Who is John Galt? Maybe He's Paul Ryan


Selene

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"Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) determination to privatize Social Security and dismantle Medicare -- what he calls a "collectivist system" -- comes, at least in part, from his longstanding devotion to the works of Ayn Rand. ...

In his keynote address to CPAC last year, Ryan said Obama's policies sound 'like something right out of an Ayn Rand novel.'"

http://tpmlivewire.t...s-paul-ryan.php

Ryan participated in this Reason.tv "Rand-o-Rama" last year as well:

"'The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,' Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of 'Atlas Shrugged' and 'The Fountainhead.'" ...

"Ayn Rand economics At the Rand celebration he spoke at in 2005, Ryan invoked the central theme of Rand's writings when he told his audience that, 'Almost every fight we are involved in here on Capitol Hill  . . .  is a fight that usually comes down to one conflict - individualism versus collectivism.'"

http://www.jsonline....s/43705712.html

Paul Ryan talks Ayn Rand on Facebook (Cross-posted at Paul Ryan Watch)

Did you know that we are living in an Ayn Rand novel, metaphorically speaking? That capitalism is under assault and we're going to replace it with a "Crony capitalism collectivist government run system"? If not, then you haven't viewed these two embarrassingly fanboyish Facebook videos by Ayn Rand acolyte Paul Ryan.

"Unfortunately, he has something else in common with the fortieth president: an approach to budget issues that owes more to Ayn Rand's paranoid fears about making even the most minimal civic demands on "productive" elites than to facts, figures or economic realism. Ryan's devotion to Rand, the author of dystopian novels like Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and a favorite of the Tea Party movement's Glenn Beck wing, is fanatical. He requires Congressional staffers to read Rand's books and heaps praise on the prophetess of selfishness in YouTube videos that even fellow Republicans quietly acknowledge are unsettling.

Like another Rand devotee, former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan, Ryan sees government not just as the "problem" Reagan described but as a greater threat to freedoms than the most extreme Tea Partisans imagine. Come January the Wisconsinite, who at 40 is one of the youngest members of Congress, will finally be in a position to address that perceived threat as chair of the Budget Committee, perhaps the most important in the new House. But this is not a case of an outsider storming the battlements and seizing a position of power. For all his Tea Party trappings, Ryan is a consummate insider, with a DC résumé extending back to the days of the first Bush presidency. This native of the hard-pressed Wisconsin factory town of Janesville spent almost a decade as an aide to conservative senators and twelve years representing a swing district that previously sent Democrat Les Aspin to chair the House Armed Services Committee. Ryan is about to put his long apprenticeship to work as one of the most definitional members of the new Congress."

http://www.thenation...-kevin-mccarthy

Meet the Ayn Rand Congressman: Republican Paul Ryan of Wisconsin

PaulRyanWIRep..bmpThe Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has a glowing feature piece in their politics section on Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan. It's titled "Ryan Shines as GOP seeks Vision," with the subtitle "Ayn Rand Economics."

http://www.libertari...republican.html

http://www.tnr.com/b...-ryans-ideology

http://www.tnr.com/b...publican-vision

http://www.dailykos....and-of-Ayn-Rand <<<<priceless!!!!

http://democurmudgeo...ul-ryan-to.html

http://mobile.salon....rand/index.html

http://atlanticsenti...market-crusade/

http://www.frumforum...om-for-ayn-rand

Enjoy!

Adam

Edited by Selene
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Don't be silly Kimmler! You are not a prime mover...just ignore the above comment and good luck to that politician for getting rid of these things; cruel confidence tricks on the American working class who deserve much better.

When the Russia of Tzar Nicholas was imploding one of the Tsar's assistants came running in shouting: "The Workers are revolting, Little Father!" The Tsar replied: "Now tell me something I don't know...."

Ba'al Chatzaf

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But the socialist party wants to disband medicare and abolish, not privatize, social security. Are we John Galts?

Don't be silly Kimmler! You are not a prime mover...just ignore the above comment and good luck to that politician for getting rid of these things; cruel confidence tricks on the American working class who deserve much better.

Steven:

What is this the socialist self masturbatory debating thread?

Adam

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Thanks for the links Adam.

