The media almost universally refer to Paul Ryan as a deficit hawk and fiscal conservative. I could not disagree more. During the Bush Regime, Ryan voted for two Bush wars, two massive Bush tax cuts for the rich, Medicare Part D, and TARP, adding billions to the deficit, because all were off budget. These are the votes of a fiscal wastrel, perhaps, but not a fiscal conservative. In his infamous plan, he adds more welfare for the rich and trillions on tax cuts for the 1%. He can hardly be considered a deficit hawk, because his plan increases the deficit. I refer to to Ryan’s plan as the Romney-Ryan plan, because Willard has said several times, including last Saturday when he announced Ryan as his pic for VP. Now Romney is etching his sketch again. Ryan’s strategy is based on the philosophy of a misanthropic novelist, whose seminal work I found both sophomoric and sophistic.
EARLY in his Congressional career, Paul D. Ryan, the Wisconsin representative and presumptive Republican vice-presidential nominee, would give out copies of Ayn Rand’s book “Atlas Shrugged” as Christmas presents. He described the novelist of heroic capitalism as “the reason I got into public service.” But what would Rand think of Mr. Ryan?
While Rand, an atheist, did enjoy a good Christmas celebration for its cheerful commercialism, she would have scoffed at the idea of public service. And though Mr. Ryan’s advocacy of steep cuts in government spending would have pleased her, she would have vehemently opposed his social conservatism and hawkish foreign policy. She would have denounced Mr. Ryan as she denounced Ronald Reagan, for trying “to take us back to the Middle Ages, via the unconstitutional union of religion and politics.”
Mr. Ryan’s youthful, feverish embrace of Rand and his clumsy attempts to distance himself from her is more than the flip-flopping of an ambitious politician: it is a window into the ideological fissures at the heart of modern conservatism… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <NY Times>
Picture credit: ABC
Rachel Maddow also said that Ryan is not a fiscal conservative and explains how Ayn Rand shaped his policies.
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Rather than fiscal conservatives, Ryan and other Ayn Rand followers are Plutocons. That is government of, by and for the 1%.
Lawrence O’Donnell also covered how Ryan is etching his sketch with respect to Ayn Rand.
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As obvious as Ryan’s lies are, the one thing that makes his devotion to Rand most clear is the Romney-Ryan plan. It could not embody her heartless, misanthropic outlook more perfectly.
About that plan, in my opinion, they are also lying that their Romney plan is quite different than their Ryan plan. One question that must be asked them both during the upcoming debates is this: What specific differences are there between the Romney plan and the Ryan plan? They have both ducked that question several times already. Perhaps one of you petition experts might want to field a petition to the debate stations.
In Rand/Romney/Ryan world people like Willard, the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson, not you, are the rightful rulers of the US and the rightful beneficiaries of that rule.
14 Responses to “Ryan’s Ayn Problem”
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Note to Repubicans in General, and Paul Ryan in Particular:
You can embrace Galt, or you can embrace God … But You Can NOT Do Both
Ayn Rand Going Galt: “It is one’s own personal selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.
Jesus Christ, Mark 12:31: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Ayn Rand Going Galt: “Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.”
Going God, I Timothy 6:10 replies, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith.”
Ayn Rand, Going Galt: “Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life.”
Jesus Christ, John 15:12-13: “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”
Isn't it sad that to Republican Supply-side pseudo-Christians, those passages do not exixt.
Does this mean when we go to school to learn the 3 R's, we're going to school to learn Rand, Rmoney and Ryan?
That would be quite literally a hellish education!
indeed! 👿
It is quite apparent to me that Rmoney and Ryan, a match made in hell, are perfect for each other. They are both flip-flops denying their flip-flops for their own political goals. Political invention is the mother of political expediency!
Rachel's segment about Ryan and the descriptor given to him by the media, deficit hawk and fiscal conservative, was excellent. I would describe him as a fiscal opportunist — willing to spend money that is not in the budget as long as it advances his out of whack political ideas or those of the Republican/Teabaggers — two wars of aggression for starters.
