Reason.tv: Life, Liberty & Viticulture—Bryan Babcock on winemaking, Patrick Henry, & Ayn Rand

Bryan Babcock is a cutting-edge winemaker named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the "Ten Best Winemakers of the Year" and voted "Most Courageous Winemaker of the Year."  Part of his bold and daring reputation stems from his outspoken embrace of liberty and the ideas put forth by Ayn Rand. 

"I don't walk around thinking about Ayn Rand, John Galt, or Atlas Shrugged every second of the day, thinking about how I can make this [vineyard] be like Galt's Gulch. But if it was Galt's Gulch, the government would not be permitted to take one step on the property," says Babcock. "John Galt is the guy in fiction that Patrick Henry [was in] real life….And the world needs a few of those. The world needs an Atlas to hold up the globe.  The world needs a John Galt or a Patrick Henry to say, 'Freedom is a good thing, man needs freedom, we've got to be free.'"

Approximately 10 minutes. Babcock was interviewed by David Nott. The segment was filmed and edited by Alex Manning. Production assistants were Seth Goldin and Ryan Seals. 

This video is part of the Reason.tv series Radicals For Capitalism: Celebrating the Ideas of Ayn Rand. Go here for more information, other videos, and related materials.

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[Bruce]

So has the North American Ayn/Boy Love Association officially taken over Reason?

[Rob McMillin]

Zing!

[Winsor Beano]

Wow thats amazing dude.

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[Winsor Beano]

OMG dude thats totally inane.

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[Citizen Nothing]

Someone doesn't understand the concept of themes or of promoting one's current cover story.

[Bruce]

How long has this been a cover story? And if one theme has become increasingly more dominant than others, you have to wonder (unless you don't have that capacity) what's going on behind the curtain.

[ed]

Superficial at best. Galt is Patrick Henry? That's quite a stretch, but Babcock never really explains himself. Are we to assume Henry is mentioned along with Galt and Aristotle because of something he (Henry) probably never said? Strange video. There's no there there.

[monolith]

"Most Courageous Winemaker of the Year."

Has it become like day of the triffids and vines have started to attack people?

[ed]

Maybe he pulls corks with his bare teeth.

[Citizen Nothing]

mono - Yeah, that one's a head-scratcher.

[JB]

Mentioning Ayn Rand anywhere tends to get Leftist scum to froth at the mouth and call you evil.

[Lefty]

There was a recession in 1985?

[hurly buehrle]

Nice. I've never tasted Babcock wines, but Lompoc wineries are generally damn good.

[MadBiker]

"The world needs an Atlas to hold up the globe."

Not sure I follow. I took the title of the book to mean Atlas got tired of holding up the world, so he shrugged to get the weight of it off his shoulder and in so doing coughed up a couple of brave individuals.

Metaphorical earthquakes, and all. Galt was less of an Atlas than he was mover and shaker of rebellion against status quo.

For all his supposed faults, I rather admired Rearden more than Galt. Dagny gave him the shaft and Rearden took it like he wanted it.

[Rimfax]

I'm somewhat with you here. To me the point wasn't that the world needed an Atlas, but that no man should allow "the world" (his family, his country, etc.) to enslave him, no matter how important he was to it.

[Space Fiend]

It's stated pretty explicitly that "Atlas" is the combined efforts of all productive people, being weighed down by looters and moochers. I don't know how you could possibly have missed that.

[stubby]

Eh. Ya'll are just jealous. He's very, very cute.

But yeah - he gets the Atlas reference completely wrong.

[Atanarjuat]

Not to be superficial, but from the hair up, he looks like my girlfriend's aunt.

[stubby]

Of course, I didn't WTFV.

[Alan Vanneman]

I was going to say something totally dickish about Mr. Babcock, but that would be piling on.

[JB]

Anyone else see the school girl ModCloth.com ad on the left?

Tasty.

[Slut Bunwalla]

Do you suppose that that bulb above her is a CFL?

[Slut Bunwalla]

Also, her skirt looks like it was made out of a tarp. Weird.

[R. Paris]

This seems to me to be the first real misstep in Reason's current coverage of the A/R resurgence. Well, maybe the second (Peter Bagge's comic?). Everything else has been pretty damn good. Do I sense a loss of momentum here? Bring on the Branden interviews!

[d]

Maybe he lives the principles of Ayn Rand's philosophy, but he certainly shouldn't be given 11m to ramble on about it. He's not the most articulate of lads, eh?

[rod stanton]

Great! We need Bryan not either one of the girls running to be the GOP candidate for either Gov or Sen!
He's as Randian as Ronnie was 45 years ago! And that hillbilly won big in 66 (I voted for him so I may be biased). The red neck from Cal also won 2 presidential landslides 29 years ago.

[The Wine Commonsewer (TWC)]

Bryan makes good wine.......

[The Wine Commonsewer (TWC)]

.....they shouldn't even be asking the question.....

Got Dam Right.

[CuteCybername]

Profits for me. Me, me, me. Right vs wrong. Black and white, no shades of gray. That's Babcock. Let's see, didn't Greenspan 'discover a flaw' in his philosophy. Isn't that the philosophy espoused by Dr. Milton Friedman? Rand and Friedman's philosophy has many fine qualities, but there are also serious errors of oversight. They thought every captain of industry had the same fine morality that those philosophers did. Huge error. Any psychologist knows better than that. Friedman maintained that we could never again have a major recession, but his followers brought one. We have been under the sway of Friedmanomics almost the entire time since the first day of the Reagan administration. 20 presidential years vs 8. How many years did the Republicans control the House or the Senate or both? The great majority there also. During the Clinton administration they lobbied Bill to balance the budget and deregulate bad stuff. Then when they got back in power they trashed the budget, recommended Social Security be funded off the stock market, deregulated further and brought us one of the worst economic crises ever on the world. And they worship at the feet of Rand and Friedman. Well, R & F had many things right and many things wrong. The lesson is not to take any philosophy for more than it is: fallible, because it came from a human.

[pick up a book]

Culprits in the economic crisis include The Fed, federal housing and loan policies connecting to banking policies on lending (mandated by legislative acts such as the community reinvestment act). Blaming Friedman or Rand for this is just as confused as the guy at the health care rally held up a sign saying "get the government's hands off my medicare."

[pick up a book]

Culprits in the economic crisis include The Fed, federal housing and loan policies connecting to banking policies on lending (mandated by legislative acts such as the community reinvestment act). Blaming Friedman or Rand for this is just as confused as the guy at the health care rally held up a sign saying "get the government's hands off my medicare."

[abercrombie milano]

My only point is that if you take the Bible straight, as I'm sure many of Reasons readers do, you will see a lot of the Old Testament stuff as absolutely insane.

[abercrombie milano]

Great! We need Bryan not either one of the girls running to be the GOP candidate for either Gov or Sen!
He's as Randian as Ronnie was 45 years ago! And that hillbilly won big in 66 (I voted for him so I may be biased). The red neck from Cal also won 2 presidential landslides 29 years ago.
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