 Hi, I'm Jim Dodie and welcome to dialogue. We have one of our favorite guests, Yaron Brooke, who is the president and executive director of the Einran Institute, former professor of Santa Clara University, regular column in Forbes.com. I know, Christina, you have a thing for Yaron Brooke. Well, I'm hoping he's going to solve the world's problems today because, boy, we've got plenty out there to solve. Yeah, and somebody with a background in Einran, you'll have a randy in perspective that you could give some of the major issues facing us. Desperately needed these days. Desperately needed. And I guess it must be fun to think about how how Einran would react to some of the world's problems. But before we get into that, Einran is hot right now, isn't she? I mean, she's the best seller again. I mean, she wrote Atlas Shrug back in the 50s, came out, I believe, in 1957. Kind of negative reviews, but it's become one of the classics in literature. It was, it got negative reviews both by the left and the right, which was interesting. The New York Times trashed it and so did the National Review. So it was, the hostility was from everywhere. Yet it still became a best seller. Her second, the Fountain Head, was her first best seller. And over the years, particularly, I'd say since she died in 1982, sales have just kept growing and they kept increasing. And the, you know, in 2007, which was the 50th anniversary of the book, sales got up close to 200,000 copies a year of Atlas Shrugged. And we thought, wow, this is fantastic. And it's a huge book to read. Huge book, we're talking about 1200 pages. I still haven't gotten through it. People are buying it. Yes. Is this like, are these Tea Party people buying this book? Well, so 2008 it peaked, right? More sales than when it was a best seller back then. 2009 was better than 2008. Wow. And, and the 2000, and then so 2008 was better than 07. In 2009, it exploded. And it sold in 2009 over half a million copies. Oh my God. A million copies. So we got weekly sales figures. So we could track this. And it tracks what happens in politics almost to the tee. It's amazing. So top passes. Yes. Sales go through the roof. The bailout of the auto companies, sales go through the roof. Obama gets elected, sales go up. And that whole late 2008, early 2009, sales just sustained an incredibly high level. And I think what's going on is people are realizing that what's going on in the real world out there so parallels this book written 53 years ago that they remembered it. And they said, oh, I need to read that book again that I read in college because this, and they recommending it to their friends. And it's just, it became a cultural icon during that period. And sales have tapered off a little bit since then. But there's still it all time. But it sounds like what you're saying is that whenever there are things that happen like the bailout, anything where government is becoming bigger or there's an interpretation of President Obama, a stronger or more dominant role for government in our society, then Ein Rand, who has an opposite view, there's interest in what what you've said about all this. I think that's right. And I think what happens in Atlas Shrugged is, is, you know, the economic decline in America blamed on capitalism blamed on businessmen as a consequence, more government controls, more government regulations, greater decline blamed on businessmen. That kind of dynamic is in a book written in 1957, and it played out right in front of us. Now, you're going to solve the mystery for a lot of people out there who have wondered, what does this bumper sticker mean? Who is John Galt, which relates to Atlas Shrugged. So everybody out there viewing audience to know who the heck is John Galt? Well, I don't want to say because I want you to go read the book. Okay. And it's a mystery, right? The book is partially a mystery. And part of the mystery is who is John Galt. But who is John Galt is the opening line of Atlas Shrugged. It is the first sentence in the novel. And it is, it repeats itself throughout the novel. And of course, the mystery is revealed in the third part of the book. And in a sense, John Galt is, is, is the producer. John Galt is the thinker. John Galt is, is whatever it is within us that, that, that is focused on reason, that is focused on independence, that is focused on, you know, making the most out of your own life and making your life the best that it can be. And through being rational through being productive, that, that really is John Galt. So how does the Institute take this groundswell and guide it down the avenue that would be better, I presume, than the end of the book, which I haven't gotten to yet? Well, yes. And in the book, society collapses. And, and, and I ran said when she wrote Atlas Shrugged and said over the years, that she wrote Atlas Shrugged so that it would never happen to prevent it from happening. So we are, we're, we're not only happy because it's an, you know, I ran selling, but we're really happy because a lot of people are reading it. Hopefully they'll get the message. Now, beyond that, what we're trying to do is, is get the word out there on a, on a massive scale and explain what, what Atlas means and what the rest of the philosophy means. And we do that through programs targeted at high school students. We try to get her books taught in high school so we can take the 500,000 