Ryan and Rand...

[Gob]

Strange bedfellows?

In a recent New Yorker profile, Ryan called her a key inspiration in his life. His coming-of-age moment featured Rand.

“I grew up on Ayn Rand,” Ryan told the Atlas Society, a group of Rand devotees, in a 2005 speech. “That’s what I tell people … you know, everybody does their soul-searching, and trying to find out who they are and what they believe, and you learn about yourself … I grew up reading Ayn Rand, and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are.”

Ryan went on to say that Rand’s works are required reading for his staff. “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,” he went on to say. “And the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.”

Rand’s works featured prominently in a 2009 Ryan video critique of President Barack Obama. The congressman said that he was not surprised that Rand’s novels have spiked in popularity since Obama took office. “It’s that kind of thinking, that kind of writing that is sorely needed right now,” Ryan said. “And I think a lot of people would observe that we are right now living in an Ayn Rand novel, metaphorically speaking.”

In April, Ryan attempted to distance himself from his prior infatuation with the novelist, telling the National Review in an interview, “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.” (A spokesman later suggested that Ryan was not repudiating Rand’s philosophy, but that Ryan did not make staffers read “Atlas Shrugged.”)




[Ayn Rand on Abortion] “An embryo has no rights. Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn).

[Ayn Rand on Abortion] “Abortion is a moral right—which should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved; morally, nothing other than her wish in the matter is to be considered. Who can conceivably have the right to dictate to her what disposition she is to make of the functions of her own body?”
from Rand’s book chap “Of Living Death” in bookThe Voice of Reason, 58–59
———
[Ayn Rand on Abortion] “Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has a “right to life.” A piece of protoplasm has no rights—and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable. . . . Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives. The task of raising a child is a tremendous, lifelong responsibility, which no one should undertake unwittingly or unwillingly. Procreation is not a duty: human beings are not stock-farm animals. For conscientious persons, an unwanted pregnancy is a disaster; to oppose its termination is to advocate sacrifice, not for the sake of anyone’s benefit, but for the sake of misery qua misery, for the sake of forbidding happiness and fulfillment to living human beings.”
from Ayn Rand’s chap “A Last Survey” in The Ayn Rand Letter, IV, 2, 3
——————–
[Ayn Rand on Abortion] “If any among you are confused or taken in by the argument that the cells of an embryo are living human cells, remember that so are all the cells of your body, including the cells of your skin, your tonsils, or your ruptured appendix—and that cutting them is murder, according to the notions of that proposed law. Remember also that a potentiality is not the equivalent of an actuality—and that a human being’s life begins at birth.”

“The question of abortion involves much more than the termination of a pregnancy: it is a question of the entire life of the parents. As I have said before, parenthood is an enormous responsibility; it is an impossible responsibility for young people who are ambitious and struggling, but poor; particularly if they are intelligent and conscientious enough not to abandon their child on a doorstep nor to surrender it to adoption. For such young people, pregnancy is a death sentence: parenthood would force them to give up their future, and condemn them to a life of hopeless drudgery, of slavery to a child’s physical and financial needs. The situation of an unwed mother, abandoned by her lover, is even worse.

“I cannot quite imagine the state of mind of a person who would wish to condemn a fellow human being to such a horror. I cannot project the degree of hatred required to make those women run around in crusades against abortion. Hatred is what they certainly project, not love for the embryos, which is a piece of nonsense no one could experience, but hatred, a virulent hatred for an unnamed object. Judging by the degree of those women’s intensity, I would say that it is an issue of self-esteem and that their fear is metaphysical. Their hatred is directed against human beings as such, against the mind, against reason, against ambition, against success, against love, against any value that brings happiness to human life. In compliance with the dishonesty that dominates today’s intellectual field, they call themselves “pro-life.”

“By what right does anyone claim the power to dispose of the lives of others and to dictate their personal choices?”
from Ayn Rand, “The Age of Mediocrity”– The Objectivist Forum, June 1981, 3

[Gob]

Just to muddy the waters further...

Much has already been said about how Gov. Romney's choice of Rep. Ryan will turn the presidential election into a substantive debate on policy. But the choice will also provide Catholic voters with a choice in the November election that will serve to highlight internal tensions and conflicting priorities.

