of structures and institutions that cause people to follow their roles. Maybe the structure would be different from the Constitution and not have three branches. I don't know how it would work. Listening to this, though, makes me think that our system of gov't depends on humans not having human frailties.

" "groups" is not in Objectivist thinking."
I was saying with irony that cooler heads want a compromise between various interest groups, irony because if we rule out following a Constitution that respects individual rights and limits gov't, then a fair-minded centrist weighing all groups' interests is sadly the sensible policy.

All good questions. One answer is to undo by Executive Order anything done by Executive Order. Congress must also play their role. Some of these ABC's are fairly recent in US history. Why does their existence mean validation? SCOTUS is only one balance of three. Often their rulings are set up in such a way to throw it back to the electorate. However, they are to uphold the Constitution-which they have not upheld many, many times. Since they are lifetime appointments, this can be problematic-however, still procedural.
finally, "groups" is not in Objectivist thinking. Your rights, guaranteed by the Constitution are individual rights, not a collective.
The sad fact of Zero to ONe, is Thiel's acknowledgement of going back the way of Trade Secrets. Backward move for technological advance. That book sits on my dest and I refer to it often though.

The part near 46 min where she talks about demographics of business people who bought into crony capitalism and the goal of preserving mediocrity reminds me of another book I read recently: Zero to One. This book says that the post-WWII prosperity led Boomers to the conclusion that success comes from following a clear career path and letting the rising tide lift all boats. The dot-com bust, Thiel says, led my generation to embrace this in the form of Lean business practices and reject notions of grand ideas that change the world in favor of incremental improvements.
[Below are my thoughts, not Thiel's]
The post WWII rising tide came to an end, and now people look for whom to blame. We have Trump selling the lie that it's outsiders and foreigners. We have Sanders selling the lie that it's billionaires. We have most people scared, like we're on a ship with no guiding navigational principals, that one of these people will enact tyranny of one group on the others. If we have no boundaries, centrism gives us stability, a reduced risk of the unstable system careening into one form of tyranny or another. As Rand says in this piece, we sometimes even get sanctimonious about our zealous centrism, wanting the cooler heads to listen to all sides and come to a compromise between all the various interest groups in society.

My questions for Rand: How do we get those boundaries on gov't back? How do we make the groups not feel like they're unilaterally disarming by calling for limited gov't? It's not their interests to do so if the other groups will continue using the gov't to further their own interests. Is President LBJ an unprincipled man, and our system depends on having people of principles in office? (I hope the answer is no.) Then what institutions should we have to enforce those boundaries?

I don't know the book. Was this author featured in a movie about stats? I think with Kurt Russell and Jonas somebody? it actually ended very sadly. sorry to digress

The line about the problem of "statistics substituted for truth" caught my attention because it reminded me of the 2012 book The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail - But Some Don't. The books says we have so much data and number-crunching ability in the modern world that we sometimes substitute statistical analysis of data for logical models.

It's odd to hear something similar 50 years ago.

Thanks for the link. Chilling applicability

Every time I reread this it is just as relevant to whatever the current national situation is as it was when she wrote it. Follow up with her "The Wreckage of the Consensus" from a year later.