that bought the book in, in the bookstores and leverage that into hundreds of thousands of kids reading the books, which we do every year. We ship over 300,000 books to high school teachers every year to, and they teach Anthem and the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. We have high school programs, we have university programs, and then we have a lot of, a lot of media and public speaking, a lot of commentary on what's going on in the world today, you know, particularly around this financial crisis and around the economic crisis, why state isn't bad? What are the solutions? How can we get away from what seems like an inevitable decline in the culture and the economy of the United States? They're solutions. This is not inevitable. And we're trying to get the message out there. And I think the Tea Party movement has been quite receptive to this message. If you went to Tea Party gatherings, you would have seen big signs about Atlas Shrugged and who is John Gultz and, you know, about Ayn Rand. They've picked up that there is a parallel between the book and what's going on. They are looking for answers. I generally view the Tea Party movement as a very positive movement, as a movement of people basically saying, enough is enough. We've had it. It's an expression of kind of the American sense of life. You know, we don't want government in our lives and we want, you know, we've tolerated it so far, but this is it. Enough's enough. And then the question is, do they have the intellectual ammunition? Do they have the intellectual knowledge and the capacity to present a positive agenda for resurrecting this country? And that's where I think Ayn Rand and I think where we can play a role in helping them articulate a positive position. It's great to say no. No is important to say, but then you have to have an alternative. And I fear that Tea Parties don't yet, but one of the things that we try to do at the Institute is present that alternative and hope that groups like the Tea Party pick it up and reverse course for the direction this country is heading in. Can you take us back a little bit and maybe tell our viewers what the difference is between individualism and collectivism and why we want to slant more towards individualism? No, we don't just want to slant more. We want to be all the way over. Collectivism is the idea that we as individuals should live for the sake of the group. And you can define a group in different ways. You can define the group as a race. You can define a group as an ethnic group. You can define the group as a country. Country first was McCain's slogan. That is collectivism. Placing some entity out there, some group above yourself. So your interests are not important. What's interest is the group. And every fascist regime, every totalitarian regime in history has used collectivism in one form or another to get people to sacrifice for the cause. We believe that that is wrong. And I think the founding fathers, the central revolution of this country was a rejection of the idea that your life belongs to somebody else. The very fundamental basis for the revolution is the idea that we are sovereigns of our own life. That you own your life. You have an inalienable right to your life, your liberty. And in the most astounding statement in human history, I think politically, you have an inalienable right to pursue your own happiness. That's individualism. Individualism is the idea that you own your life, that you are responsible for your life. You should be the beneficiary of the good stuff that you do. And you should suffer the consequences of the bad stuff. Makes sense to me. And Ayn Rand was born and lived through the Russian Revolution. Her parents lost their business as a result of the Russian Revolution and emigrated to the United States to escape that. So she lived through this, collectivism. I mean, almost a classic period of collectivism. Absolutely. You know, kind of some of the one of the worst forms of collectivism. There are many forms of collectivism. Communism certainly is one of the worst forms of it. A bad idea, you know, badly executed, but that's all you can do when you have evil ideas. You know, she lived through it. Not only was the business taken, all property was taken. So the house was taken. You know, they have to live with other families in a big apartment. I would recommend reading a book called We The Living, which is her first novel, and it's the most autobiographical novel. It's about her life. It's not about her life, but it's about a fictional character's life in the Soviet Union at about the age I ran lived through that. So it's very autobiographical, at least in terms of the sentiment. She managed to escape that. She, her family didn't. Only she managed to get out. She got out in the 20s and late 20s to the United States. And we were talking before the show. Well, yeah, but our viewing audience, we know we have a wonderful Dodge College of Film and Media Arts and an icon here in the Dodge College and a Chapman is Cecil B. DeMille, whose granddaughter, C.C. Presley, is on our board of trustees, donated wonderful memorabilia. We had a show on all of that. And there's a connection between Cecil B. DeMille and Ayn Rand. Tell us about that. Ayn Rand is a young woman, fresh off the boat from Russia. She goes first to spend some time with family in Chicago. One of the family members