America vs. Americans
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 1 hour, 29 minutes
Two years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Dr. Leonard Peikoff reflects on the nature of Americans’ cultural and political response. Peikoff revisits the essential philosophy of America in its Enlightenment era founding as well as the American response to the Pearl Harbor attack. In contrast, Peikoff notes that Americans in the early twenty-first century embraced futile appeasement and policies that undermine the foundations of the nation under attack.
Study Guide
This material is designed to help you digest the lecture content. You can also download a printable PDF version below.
| Why did Americans respond to 9/11 differently from Pearl Harbor? |
| Why has the response to terrorism been misdirected? |
| Why do the American public adopt a passive “follow the leader” approach? |
| How does education lead to the deference to authority by the people? |
| What role does pragmatism play in the situation? |
| Why is philosophic change needed for improving the situation? |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 1:02:18 | There seems to me to be a real confusion or epistemological error that people make a lot when they try to make a distinction between the government of a country and its people, such as in Iraq where we say we’re only fighting a war against the government but not against the nation or the people. Can you explain what that is? |
| 1:03:40 | Could you comment on your thoughts on the effectiveness of lectures as a way of instructing students before college or the college level, such as on the high school level? |
| 1:05:07 | Once we get rid of Hussein, or after we were to attack Iraq, if we were to achieve that, what do we do with the nation and the majority of passive, moderate Muslims who you say are as much a cause of terrorism against the U.S. as the active terrorists? |
| 1:07:35 | In 1968, around January, you had a four-lecture course on The Ominous Parallels that inspired me to some action later that year at the Democratic convention. Right now, what I’m hearing makes me feel equally inspired. I’m wondering if at the schools, where you say there’s such a great need, what I’ve seen in Objectivist clubs is generally a low level of knowledge and support and ability to influence their community. Do you think that ARI and the people who support this would fund an effort that sort of parallels what the religions do, but with good ideas… |
| 1:09:12 | You’ve said repeatedly that political fallout should be secondary, that we should be asserting our moral right in this war and that, if I may make an inference, 1,000 Iraqi civilians or soldiers should die if it meant that one U.S. Marine could live. In that context, if we were to take your reasons to the extreme level, why not just drop a nuclear bomb Baghdad? |
| 1:11:02 | I attended the conference this weekend and also the student conference today, and I’ve come to realize a lot more than I had in the past that we can’t expect Objectivism to infiltrate the U.S. political system. What can we expect in positive change that would be realistic? Do you see in the next 10 or 20 years a political movement toward it that you would support? |
| 1:15:51 | I was wondering about the context that you had spoken of, that we should take things in context in order to make decisions. What about the context of the reasons why there are terrorists and, even given that we used the atomic warfare on Japan, that there was an attack on September 11th, just 50 years later, the notion that we can go in and use some sort of overwhelming force on a nation or a people to actually take care of all enemies seems to be inaccurate. Why do you think that acting without restraint militarily will actually be better in the long run? Where do we draw the line? |
| 1:18:38 | I was wondering if you think that it can be shown and made nationally public that Iran was responsible for the Khobar Tower bombings in 1996, and whether this would force the administration to act… |
| 1:20:22 | You mentioned in your lecture that World War II was an example of how to fight a real war. And it seems that even after we fought the war the way it was supposed to be fought, we created restrictions on those countries, such as the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations, immediately following a war that we thought we fought the right way. Why do you think that happened, and what does that have to say—since it already happened 50 years ago—about where we are today? |
| 1:22:34 | What set or sets of circumstances would justify an individual or individuals to take or initiate action against one’s own country (government). I know Ayn Rand spoke of restriction of free speech as one of those reasons, and I was wondering if you would like to comment. Were the Colonists wrong in the Boston Tea Party? |
| 1:24:11 | How do you think this war will affect the future generation, and how do you think history will be changed in the way it’s taught in the different schools at the different levels? |
| 1:24:48 | I have read somewhere that the U.S. had broken the military code of Japan prior to Pearl Harbor. Do you have any knowledge of this or am I being misinformed? |
| 1:26:04 | The voices that I’m hearing from the leftist movements in the schools nowadays are saying “no blood for oil” and “don’t go to war for oil and for economic interests.” How would you respond to statements such as these? |
| 1:27:48 | I have a question about the role of altruism and how it may have resulted in the terrible population explosion in the past 50 years in the Third World and if you had any thought on this? |