I watched some more segments of Lawrence and the one with Robert Reich and Jonathan Cohn explaining the "$716 billion stolen from Medicare" by Obama for Obamacare was excellent and should be required viewing for every elector.
As Reich says, both parties will slow the growth of Medicare costs but Obama does it by controlling costs to the providers and protecting benefits to seniors, while R/R control costs by passing them on to seniors through their declining value voucher programme. The same $716 billion savings that R/R would get from the plan, don't go against the deficit but instead go back to providers etc. Mr Obama puts people before profits where the misanthropic duo of Rmoney and Ryan puts profits before people. In my understanding of Ayn Rand, and I am just starting to look at her, the idea of profits before people is a point that she and Ryan share.
You clearly have this one down.
Rand was a celebrity. Famous, and a sought after guest on radio and early television. She had plenty of access to the American people. Her views were well expressed. Her views became intellectual game play for political debates.
Her views were rejected by all but a small minority of Americans. Scholars have rejected her "rational self interest" thinking could be applied to a government that has to serve hundreds of millions of people. Academic leaders have referred to her followers and movement as a "cult."
She thought government should be as small as possible. She thought there was no need for a "family group" for a healthy society. She was an atheist. She grew up in old Dark Age Stalinist Russia. No wonder she thought that ANY kind of collective endeavor by government could only lead to tyrannical, socialism.
In truth, collective endeavors and communal taxation is one of the keys of success to America's greatness.
One guide to the success of political governance, is how well it works, even through the distortion of of its own principles. There's an old saying, "Conservatism to extreme is Fascism, Liberalism to extreme is Socialism." Randism to extreme would be an Orwellian nightmare.
Ryan seems to be a member of a small group that have taken Rand's idea of a small government, and made it the "holy grail" of some political utopia. Amazing he could get away for years claiming to be a follower of someone who would hate what he is doing. Ryan is a POLITICIAN who will say anything to get elected.
If society rejected Rand, no wonder Republicans embrace her,
Rmoney and Ryan beware! The Catholic nuns are out to get you both now for your policies against social programs. Ryan professes to be a "good" Catholic yet Ayn Rand's books spread the word of atheism and profits above compassion. This does not bode well for the Un-dynamic Duo.
Ryan could not have embraced Rand without knowing of her atheism. That shows just how phony he is.
If you want the Cliff Notes version of Ayn Rand's (and by extension, Paul Ryan's) entire philosophy, find a clip of Michael Douglas' speech as Gordon Gekko in the movie "Wall Street" that begins "Greed, for want of a better term, is good…."
Rand was very "in" when I was in college in the '60's – yeah, I'm old – and it was considered very hip to quote the wisdom of John Galt at every opportunity. Being an English Lit major and a glutton for punishment at the time, I read "Atlas Shrugged," "The Fountainhead" and "Anthem." At that point I'd hit my saturation level and couldn't quite bring myself to tackle "We, the Living." I found the books to be way too long (with the exception of "Anthem" ) tedious and not very well written. Her protagonists are cardboard cut-outs and her political/philosophical pronouncements both simplistic and arbitrary. Joseph Goebbels must have been quite proud of her.
Interesting to note that this premier advocate of unregulated, predatory Capitalism and hater of all things governmental spent her last years taking advantage of Social Security (documented) and probably Medicare as well (not so documented)
Despite his recent attempts at backpedaling, Paul Ryan's adulation of Rand says a lot about him. He considers himself one of the elite, or in Rand's terms a 'producer' even though he has spent his adult working life in politics. The concepts of sympathy and/or empathy are foreign to him. He is quite comfortable with the contradiction of Rand's strident atheism and his own loudly and frequently proclaimed religiosity, and will reflexively lie without compunction or remorse to achieve his goals.
This is a dangerous man, and one not to be taken lightly..
Well said, John. I remember those days. That is when I determined Rand was sophomoric and sophistic.
" During the Bush Regime, Ryan voted for two Bush wars, two massive Bush tax cuts for the rich, Medicare Part D, and TARP, adding billions to the deficit, because all were off budget. "
Seems to me that Ryan's votes created the very budget deficit that he now whines about….?
How about that!