owns a movie theater. And Ayn Rand studied film in Russia and was fascinated by silent movies, American silent movies, and her dream was to work in Hollywood. So she comes down to Los Angeles and the first day in Los Angeles she goes to Cecil B. DeMille's studios and hands her a letter of introduction from her cousin in Chicago. And of course they tell her, don't call us, we'll call you. And Ayn Rand is this, you know, small woman with a very strong, heavy Russian accent and she's fresh off this boat and she walks out of the office and in the driveway is this big convertible and in the convertible is Cecil B. DeMille. And she stops and she stares. And he comes driving by and he stops the car and he looks at her and he says, why are you staring at me? And she says, you know, I'm from Russia, I admire your movies, I love your movies and I want to get into the movie industry. And Cecil B. DeMille says, get in the car. And she gets in and he drives her to the back lot where they are filming, you know, Cecil B. DeMille's silent movie, The King of Kings. And he gives a three-day pass. He says, if you want to get into the movie business you need to see how movies are made. And he gave her a pass and she, you know, she came and she becomes an extra on the movie. And we have photographs at the Institute where, of crowd scenes where we've marked where Ayn Rand appears. She actually met her future husband on the set of The King of Kings. He was also one of the Roman gods. And she managed to get jobs in Hollywood. She started out doing things like working in the wardrobe department. But her goal was to write scripts. And she landed up ultimately reviewing scripts for the different studios and ultimately became a script writer. And she wrote a number of scripts for movies before she became a best-selling author. So, you know, Ayn Rand's story is truly the American success story. It is, you know, the young immigrant coming here with nothing. And literally she came with nothing. And becoming a huge success and really becoming a cultural icon. I mean, it's not just that she made a lot of money in America. She did, you know, through the sale of her books. But she became, in a sense, more American than, you know, any other author you can think of. Atlas Shrugged is and fountain head of the American novels. And here she's been dead almost 30 years and has become a rock star again. Unprecedented in publishing history. There is no other author whose books are not being picked up, let's say, by university system or by school system. But just on the power of the novels themselves and the power of the ideas, sales are far higher after they're dead than when they were their life. Just unprecedented. Let's talk about some current policies and issues, the issues of our time, and ask how would Ayn Rand look at them and maybe you can be her voice. And if you have a different point of view than Ayn Rand, give it to us. Let's start with what I think may be very important in the rising importance of Ayn Rand and the growth of a Tea Party movement. And this idea that we just experienced the Great Recession. Supposedly we're out of it, but it was the market system, it was capitalism, it was this individualism, this idea that greed is good, that led us into this Great Recession and now it's the government that's getting us out of it, President Obama's policies and so on, and there's a reaction against that. What would Ayn Rand say about the Great Recession and is that true? Is it true that that individualism caused it? So first let me say I can't channel her, so I hope what I say reflects, I believe what I say reflects exactly what she would say, but I'm sure she would be much more brilliant in her answer than I am. But I mean, I think, you know, I find a whole explanation for the financial crisis and the recession is bewildering. This whole notion that in 2007 we had capitalism in America, we had free markets, we had rampant individualism, and that failed is just bizarre. Think of the markets that failed. Housing, mortgages, banking. Three of the most regulated businesses in America, I would argue banking is the most regulated business in America. Starting with Fannie and Freddie, instituted by the government. Well, Fannie and Freddie, but you know, because you have some knowledge of how banks work, but the banks are heavily, heavily regulated. You can't start a bank without having your business plan approved, your board approved, your CEO approved, your investors approved, regulators in your office and they can come in any time and they irregularly, they tell you when to sell the business, when to fire the CEO, everything. This is, if we have one sector of the economy that is fascist, fascist in a sense of government control without ownership, it is the banking sector. So here are the sectors of the economy that failed are clearly the most regulated control sectors in the economy. Fannie and Fannie, for example, each had a regulator dedicated only to regulate them, and yet each one of them had a whole regulatory agency just to regulate them, and yet they failed on a much bigger scale than any private bank did. So the more regulated, the bigger the failure. It's no accident that this crisis happened in banking and not in technology, which is not very regulated, or not in other industries that are not regulated. So this is, so first it's bizarre to think of this as a