The Catholic Church is already under immense stress. Just Friday (August 11), the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), which represents most Catholic nuns in America, formally rejected the Vatican takeover of their organization and its accompanying Bishop overseers.

These nuns have been accused of emphasizing work with the poor and not focusing enough on issues such as abortion and gay marriage. Some of them participated in the media-friendly Nuns On A Bus tour, during which they traveled to nine states protesting the budget proposal of Rep. Paul Ryan. Sister Simone Campbell was quoted as saying that Ryan's budget "rejects church teaching about solidarity, inequality, the choice for the poor, and the common good. That's wrong."

Their months-long critique of Rep. Ryan's budget is unlikely to lessen in the coming months.

Another show of Catholic concern with Rep. Ryan came when he was invited to speak at the Jesuit affiliated Georgetown University. Before he arrived, Ryan was sent a letter signed by more than 90 faculty, including over a dozen Jesuit priests. In the letter, the vice presidential candidate was again taken to task by Catholics: "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."

So, on the one hand you have a rare show of Catholic unity in condemning what is considered Paul Ryan's major asset to the Romney campaign -- namely his radical fiscal conservatism.

However, Rep. Ryan is certainly in line with the Catholic Bishops on questions of religious freedom (as understood as exemption from the contraception mandate), gay marriage and abortion. And these three, especially abortion, will rally many 'pro-life' Catholics to the Romney/Ryan ticket.

[dgs49]

So the beat goes on. The entire Non-Fox Media will do everything it can to paint Ryan as an extremist, and this includes taking the most extreme quotes from Ayn Rand an others, and trying to portray them as Ryan's thoughts on various issues.

The Catholics who take issue with Ryan's budget proposals are unconcerned with minor details like how the United States Constitution (which Ryan is sworn to uphold) prohibits the Federal Government from doing most (actually, all) of the things that the Cath-Libs want the Federal Government to do.

No good, coherent Catholic would vote for four more years of THIS.

I have sent in for my Romney/Ryan bumper stickers. One for each of my vehicles.

[Scooter]

So the beat goes on. The entire Non-Fox Media will do everything it can to paint Ryan as an extremist, and this includes taking the most extreme quotes from Ayn Rand an others, and trying to portray them as Ryan's thoughts on various issues.

Since you obviously didn't get it, the point of the piece was to show how diametrically opposed Ryan's view are to the "one person" he claims to have been most responsible for shaping his value systems and beliefs.

I have sent in for my Romney/Ryan bumper stickers. One for each of my vehicles.

I'm sure one day they will go nicely as a set with your Goldwater/Miller bumper stickers.

[dales]

"Extremeism in defense of liberty is no vice"

~ Barry Goldwater

[rubato]

Ayn Rand was a liar.

She said that Medicare was immoral, not bad policy, not a mistaken program, immoral. And the minute she got lung cancer (from smoking cigarettes) rather than paying for her own health care she did the hyprocrit dance and took Medicare out of pure greed.

Only fools lionize liars like Rand.

yrs,
rubato

[Grim Reaper]

So the beat goes on. The entire Non-Fox Media will do everything it can to paint Ryan as an extremist, and this includes taking the most extreme quotes from Ayn Rand an others, and trying to portray them as Ryan's thoughts on various issues.

What you conveniently ignore is that these are Mr. Ryan's quotes about Ayn Rand.

[rubato]

So the beat goes on. The entire Non-Fox Media will do everything it can to paint Ryan as an extremist, and this includes taking the most extreme quotes from Ayn Rand an others, and trying to portray them as Ryan's thoughts on various issues.

What you conveniently ignore is that these are Mr. Ryan's quotes about Ayn Rand.

which reflect accurately on Ryan.

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

Ryan shows that he matches Romney in abandoning tenets when it suits his need for votes. He certainly lies with great facility.:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics ... and/51605/


How to Tell Paul Ryan Wants to Be Veep: He's Rejected His Former Idol Ayn Rand
Associated Press

Elspeth Reeve 2,410 Views Apr 26, 2012

Rep. Paul Ryan, looking to undercut his image as a hard-hearted Objectivist, has told the National Review of one of his favorite authors, Ayn Rand, "I reject her philosophy... It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview." It's a surprising statement, given that Ryan said nearly the complete opposite in 2005: "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 she didn't drive him into politics because he couldn't stand her philosophy, either. Ryan made those comments at a dinner in Washington, D.C. honoring Ayn Rand's birthday -- hosted by The Atlas Society, a group that takes its name from Rand's book Atlas Shrugged and is dedicated to promoting her ideas. But today, in an interview with National Review's Robert Costa, Ryan says something very different:

‘You know you’ve arrived in politics when you have an urban legend about you, and this one is mine,” chuckles Representative Paul Ryan, the Budget Committee chairman, as we discuss his purported obsession with author and philosopher Ayn Rand... These Rand-related slams, Ryan says, are inaccurate and part of an effort on the left to paint him as a cold-hearted Objectivist...