As regards the 2012 Republican race, Dick Morris was just on Fox and he downplayed the chances of The Huckster, Mama Grizzly, and Mitt Romney, and did not think Newt would run. His favorite was New Jersey’s new Governor Christi.

Paul Ryan is still not running. He said his children are too young. Morris did not even bring up his name. Ryan is my favorite, as of now. A Ryan / Palin or a Ryan / Rand Paul ticket would be OK. But would one of those tickets win?

Of course there is the argument that almost any ticket would beat the current Socialist government, as America goes to pot, but I don’t buy that theory. They will have plenty of money, most newspapers, much of the local news teams, and three major TV networks on the Progressive Socialist side.

Would Sarah Palin shoot herself, and the ticket, in the foot?

What is the Republican ticket that is most likely to win against J’Obama?

Peter

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Peter:

I am pretty positive that my dead Irish Setter could beat the current Mutt in the White House in 2012.

My major concern is that there may not be an election.

However, short of that nightmare, a serious challenge from within his party could set up a three or four party race which would be almost as bad as having no election.

It all depends on how well the new Congress stays the course of repeal, reduce [as in the Dept. of Education, EPA, Dept. of Agriculture], replace [iRS with a FAIR or Flat tax, ATF, TSA, etc.] and revolutionize [social Security, Capital Gains and Regulatory structures] as to how successful the standard bearer will be in the 2112 race.

If the new Congress caves, then a Palin ticket will win. There will be a hard core of 40 to 44 % who will never vote for her under any circumstances, but they will not turn out at even that level so she would win.

Adam

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Thanks for the links Adam.

As regards the 2012 Republican race, Dick Morris was just on Fox and he downplayed the chances of The Huckster, Mama Grizzly, and Mitt Romney, and did not think Newt would run. His favorite was New Jersey’s new Governor Christi.

Paul Ryan is still not running. He said his children are too young. Morris did not even bring up his name. Ryan is my favorite, as of now. A Ryan / Palin or a Ryan / Rand Paul ticket would be OK. But would one of those tickets win?

Of course there is the argument that almost any ticket would beat the current Socialist government, as America goes to pot, but I don’t buy that theory. They will have plenty of money, most newspapers, much of the local news teams, and three major TV networks on the Progressive Socialist side.

Would Sarah Palin shoot herself, and the ticket, in the foot?

What is the Republican ticket that is most likely to win against J’Obama?

Peter

Peter, there are no socialist politicians in America...the welfare state and Medicare and nothing to do with socialism and are solutions to the problems created by capitalism. They are reforms, brought in, not by the socialists, but by conservatives, in order to keep capitalism working. In that they have been successful. You might not believe me but this socialist is totally opposed to social security, welfare or 'socialised' medicine.

The working class deserve better.

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The working class deserve better.

Do you believe the workers are revolting? I do.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Do you believe the workers are revolting? I do.

copyright Chaucer

Ba'al Chatzaf

Oh come on...you could carbon date that gag. Here was me thinking I'd get a better class of insult here.

Oldie but Goodie.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Adam wrote:

However, short of that nightmare, a serious challenge from within his party could set up a three or four party race which would be almost as bad as having no election.

end quote

I saw on MSN online that Hillary (or someone who did it for her without her wishes, “No please. Take it down. I can’t run. I work for the world’s biggest loser. Pretty please, take it down . . . unless,”) has set up a Hillary in 2012 Facebook page.

I envision no third party challenge from the Tea Party. Michelle Bachman is getting ready to come on Fox, with the promo, “Can the Republicans keep their promises?” From now on, it’s time to get serious you Republicans, a promise is a promise. Will Steele leave his position at the RNC? I hope so. And I hope Ron Paul stays on the sidelines.

Peter

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  • 4 months later...

Paul Ryan, who says he won’t run anyway, might not be such a good campaigner. His speechmaking is not eloquent like Reagan, but I would place him above the oratorical abilities of Dubya Bush.