crisis of free markets, because we don't have free markets and we certainly don't have free markets in these industries. We have government controls and regulations over so much of what we do today in the business world. But if you start digging in, if you start peeling this off, you suddenly realize that, well, this is a government-caused crisis from beginning to end, whether it's the low interest rates that the Fed, Fed is a government entity, had interest rates at below the rate of inflation, anybody who's taking a finance class, that is a negative real rate of return, basically that paying you to borrow money, guess what people did? They borrowed money because they were being paid to do it, and they borrowed lots of it, they borrowed it on our homes and our cars and our credit cards and everything. This is, we took on too much debt, that's what this financial crisis is really about. That's a government entity, that's government-caused. Well, the government told us to give them, told the bankers to lend. Well, then Allen Greenspan actually went on television and said, in a new era of low interest rates, get variable rate mortgages. They're better than fixed rate mortgages. That was about the worst advice anybody's given to anybody in decades. But he was, it's Allen Greenspan. Well, Allen Greenspan speaks because he's chairman of the Fed, all powerful. But that's what happens to politics, you know, when we give governments so much power and so much control. Then we talked about Fenni and Fenni, government entities who encouraged these ridiculous mortgages and bought them and sold them and we packaged them, but created this market all subsidized by us, the taxpayer, and we're paying hundreds of billions of dollars to cover their losses. So this idea that the government caused the recession is absolute bunk. That the government caused it is true, that the market caused it is absolutely bunk. In fact, it's the government that got us into all of this. And then the idea that the government is going to get us out on that basis is absolutely preposterous. It's preposterous and the fact is that what we've learned is the opposite lesson and therefore everything the government is doing. I'd say since March of 2008, almost every action that's Federal Reserve and this Treasury Department is engaged in and Congress have engaged in, has been detrimental to the economy and to getting us out of this crisis. Even the stimulus package? Well, I mean there's an example in my view and you're an economist so maybe maybe I should commute to you. Well, no, we're aligned, I think. Stimulus package. So here's an example of a policy that's been tried many, many, many times. It was tried during the Great Depression and failed. It's been tried in the U.S. before and failed. It's been tried in Japan for the last 20, 20 years since 1990 on a massive scale and has been a massive failure. This is a classical example of the fact that economic facts, reality, does not drive policy. Ideology drives policy. Stimulus package is a way to grow government and have a veneer of an excuse to do it. That's all it is. It's to grow government power. They use economics as a veneer they use Keynes as a veneer. Keynesian economics has been proved to be wrong over and over and over again. It doesn't matter to anybody. But just think logically about a stimulus package. All the stimulus packages is taking money away from some people whether it's bondholders or taxpayers who are in the private sector who would use that money productively because nobody likes to just sit on piles of cash. They would actually invest to create jobs. Give it to a bunch of bureaucrats to spend on what? On the favorite projects of politicians. Anybody who believes that that could be more productive than leaving it in the private sector is delusional. The private sector is best to allocate that capital and indeed politicians waste it. It's destructive. The stimulus package in my view actually destroyed jobs. It's not an issue of how many jobs were saved according to Obama. It's literally destroyed jobs. Every job in the public sector destroys multiple jobs in the private sector. The only jobs that are meaningful are jobs that are productive. The jobs where stuff is being created, where services are being provided. And those jobs are private jobs. They're not public jobs. So in your view, would we be a lot better off without the Federal Reserve? Yes. In my view, we would be. Milton Friedman would agree with Anne that one. Milton Friedman I think at the end, you know, I think he alternated between two views. He believed that he probably believed that the Federal Reserve would just had it and therefore, you know, we needed to give it a rule and he had this rule for the Federal Reserve. You could say as long as you give it rules and take away its autonomous power. I'd say even if you had rules, it would be a bad idea because it's not a market institution and it doesn't respond to supply and demand. I believe that banks should be unregulated. They should be completely private. They should succeed or fail based on their own merits. They should not be deposited insurance. We as depositors should actually care whether a bank was run well or not. And I think that the Federal Reserve should not exist and banks should basically be issuing currency. And while that sounds bizarre and freaky, that's how the U.S. was from