To William M. Jones, professor of English at the University of Missouri [Letter 496]

February 4, 1963

Professor William M. Jones
University of Missouri
College of Arts and Science
Department of English
Columbia, Missouri

Dear Professor Jones:

Thank you for your letter of January 28 and for the copy of the comments which you sent me.[*] I should like to ask you to make just one correction in these comments, namely, in the sentence: “In the past few years Miss Rand has become one of the leaders of the New Conservatism that Mr. Justus mentions.” I am not a “conservative” and am profoundly opposed to some of the new conservative groups. Besides, I have not read Mr. Justus’s essay and do not know his definition of conservatism. I describe myself as “a radical for capitalism.” Therefore, please change that sentence to read: “In the past few years Miss Rand has become one of the leaders of a movement advocating capitalism.”

I deeply appreciate the rest of your comments—particularly the fact that you note that I am careful in defining my terms.

Sincerely yours,

Ayn Rand

AR:dk

*Professor Jones’s “comments” are his introduction to AR’s “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,” for a reprint in his textbook Stages of Composition: A College Reader (Boston: D.C. Heath, 1966), in the chapter “Using the Language.”