I just typed in his name on Yahoo search, and one of the top ten answers was “Paul Ryan for President”:

Quote

Though Ryan has repeatedly denied a desire to run for President, citing concerns for his family and the role he can play in his current position as House Budget chairman, the political winds may be changing. Stephen Hayes, a Wisconsin native and contributor to the conservative publication The Weekly Standard, gave an interview this morning with influential Milwaukee, WI talk-show host Charlie Sykes saying the following: "I take him at his word when he says he doesn’t want to run. He doesn’t want the office. But . . . when he’s the best spokesman for the alternative vision of the country’s future, how can he not run?"

End quote

He said a year ago that his children are too young for him to run. I tried his home site and Wikipedia but I could not find the ages of Liza, Charlie and Sam, but Paul was married in 2001. Their ages be 7, 8, 9 or some such combination, which might place them at 8, 9, and 10 in 2012. With the luck of the Irish, perhaps America will get lucky.

This thread may come back to life.

Peter

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This is an old-fashioned way of thinking. Drafted or dark-horse nominees could emerge back when convention delegates did the real work of selecting the nominee. Wilkie and Stevenson are examples. Today it's all in the primaries, and the only way to win is to put enormous amounts of effort and money into running in the primaries. The time for go / no-go decisions was a few months ago. Ryan is not a candidate for 2012.

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Peter Reidy wrote:

Quote

The time for go / no-go decisions was a few months ago. Ryan is not a candidate for 2012.

End quote

I hope you are wrong, my friend.

Pawlenty and Romney started the drum beat a couple of months ago, but I don’t know how long it took them to come to their decisions to run. If Paul Ryan came to the decision to run this weekend, why would that make a “better candidate” like him too late and out of the running?

The primaries are way off. They will not start until February, 2012. This is from Wikipedia:

A temporary committee of the Republican National Committee (RNC), set up in 2010, recommended a new plan. Under this plan, the traditional states (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina) would hold their events in February, states' elected delegates proportionally could hold their events in March, with winner-take-all states and any other remaining states holding their events from April onward.

End quote

Once Ryan’s budget is finalized and voted on, he could go ballistic and interstellar at that time. Wouldn’t that be a tasty pudding? An exploratory committee? It would take some pledges of money I am sure. The first primary is around 8 months away. Many candidates don’t even run in some primaries.

Peter, I think the problems are surmountable. We could help. If I could just figure out . . . I know. I will write that grassroots guy who has the site, Paul Ryan for President.

Peter Taylor

Edited by Peter Taylor
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I went to the Paul Ryan for President site, and luckily my savvy daughter was here. It asked me how did I want to send the message, then a screen popped up asking for my hotmail user ID and password. I sent it. She warned me that that was not hotmail. I may have given a scam artist my password. Yikes! I immediately changed it.

Peter

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> My major concern is that there may not be an election. [Adam, 08]

And I suppose 9-11 was faked, we never landed on the moon, and Christopher Columbus actually landed in Taiwan.

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  • 9 months later...

"Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) determination to privatize Social Security and dismantle Medicare -- what he calls a "collectivist system" -- comes, at least in part, from his longstanding devotion to the works of Ayn Rand. ...

In his keynote address to CPAC last year, Ryan said Obama's policies sound 'like something right out of an Ayn Rand novel.'"

http://tpmlivewire.t...s-paul-ryan.php

Ryan participated in this Reason.tv "Rand-o-Rama" last year as well:

"'The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,' Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of 'Atlas Shrugged' and 'The Fountainhead.'" ...

"Ayn Rand economics At the Rand celebration he spoke at in 2005, Ryan invoked the central theme of Rand's writings when he told his audience that, 'Almost every fight we are involved in here on Capitol Hill  . . .  is a fight that usually comes down to one conflict - individualism versus collectivism.'"

http://www.jsonline....s/43705712.html

Paul Ryan talks Ayn Rand on Facebook (Cross-posted at Paul Ryan Watch)

Did you know that we are living in an Ayn Rand novel, metaphorically speaking? That capitalism is under assault and we're going to replace it with a "Crony capitalism collectivist government run system"? If not, then you haven't viewed these two embarrassingly fanboyish Facebook videos by Ayn Rand acolyte Paul Ryan.

