Paul Ryan: Ayn Rand to Romney
The Republican ticket will consist of Two Suits, aptly enough for a party of wealth, privilege and social Darwinism.
Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan will propel the word “wonk” into Google heaven, reflecting the poverty of ideas in a time of nasty attack ads and sound bites. His not-Palin qualities may elevate the tone of the campaign, if not the content.
The VP nominee could offer focus to the fuzzy figure President Obama has dubbed “Romney Hood” and allow serious analysis of their desire to take from the poor and give to the ultra-rich.
The changeable Romney must surely be attracted to Ryan’s consistency, but he should not count too much on his running mate’s steadfastness under fire.
In 2005, Ryan revealed “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,” the cult figure who in the turgid 1200-page novel “Atlas Shrugged” proclaimed money as “the root of all good” and labeled those who don’t agree as “moochers” and “looters.”
This May, under pressure in the primaries, Ryan backpedaled on his patron saint when a questioner called her “an outspoken atheist [who]… felt altruism was evil, supported abortion and condemned Christianity for advocating compassion for the poor.”
“Just because you like someone’s novels,” he weaseled, “doesn’t mean you agree with their entire worldview philosophy…which is completely antithetical to mine because she has an atheist philosophy.”
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What exactly does “social darwinism” mean? Favoring tighter limits on entitlement programs than Democrats do?
Favoring their elimination, Dr. J. You won’t hear too many of them admitting to it, but why else would you kneecap a program so that ten years down the line it couldn’t do what it is meant to do? That certainly is the core of Ryan’s plan for Medicare. And while you can’t find an officeholder who will admit it there are plenty of “conservatives” who relentlessly attack every social safety net program. They never seek to make them more efficient so it might take less money to help people who need it. They, with not one exception that I know of, just want to take an axe to funding and cite “welfare queen” stories as excuses. Claims are put forth about how the poor in America aren’t really poor, etc. The general attitude from every conservative I’ve met seems to be that there’s plenty of jobs for everyone and it’s the fault of the unemployed that they don’t have a job. And whenever confronted on these beliefs they backtrack like crazy and say they didn’t mean to imply any such unrealistic things were true…and then go on and propose more policies based on those beliefs.
In 2005, Ryan revealed “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,”
And there you have the problem with Paul Ryan in a nutshell.
Anyone who had read Rand and took her philosophy seriously would NEVER have entered public service as a result.
Public service – subjugating oneself to the greater good – is antithetical to Rand’s core philosophy of rational self-interest.
@cjjack: that is true of anyone who has read Rand and wants to act like the protagonists. It also happens to be a semi-decent treatise on how to exploit our governmental system…
Ryan proposed a plan that would have us spending 4.75% of GDP on Medicare in 2050. That’s not exactly eliminating it.