# The Sanction of the Victims **URL:** **By** Ayn Rand **Published:** November 21, 1981 --- Ayn Rand defected from the U.S.S.R. and came to the the U.S., where her anti-collectivist writings formed the intellectual basis for the philosophy she called Objectivism. She is the celebrated author of many books and essays including _We the Living_ (1936), _The Fountainhead_ (1943), _Atlas Shrugged_ (1957), and _Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal_ (1966). This video is of Rand's last public lecture at a 1981 National Committee for Monetary Reform conference in New Orleans. The text of this lecture, which is titled "The Sanction of the Victims," would later be published in a collection of her works called _The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought_ (1990). In the lecture, Rand admonishes American businessmen for apologizing for capitalism and for, in some cases, directly funding detractors of the free market. Notably, she says that "It is a moral crime to give money to support your own destroyers." She also answers audience questions after the lecture.