There May Not Be a Free Lunch, But That Was Some Dinner of the Ayn Rand Institute

Vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan would have felt right at home yesterday here in Manhattan, where in the ballroom atop the St. Regis hotel, the Ayn Rand Institute had a dinner there last evening and where John A. Allison, incoming chief executive of the Cato Institute, declared, “All human progress is based on creativity.”Stephen Moore, founder and former president of the Club for Growth, spoke earliest, and was followed by Mr. Allison, who spoke of how socialism and communism destroy innovation and creativity. A “free lunch” mentality, he argued, leads to lack of personal responsibility. Rationality, he said, demands a long-term perspective. Mr. Allison’s book “The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure” (McGraw Hill) was in each gift bag.Don Watkins spoke next. He is co-author with the Ayn Rand Institute’s executive director, Yaron Brook, on the new volume “Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government” (Palgrave Macmillan), which was also in each gift bag. Mr. Watkins recalled being on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Orange County. He had a window seat and there was an open seat in the middle next to him.He was looking forward to enjoying extra room, but was crestfallen when at the last minute a woman came barreling down the aisle and sat down in the seat with a large bag. She tried to put her bag under the seat to the chagrin of a flight attendant. To his surprise, the woman reached in and pulled out a copy of “Atlas Shrugged.” Mr. Watkins’s mood abruptly changed, and he beamed, “We need to talk.”A businessman involved with education, Carl B. Barney, spoke last. He said he had asked Mr. Brook, the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, how long he should speak. To audience laughter, Mr. Barney said he was told, “The Gettysburg Address took less than three minutes.”Mr. Barney said years ago he had been giving $5,000 annually to the ARI for three years. On the fourth year, the former executive director of ARI, Michael S. Berliner, said “I’d like to treat you to lunch.” Mr. Barney said in deadpan, “That lunch cost me another $5,000.”Mr. Barney galvanized the audience to raise money last evening. He started off asking the audience for sums of $1 million, $500,000 and the like in cash, stock, gold or real estate.One woman raised her hand, and the audience cheered.The crowd roared with laughter when instead of pledging, she said, “I’ve got a question.”“How are you estimating the real estate?” she said to more laughter. He shot back, “We’re not picky.”She and her husband, who was wearing solid gold cufflinks in the shape of dollar signs, proceeded to pledge a 2,300-square-foot condo in Naples, Fla., overlooking a nature preserve and the Gulf of Mexico. It had an estimated value of $875,000, the price a potential buyer would pay.Mr. Barney announced that he would match the donations pledged that evening.A live auction followed, offering humorous free-market banter. The auctioneer encouraged people to open their wallets. To audience mirth, he said the bills are “what most of us expect to become worthless money anyway.”The first item up for bid was a thin, signed pamphlet by Ayn Rand called “Is Atlas Shrugging?” On this copy, Rand had circled the question mark and extended a line to an emphatic word she wrote: “No!” It sold for $4,250.The initial printing of a special 25th anniversary edition of “The Fountainhead” was up for bids. Both Rand and her husband Frank O’Connor had signed it at a lunch in Boston in her honor. The book came with the luncheon invitation. The gavel fell at $4,750.”There was a sculpture of Rand, a painting of Rand, Rand’s membership card in the “Pilots for Goldwater” organization. And so forth.Toward the end of the evening, Lou Silverstein, who owns radio stations in Arizona, told the Knickerbocker the time he heard Ayn Rand speak in New Orleans, which turned out to be the last talk she gave in her life. Asked for something he remembered, Mr. Silverstein said he recalled Rand saying the government had no business telling her whether to smoke or not. Rand said she had a right to smoke, knowing the risk. The crowd at the St. Regis that evening was equally as independent minded.

There May Not Be a Free Lunch, But That Was Some Dinner of the Ayn Rand Institute

There May Not Be a Free Lunch, But That Was Some Dinner of the Ayn Rand Institute

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