"Unfortunately, he has something else in common with the fortieth president: an approach to budget issues that owes more to Ayn Rand's paranoid fears about making even the most minimal civic demands on "productive" elites than to facts, figures or economic realism. Ryan's devotion to Rand, the author of dystopian novels like Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and a favorite of the Tea Party movement's Glenn Beck wing, is fanatical. He requires Congressional staffers to read Rand's books and heaps praise on the prophetess of selfishness in YouTube videos that even fellow Republicans quietly acknowledge are unsettling.

Like another Rand devotee, former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan, Ryan sees government not just as the "problem" Reagan described but as a greater threat to freedoms than the most extreme Tea Partisans imagine. Come January the Wisconsinite, who at 40 is one of the youngest members of Congress, will finally be in a position to address that perceived threat as chair of the Budget Committee, perhaps the most important in the new House. But this is not a case of an outsider storming the battlements and seizing a position of power. For all his Tea Party trappings, Ryan is a consummate insider, with a DC résumé extending back to the days of the first Bush presidency. This native of the hard-pressed Wisconsin factory town of Janesville spent almost a decade as an aide to conservative senators and twelve years representing a swing district that previously sent Democrat Les Aspin to chair the House Armed Services Committee. Ryan is about to put his long apprenticeship to work as one of the most definitional members of the new Congress."

http://www.thenation...-kevin-mccarthy

Meet the Ayn Rand Congressman: Republican Paul Ryan of Wisconsin

PaulRyanWIRep..bmpThe Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has a glowing feature piece in their politics section on Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan. It's titled "Ryan Shines as GOP seeks Vision," with the subtitle "Ayn Rand Economics."

http://www.libertari...republican.html

http://www.tnr.com/b...-ryans-ideology

http://www.tnr.com/b...publican-vision

http://www.dailykos....and-of-Ayn-Rand <<<<priceless!!!!

http://democurmudgeo...ul-ryan-to.html

http://mobile.salon....rand/index.html

http://atlanticsenti...market-crusade/

http://www.frumforum...om-for-ayn-rand

Enjoy!

Adam

Dennis...do you remember this thread?

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  • 1 month later...

Still the best person on the political horizon in terms of articulation and presentation...his three (3) minute video is compelling...so is his budget plan...

http://budget.house.gov/

032012obaamvsryan.jpg

At the same time, Ryan proposes to reshape the tax code and lower rates for nearly all individuals and businesses.

The proposal would replace the current tax structure’s six brackets with just two tax levels, a 10-percent marginal tax rate for lower-income earners and 25-percent for upper-income earners.

That would be a reduction from the current top marginal rate of 35 percent. The plan would also lower the top corporate income tax rate to 25 percent and virtually eliminate taxes on corporate profits brought back from overseas. And it would do away with the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was designed to hit the wealthiest taxpayers, but increasingly also affects upper-middle-income earners.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/gop-budget-plan-cuts-deeply-into-domestic-programs-reshapes-medicare-medicaid/2012/03/20/gIQAxFbQPS_story.html

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Paraphrasing Fox’s political commentator’s today, voting for the Ryan Plan does sacrifice the ideal for the good, but it is a step in the right direction. When a further step is politically possible then it will be done, but let us take Ryan’s first step. Ryan persuades by putting it into a personal perspective: what do we want to leave our grandchildren, an unsustainable, bankrupt, socialist country like Greece or a free, prosperous America?

What an excellent VP or Secretary of something, Paul Ryan would be.

Peter Taylor

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Now this is news, Paul Ryan will not rule out a V.P. run:

http://cowboybyte.com/5685/id-consider-a-vice-presidential-run/

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Sunday he “would consider” running in the vice presidential slot on the
2012 Republican ticket, though is “so focused” on his current job that it’s “not even” in his mind.

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  • 1 month later...

  • Government Did Paul Ryan Really Just ‘Reject’ Ayn Rand?
  • Posted on April 27, 2012 at 7:15pm by mytheosholt.thumbnail.jpgMytheos Holt

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has made no secret of his admiration for Ayn Rand in the past. As far back as 2009, in this article, Ryan was letting his geek flag fly:

To that task, Ryan brings an admittedly geeky head for numbers and detail. He also brings a deep philosophical attachment to market capitalism and “supply-side” economics – a world view shaped by such icons of individualism and free enterprise as Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.

