For anyone still wondering about the difference between the Ayn Rand Institute and The Atlas Society, I offer the following two video interviews by UFM.edu:

• David Kelley, Founder, Senior Fellow, and former Executive Director of The Atlas Society

• Yaron Brook, President and Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute

(Courtesy of an anonymous contributor to the Sunday Open Thread, embedding not permitted.)

The interviewer is the same in both interviews. The questions are quite similar. Yet the interviews couldn’t be more different.

Yaron Brook is clear and direct. With every question, he immediately hones in on the fundamental, often a crucial moral point. He clearly conveys the importance of the ideas he’s espousing, and his confidence in the truth of his answers. He knows his stuff, and he makes us eager to hear more.

David Kelley wanders and stammers in his answers. He is routinely lost in his own pointless digressions and qualifications. He speaks in terms of his own beliefs, not in terms of the truth. He displays no facility with the answers to these basic questions, nor passion for what he’s saying. It’s painful to watch.

(David is much, much worse in this interview than I ever remember him. It seems that his commitment to a subjectivist approach to ideas, Objectivism in particular, continues to take its toll on him.)

The difference between the two interviews is so great that even I’m shocked. Yet it’s so perfectly representative of the moral and epistemological gulf between the two organizations. And that’s why I’m such an ardent supporter of the the Ayn Rand Institute, particularly under the guidance of Yaron Brook.