the Civil War until 1914. And during that period, the U.C. economy grew at the fastest rate in human history. We became the industrial powerhouse that we are. Many people don't realize that when we had a private banking system. I'd like to change from the economy to international politics and affairs. I'd be interested in what you would think on this particular issue. You know, Ein Rand was an atheist. And I wonder, what would she say about this planned Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero? Well, you know, I think that this mosque is a tricky issue. And I don't know exactly what you would say because I think it has some subtleties. But I think the most important point about this mosque is that the fact that is at the issue, the fact that we're even talking about it, is a reflection of the fact that we have no foreign policy. We have no clue what we're doing in the world. We have no strategy. We were attacked in 9-11 and we've been floundering since. And I think this is not a Republican-Democrat thing because I think I'm more critical of Obama than of Bush. But I don't think we've seen any change from Obama. I just think we've seen him continue Bush policies in worse, in a worse way. If we had actually recognized after 9-11 that we were at war, if we'd identified who we are at war with, if we had gone out there and crushed the enemy, which I think exists out there, brought our troops home, this would all be over now and who would care about a mosque one way or the other. You know, and they would indeed be so timid in my view that they would even consider building, the fact that they would consider building a mosque by a pretty radical sheik, Imam, a religious leader. At 9-11 this suggests to me that they think they're winning. And so think about this. Here's this Imam who I think is fairly radical, but yet the State Department sends him overseas to speak for America. I mean, how can we object to a mosque run by a guy who the State Department thinks is one of the good guys? Then you've got, he says, you know, he's ambiguous about Hamas, where the Hamas is a terrorist organization. But we have, George Bush is the guy who gave Hamas the Gaza Strip, right? He was the guy who assisted in elections among the Palestinians, which Hamas won. He recognized them, you know, their victory and in a sense, acknowledged them. So why can't we condemn this guy? Now, so there's so much hypocrisy. There's so, you know, non-existent real foreign policy based on principles, based on American self-defense, based on protecting this country and doing what's necessary to protect the lives and property of Americans. This is ridiculous. Now, I do think that it's ridiculous that a mosque be built near the site. I do think that it's outrageous. I think that- It's three properties. It's their property that don't we believe in individualism and freedom of religion? We do, but at a time of war- Or not at war. But that's the problem. I believe we are at war. Whether the government has declared it or not, I believe we are at war. And I think, I think we should be outraged at the fact that the enemy, and I do believe that he represents the enemy, even though the State Department doesn't agree with me, that the enemy build a shrine to itself on the site of their attack against us, I think is a sign of defeatism and weakness and really surrender by the American people and the American government. War has changed its look. Yeah, and one thing I'm particularly worried about for the economy, but it's a global peace, and that is the possibility of Israel, perhaps in partnership with the U.S., bombing nuclear facilities in Iran. I think that's the greatest risk to the world economy, but world peace as well. What do you think of that? I think the risk is the reverse. I think the greatest threat to the world economy and to world peace is Iran building a bomb. If Iran has a bomb, that is a game changer. It's a geopolitical game changer. It changes the dynamics of the Middle East. It changes the dynamics of oil. It changes. It puts at risk the very existence of the state of Israel. I think Israel is really a threat. I don't think you can use the mutually assured destruction model of the old Soviet Union with a suicidal regime like the Iranian regime. These people, religious fanatics who believe that going to heaven dying for the cause of Islam is virtuous. I think we were lucky that the commies were atheists and believed that this was the only life they had. So if they launched, they would die and that was not a good thing. These guys, if they die for the cause, that's a good thing. So I really hope and I think the only thing the only thing that can sustain long-term peace or peace relative peace and can sustain economic growth long-term is if somebody takes out the Iranian nuclear reactor and actually takes out the whole regime, I think. Iran, unfortunately, we're out of time. We need a continuation. We can go on. Yes. We're going to have to you're one of our favorite guests. Yes, definitely. Christina has a thing for you, right? Well, it's just, Iran is a I think there's some very famous groups. I'm going to blush, yeah. Absolutely. I kind of have a thing for you too. So we want you to come back. We're good fans. Maybe when we come back we'll reassess the situation and see if it's surprised you or if it's consistent with the strong road that we're moving down.