Eric Brunner, president of UC Irvine’s Ayn Rand Club, spoke to me about Rand’s philosophy, the group’s relationship with other clubs such as the Anteaters for Israel, and the recent controversy at UCI regarding an event with Dr. Yaron Brook sponsored by the club.
What type of club is the Ayn Rand Club? What are you trying to promote at UC Irvine?
The Ayn Rand Club at UCI is a club based on promoting Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. We promote Objectivist ideas in every area of philosophy - metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics. We do this by watching recorded lectures, reading Objectivist literature, and hosting and attending live lectures by Objectivist speakers. We aren’t simply a political group. Our focus is much broader than politics, and we seek to provide those interested with a positive, coherent, consistent, rational guide to life. We seek to promote Objectivism. In Objectivism, the world around you is real, things are what they are, and things act in an orderly fashion, and man can discover the facts of reality and use his knowledge to guide his life in order to make himself happy. We reject the supernatural, and we embrace this world and man’s happiness. We embrace reason, and we reject using blind faith or using emotion to decide what to do in your life.
We are for a code of morality called rational selfishness. Most people believe in altruism, the moral code that says that you should sacrifice yourself for others. We believe in the opposite. We believe that man should use reason to act in his self-interest so that he can become happy. We think the standard of morality is man’s life. Therefore, anything that destroys or hinders man’s life is bad, and anything that promotes man’s life is good. We reject all sacrifices. We reject sacrificing yourself for others and sacrificing others for yourself. We are for trading value for value.
The Ayn Rand club has begun building a relationship with the Anteaters for Israel this year. What are your motivations for building a coalition with this club (especially because you’ve little religious motivation)?
Objectivists support Israel, so I thought a group on campus that supports Israel, like AFI, would be a good group of people to be allies with in limited contexts. Objectivists support Israel because Israel is a Western country, i.e. it tries to protect individual rights. Even though many AFI members support Israel on religious and Zionist grounds, I believe that the AFI can understand and support the Objectivist position. I believe that many AFI members implicitly agree with the Objectivist position. I seek to be friends with the AFI in order to promote Ayn Rand’s ideas. For instance, I can present the Objectivist view of Israel and the war on Islamic totalitarianism to AFI members, we can inform each other of our events, and we can co-sponsor events. Religion has nothing to do with it.
The Ayn Rand club sponsored an event at UCI this past Monday called “Why the Destruction of Islamic Totalitarianism is Our Moral Imperativeâ€? with Dr. Yaron Brook. This event drew many protesters, including LaRouche and a few students with the Muslim Student Union. What was your reaction to the protestors at your event?
First of all, there were no “protestors” at my event. I wouldn’t go so far as to call them that and put them at that level. There were unlawful disruptors and some people with antagonistic questions. My reaction to the disruptors was the desire for justice to be served, i.e. for them to be thrown out and/or arrested. A number of individuals at my event who disrupted it were arrested, and rightly so. Calling someone a protestor implies that they had some sort of legitimate way of showing their horribly false point of view. As far as I know, no one from the MSU took part in a disruption at my event.
As I said at the lecture, I wanted law enforcement officials to deal with such people, and they did.
What does the Ayn Rand Club hope to accomplish by bringing speakers like Dr. Yaron Brook who have been characterized as controversial?
The Ayn Rand Club seeks to show all the independent, rational thinkers in the community that there is a rational solution to ending the jihad against the West…I seek to show that individuals should feel proud of Western values: reason, individual rights, capitalism, limited government, the separation of religion and state, and that we have a moral right to punish those who seek to murder us - in this case, Islamic totalitarians.
Is there anything else that you would like to add to this interview?
If anyone is interested in Ayn Rand and her ideas, I encourage them to visit the Ayn Rand Institute’s official site. From there you can see all the upcoming lectures by Ayn Rand Institute speakers on campuses and other venues around the country. If anyone is interested in the Ayn Rand Club at UCI, I can be contacted at ebrunner@uci.edu.
This is, from an objective atheist view point(in the sense that I hold no ethic view point and a limited sense of morals which i formed for myself.) an altogether un-Ayn Rand statement. My point being that Rand was an altogether full blown capitalist, rejecting communism on a moral stand point(her pointless and individually claimed morals, followers are but sheep, one needs to claim his own moral independents to other moral systems to achieve his own rank) but bordering more so the concepts of anarcapitalism, or capoanarchism. Which, although sometimes denied by her, can only be affirmed by her statements and those of her followers, can only be seen as the antithesis, or straight forward reversal of her doctrine. Whether limited or universal, these antithesis are counter-Ayn Rand. I would argue that, otherwise, Ayn Rand, or her followers, Would nor today nor yesterday nor tomorrow, be able to stand up to an argument of any current philosopher or politician on the subject, would agree, this topic is mute as retarded, that is backwards and counterproductive. Extending the ideology of national identity forward to Global identity, this concept would only prove to reinforce those archaic concepts of those culture which we(the west) have constantly held to be counter productive, whereas a more American standpoint is now being adopted here and throughout South America, The East and the underdeveloped world to support western views as opposed to counteracting them. This is accomplished in a form of changing the National Identity and Global Identity in a way that happens to neither support nor deny either Communism nor Capitalism nor Anarchism in a quantitative nor qualitative way. I argue that the Ayn Rand Club is nothing more than, and in essence doing, a harm to western thought for the past centuries, injuring the the cultivated ideas and culture of western though. Thus, its alliance with Western Thought are a harm to Ayn Rand Club(by being its antithesis) and to Western Thought(by being its antithesis).
Pat, not many people speak Hegelian, FYI.
Ayn Rand was a full blown capitalist, yes, which means she was totally against anarchy.
FYI, it is hard to follow your words, you almost sound like Kant. No one said anything about identities, especially global or national identity. I cannot properly respond to your other statements because your thoughts are not clear.