“The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

This led the likes of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to describe Ryan as ”a garden-variety modern G.O.P. extremist, an Ayn Rand devotee who believes that the answer to all problems is to cut taxes on the rich and slash benefits for the poor and middle class.”

There’s just one problem with this whole “Paul Ryan as Ayn Rand cultist” narrative. And that is that there‘s a big difference between being a casual admirer of Rand’s individualist vision, or her views on free markets, and embracing her Objectivist philosophy wholesale. Liberals like Krugman tend to conflate one with the other, usually because pure, unleaded objectivism has a number of politically toxic tenets. It’s a bad faith argument, but it‘s one that Ryan hasn’t taken the time to shoot down.

Until now. From the Huffington Post:

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan
told
National Review
on Thursday. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my world view. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don’t give me Ayn Rand.”

Note the wording there. “If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas.” Here is a list of things Ryan is not saying:

1. He thinks Ayn Rand is wrong about economics.

2. He thinks Ayn Rand is wrong about politics.

3. He thinks Ayn Rand is wrong about ethics.

4. He thinks Ayn Rand is right about religion.

He is simply saying he rejects Rand’s epistemological claims, which is a very specific subset of philosophy. And indeed, many people (including and especially Roman Catholics like Paul Ryan) would reject that part of her philosophy in favor of Aquinas.

Unfortunately, the Left didn’t quite get that little bit of nuance. In fact, in the same Huffington Post article linked above, the author spends multiple paragraphs rehearsing all the times Ryan has said he admires Rand (typically on political/economic grounds), as though this somehow contradicts his stated position above (the first few passages of this are below):

But any urban legend about Ryan’s affinity for Rand surely started with Ryan himself, who, prior to this week, had no qualms about gushing about Rand’s influence on his guiding principles.

“The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” Ryan said during a 2005 event honoring Rand in Washington, D.C., the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
reported
in April 2009.

During the 2005 gathering, Ryan told the audience, “Almost every fight we are involved in here on Capitol Hill … is a fight that usually comes down to one conflict — individualism versus collectivism.” The event was hosted by The Atlas Society, which prominently features a photo of Rand
on its website
and describes itself as a group that “promotes open Objectivism: the philosophy of reason, achievement, individualism, and freedom.”

Ryan also said during
a 2003 interview with the
Weekly Standard
, “I give out ‘Atlas Shrugged’ as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it. Well … I try to make my interns read it.” He noted that he “looked into” Rand’s work when he was younger, but reiterated that he is a Christian and reads the Bible often.

Note that none of those cited Ryan quotes mentions anything about agreeing with Rand on religion – in fact, Ryan explicitly says he is a Christian and reads the Bible often. This is perfectly consistent with admiring Rand for her political and economic views, but not agreeing with her entire philosophy. However, based on the reaction from HuffPo, apparently this wasn’t clear enough, so Ryan’s spokesperson had to explain it further:

Ryan spokesman Kevin Seifert downplayed the lawmaker’s apparent change of tune on Rand.

“I wouldn’t make too much of this one way or another. Congressman Ryan was not ‘distancing himself’ from Rand, merely correcting several false storylines that are out there, such as the myth that he requires all of his staffers to read Atlas Shrugged. Saying he ‘rejects Ayn Rand’s philosophy’ was simply meant to correct a popular falsehood that Congressman Ryan is an Objectivist — he isn’t now and never claimed to be,” Seifert said in a statement to The Huffington Post.

Of course, this is not a “change of tune,” based on Ryan’s paper trail regarding Rand. Indeed, he has never claimed to agree with her on religion, or on epistemology. What’s so complicated about this is not clear, but hopefully it’s been explained properly now.

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My my...they are coming out of the woodwork on this one...Forbes...

4/26/2012 @ 3:09PM |3,475 views

Ryan Now Rejects Ayn Rand-Will The Real Paul Ryan Please Come Forward?

300x2031.jpg

(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the man who would turn Medicare into a voucher plan that would leave the nation’s seniors to fend for themselves in their old age, can’t seem to make up his mind when it comes to his philosophical underpinnings.

