She said:
I am speaking here today on the assumption that I am addressing an audience consisting primarily of "liberals" -- that is: of my antagonists. Therefore, I must begin by explaining why I chose to do it.The briefest explanation is to tell you that in the 1930s I envied the "liberals" for the fact that their leaders entered political campaigns armed not with worn-out bromides, but with intellectual arguments. I disagreed with everything they said, but I would have fought to the death for the method by which they said it: for an intellectual approach to political problems.
Today, I have no cause to envy the "liberals" any longer.
That's how Ayn Rand began her speech, "The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age," delivered at Boston's Ford Hall Forum on this day in 1961. To find out why, by 1961, she no longer envied the liberals of her day, you can read "The Intellectual Bankruptcy of Our Age" here, or listen to her delivering the speech itself, on cassette or on CD.
I'll let Ayn Rand herself enjoy the last word (as, on this issue, I believe she already has):
Those of you who may still be "liberals," in the original sense of that word, and who may have abandoned everything except loyalty to reason -- now is the time to check your premises. If you do, you will find that the ideal society had once been almost within men's reach. It was the intellectuals who destroyed it -- and who committed suicide in the process -- but the future belongs to a new type of intellectual, a new radical: the fighter for capitalism. Posted by Craig Ceely at March 26, 2005 08:19 PM