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This is a transcription of Miss Rand from her initial Columbia University radio broadcast from 11:00 to 16:35 minutes into the program. I am addressing myself to those who are genuinely interested in ideas, and who therefore, have an authentic desire to understand Objectivism. Those who are making an effort to fail to understand me are not a concern of mine. Please take the following as an official public notice: The only authentic sources of information about Objectivism are: my own works, the Objectivist Newsletter, a monthly journal dealing with the application of Objectivism to current cultural and political problems. The above public notice is necessitated by the fact that most of such comments on Objectivism that I have seen in print consist of outright misrepresentations and smears. Some of the misrepresentations may be unintentional, some people find it difficult to grasp new ideas, let alone to summarize them correctly. But most of the misrepresentations are deliberate, since an attempt to ascribe to a writer the exact opposite of her ideas can hardly be attributed to an innocent error. There are many such attempts. Those who created them, deserve them. If you do wish to understand Objectivism, the one helpful suggestion I can give you is this. Remember that the basic premises from which I speak are not the ones most people take uncritically for granted. It is precisely the basic premises of today’s culture that I challenge. Therefore, do not leap to conclusions and equate my viewpoint with somebody else’s, by assuming automatically that you have heard it before. You haven’t. For instance, do not equate my views with Nietzsche, or Herbert Spencer or Senator Goldwater. My views are not theirs and vice versa. So whether you choose to agree with me or disagree, do not set up a straw-woman. It is a futile procedure, which does not fool anyone except that man who attempts it. If you wish to disagree with me, you have to start by identifying my basic premises, and then refuting them—if you can. You have to take me up on the issues. None of my antagonists have done it so far, and, I venture to say, none ever will. I say it because the whole case of the mystic-altruist-collectivist axis rests on the evasion of basic issues, on never identifying their own base. Objectivism holds that: A.) Men must be guided exclusively by reason. B.) That man has a right to exist for his own sake. And C.) That no-one has the right to initiate the use of physical force against others. In order to refute this you would have to admit and maintain that: A.) Man ought to be irrational. B.) That man is a sacrificial animal. And C.) That you seek to impose your own ideas or wishes on others by means of physical force. This is what you would have to admit, and then attempt to prove that you have a right to. You see all three of these premises dominating our culture and being practiced all over the world today, but you do not hear anyone admitting it openly. Instead, you hear such things as: A.) Rationality consists of recognizing that reason is impotent, or, an intellectual is one who denies the existence of the intellect. B.) To enslave men is to act for their own good, or, to slaughter men by the millions is the proof of one’s love for humanity. And C.) Freedom consists of obedience to the edicts of the government, or, to compel men to obey by means of physical force and violence constitutes a defense of liberty and entitles one to be called a liberal. Ladies and gentlemen, I could almost rest the entire case for Objectivism on this kind of pronouncements by my antagonists. The fact that they find it necessary to evade in such manner is one of the clearest [and?] least attractive evidences of the fact that the truth is on the side of Objectivism.

I've heard some proclaim that the basis of this was egoism, that as a creator she wanted spiritual recognition and ownership. Of course full on altruists and mixed or sloppy thinkers have a field day with this... twisting it into some kind of childish need for approval or akin to a rotter's lust for fame. A kind of grasping Greed in a realm of academia which should remain pure and untrammelled by it. In the beginning, unquestioning of the very basic premises Rand refers to, I remained confused... this doesn't sound like Rand. That because it isn't Rand. I think it is because of the very possible misrepresentations that she decided in order to both preserve the core philosophy and to defend what she actually thought that giving it a name was necessary and the most effective way to defend the ideas and her connection to them , and only them.