It was in 2005 that Rep. Ryan, while speaking at a Washington gathering to honor author and libertarian philosopher Ayn Rand, shared the news of Ms. Rand’s impact on his life and career. “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.”

Ryan would also use the occasion to refer to Social Security as a “collectivist system” that fails to allow the laborer in America to become a capitalist by denying workers the opportunity to hand over their retirement savings to the Wall Street casinos.

While defenders of the Wisconsin congressman—who serves as Chairman of the House Budget Committee—have argued that Ryan’s devotion to Rand is overstated, it becomes difficult to sustain that position when considering that Ryan is on record as noting that he hands out copies of Rand’s novel, “Atlas Shrugged”, as Christmas presents. He also likes to encourage his congressional office interns to read the book so as to soak up Rand’s philosophy of government.

Ayn Rand, of course, was the Russian-American moral philosopher and confirmed atheist who viewed government compassion and assistance for the poor as evil and destructive. She is considered by the Cato Institute as one of the founders of American Libertarianism.

Apparently, Paul Ryan’s recent scrape with the Catholic Church—which has taken extreme issue with Ryan’s plan to disproportionately beat up on the poor by cutting food stamps and other programs for the needy while claiming that his budget is rooted in Catholic beliefs—has caused the congressman to take a crack at at some revisionist history. Indeed, one might think that Ryan got a few tips on the topic while hanging out with Mitt Romney during the GOP presumptive nominee’s recent swing through Wisconsin.

In an interview in this week’s National Review, Ryan changed his tune on Ayn Rand– if not his budget that is the very embodiment of Rand’s morality and political perspective.

I reject her philosophy. It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my world view. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas, who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. Don’t give me Ayn Rand.

Apparently, Ryan will be removing himself from his own Christmas list this year.

With a presumptive presidential candidate and, now, the ideological conscious of the GOP, heavily dependent on the ‘flip-flip’ as their weapon of choice when it comes to political survival, has the time come to change the Republican logo from the elephant to a more animated moving target graphic?

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And here from Religious Dispatches Magazine...

  • logo_v2.png


    • April 29, 2012
    • logo_name.png


    • April 26, 2012
    • 12:15PM

    [*]

    [*]Paul Ryan: I Reject Ayn Rand, She’s an Atheist!

    [*]Post by Sarah Posner

    [*]

    [*]

    Rep. Paul Ryan has decided that he doesn't like Ayn Rand after all, because she's an icky atheist. He told National Review's Robert Costa, in advance of his speech today at Georgetown University:

    [*]

    [*]

    "I, like millions of young people in America, read Rand’s novels when I was young. I enjoyed them," Ryan says. "They spurred an interest in economics, in the Chicago School and Milton Friedman," a subject he eventually studied as an undergraduate at Miami University in Ohio. "But it’s a big stretch to suggest that a person is therefore an Objectivist."

    "I reject her philosophy," Ryan says firmly. "It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my world view. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas," who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. "Don’t give me Ayn Rand," he says.

    [*]

    Ryan enjoys bantering about dusty novels, but it’s not really his bailiwick. Philosophy, he tells me, is critical, but politics is about more than armchair musing. "This gets to the Jack Kemp in me, for the lack of a better phrase," he says — crafting public policy from broad ideas. "How do you produce prosperity and upward mobility?" he asks. "How do you attack the root causes of poverty instead of simply treating its symptoms? And how do you avoid a crisis that is going to hurt the vulnerable the most — a debt crisis — from ever happening?"

    [*]

    First, about that "dusty novel" Atlas Shrugged: here's Ryan in a 2009 video he posted on his own Facebook page, in which he claims that contemporary America is "like we're living in an Ayn Rand novel" and that "Ayn Rand, more than anybody else, did a fantastic job explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism, and that, to me, is what matters most."

    [*]

    Ryan has been under fire for these comments because, charge groups like the American Values Network, Rand was an atheist who rejected Christianity and organized religion. (I've previously written about how rejecting Rand because she was an atheist is criticizing her for the wrong reasons.)

    [*]

    This week, in advance of today's Georgetown speech, Ryan received a letter from 90 professors, led by Georgetown's Thomas Reese, S.J., telling him "your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Her call to selfishness and her antagonism toward religion are antithetical to the Gospel values of compassion and love."

