Apr 152009
 

Here’s a great example of what the Ayn Rand Center is enabling around the nation.

They made some excellent material available, and I thought it would come in handy for any tea party protests that might happen here in Boise. When I found out that there was indeed one being organized here, I quickly put together a single-sheet front/back handout and printed several hundred in full color to distribute. Quick and easy cultural activism!

And then Tammy suggested that I offer myself as a speaker, on the off-chance that the organizers might be receptive to an Objectivist and find a way to fit me in. So I sent them a note the night before and heard back the morning of that they would like to have me speak! I cribbed and customized the backside of my handout, and voila, a 3.5-minute speech ready for delivery with almost no notice.

They ended up using me as their opening speaker! You can see me above in the lower-right, a while before I took the stage (it was cold and drizzly, and my papers were getting soggy). By the time I had the mic there were thousands of people in the audience, and I was surprised at how vocal and receptive they were! Tammy was off handing out the flyers (likewise, surprisingly popular) and didn’t expect me to take the stage so early, but she nonetheless managed to capture a nice chunk of my performance on her little point-n-shoot camera:

Lots of people expressed gratitude and enthusiasm after I left the stage. The crowd was mostly stock conservative folks unhappy with the current situation and filled with all sorts of mixed, inconsistent, disintegrated ideas. And of course (ugh) there was the inevitable handful of crackpots. One conspiracy nutter buttonholed me to let me in on the secrets of the Federal Reserve, and we moved on pretty quickly. I was also pulled aside by a couple of far-Left media people looking to confirm that I was some crank trying to rewrite history or something — I just responded pleasantly and explained more about what I was saying. We’ll see what shows up in their outlets, if anything.

Quite a day for a guy who simply didn’t have the time to design a flyer or write a speech from scratch. Thank you, ARC!

   
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