    [*]

    In response, a Ryan spokesperson said:

    [*]

    Chairman Ryan remains grateful for Georgetown's invitation to advance a thoughtful dialogue this week on his efforts to avert a looming debt crisis that would hurt the poor the first and the worst. Ryan looks forward to affirming our shared commitment to a preferential option for the poor, which of course does not mean a preferential option for bigger government.

    In rejecting Rand, Ryan must have woken up to the reality that piggybacking on an atheist wouldn't help his Catholic "social justice" defenses of his budget. Don't be fooled, though, by his giving Rand the boot. There are plenty of other conservative ideologues willing to defend Ryan's budget as being in line with what the Ethics and Public Policy Center's George Weigel calls, in a <a href="http://www.archden.org/index.cfm/ID/8100?CFID=46987664&CFTOKEN=34825967" target="_blank">column for the Archdiocese of Denver, "Catholicism’s anti-statist social justice principle, subsidiarity."

    [*]

    As Dan Maguire explains, subsidiarity "means that nothing should be done by a higher authority that can be done by active participation at lower levels. Right-wingers like Paul Ryan grab that one word, 'subsidiarity,' and claim it supports their maniacal hatred of government. It doesn’t."

    [*]

    Ryan's theological defenders are having none of that commie nonsense. Weigel argues that subsidiarity is about anti-"statism," i.e., programs like food stamps, sure, but also like Obamacare, which Weigel charges "flatly contradicts subsidiarity and its principled rejection of vast concentrations of state power—the dangers of which are amply demonstrated by the coercive HHS 'contraceptive mandate.'" (Hmm, I do recall the Bishops pushing for health care reform, albeit minus imaginary abortion funding.) The days of the "Catholic left," says Weigel, are over because "four decades of intellectual and political work, coupled with extensive care for women in crisis pregnancies, have made the pro-life cause the cultural marker of serious Catholicism in America." (emphasis in original).

    [*]

    See that? If you're pro-choice, you can't be a "real" Catholic. Therefore, Weigel concludes, Rep. Rosa DeLauro's (D-CT) request to Cardinal Dolan that the Bishops take a position on the budget should be rejected, because she's not a "real" Catholic. (Not that members of Congress should be running to the Bishops for their imprimatur on legislation, but both sides have done it over Ryan's budget.)

    [*]

    Ryan has been making the rounds of late, and again today at Georgetown, arguing that leaving future generations with government debt would be the truly immoral thing to do. He told the Eternal Word Television Network recently, "If we keep growing government in debt, we will crowd out the civil society — those charities, those churches, those institutions in our local communities that do the most to actually have a human touch to help people in need." (Institutions with a human touch like the Catholic school in Indiana that fired a teacher, a "grave, immoral sinner," who pursued in vitro fertilization?)

    [*]

    Weigel is channeling not Rand but Ronald Reagan: "what the Church asks of a just society is the empowerment of the poor: breaking the cycle of welfare dependency and unleashing the creativity the Church believes God builds into every human soul."

    [*]

    And Pete Wehner, in Commentary: "the confusion is that 'preferential treatment for the poor' is synonymous with a massive, centralized state. Au contraire. A positive role for government means a limited role for government."

    [*]

    Paul Ryan and his pals are wrong to try to justify his budget on religious grounds, and his Catholic critics are perfectly justified in protesting attempts to do so. But the Congressional fight over the budget isn't, or rather shouldn't be, a theological one. The budget shouldn't be subject to any religious test, whether it's Ryan's or anyone else's. But I'm afraid we've already gone too far down this road, and the debate is shaping up to be one about what "true" Catholic doctrine is. And I can see what the conservatives are aiming for. They think they've already won the "real" Catholic litmus test over abortion, and they'd like to impose another one: to be a "real" Catholic, not only do you have to be anti-choice, but you have to be "anti-statist," too.

===========================================

Here is another from Atlantic Review which is a re-hash of the above...http://www.theatlant...ayn-rand/51605/

And here from the National Catholic Weekly ... http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&entry_id=5084

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