"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..."

Where does this terrible urban legend come from? Some conservatives have been working to stamp it out recently: "Ryan Isn’t a Randian," the National Review's Brian Bolduc wrote just a couple weeks ago. Bolduc writes that New York Times columnist Paul Krugman "dubbed the congressman 'an Ayn Rand devotee,' an oft-employed epithet among Ryan’s detractors." But the Ryan-hearts-Rand meme wasn't created by liberals. You know who else said Ryan was a Rand "devotee"? Tucker Carlson, founder of the conservative Daily Caller. A year ago, Benjamin Domenech wrote that, contra New York magazine and other newspapers, "Paul Ryan Doesn't Require Staffers to Read Ayn Ran." For some reason, those staffers wouldn't say so on the record. Maybe that's because Ryan started the rumor himself. He's publicly talked about Rand on multiple occasions:

He told Insight on the News on May 24, 1999, that the books he most often rereads are "The Bible, Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged."
He told the Weekly Standard on March 17, 2003, "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."
At a February 28, 2009 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, Ryan said Obama was trying "to use this [financial] crisis to move America toward the sort of Europeanized economy… Sounds like something right out of an Ayn Rand novel."

At the 2005 birthday party for Rand, Ryan said, "Almost every fight we are involved in here on Capitol Hill... is a fight that usually comes down to one conflict -- individualism versus collectivism." That doesn't sound so "antithetical" to Rand's worldview. For decades, Rand has been popular among fiscal conservatives from Alan Greenspan to Rick Santellii. But it makes sense that a politician with national aspirations wouldn't want to be too closely associated with Rand, who not only espoused philosophy a little further right than your average voter -- "Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction" -- but was also a little weird. Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman and Republican budget wonk, has got tough competition to be Mitt Romney's running mate. There's the equally dreamy Marco Rubio, not to mention the pleasantly boring Rob Portman. So Ryan needs to fix any weaknesses. That's why Ryan gave a big foreign policy address last year, why he talked about his humble beginnings "flipping burgers" earlier this month, and probably why he's distancing himself from Ayn Rand. It's a genius spin, really -- not only does he reject her, he rejects her for socially conservative reasons!


______________________________

yrs,
rubato

[Long Run]

I guess it is too nuanced to see that it is common and reasonable to like some things about a person and not others. Thus, many conservatives like Ayn Rand's philosophical foundation for the morality of conservative economics, which is the reason for her popularity. And just as readily do not agree with her thoughts on abortion and other topics, if they even knew her positions on such topics (since such views are not commonly known even among people who have read a fair bit of Rand).

[Lord Jim]

If the Dems want to jump on Ryan for not being a doctrinaire Randian, I say be my guest....

[Scooter]

I guess it is too nuanced to see that it is common and reasonable to like some things about a person and not others. Thus, many conservatives like Ayn Rand's philosophical foundation for the morality of conservative economics, which is the reason for her popularity. And just as readily do not agree with her thoughts on abortion and other topics, if they even knew her positions on such topics (since such views are not commonly known even among people who have read a fair bit of Rand).

Which is sort of the point. If you're going to spout off about how much Ayn Rand has taught you and how much she has shaped your value system, then you'd best be more than passingly acquainted with her, so you don't find yourself having to disavow her within a few years of praising her to the skies, as Ryan was forced to do.

[rubato]

I guess it is too nuanced to see that it is common and reasonable to like some things about a person and not others. Thus, many conservatives like Ayn Rand's philosophical foundation for the morality of conservative economics, which is the reason for her popularity. And just as readily do not agree with her thoughts on abortion and other topics, if they even knew her positions on such topics (since such views are not commonly known even among people who have read a fair bit of Rand).

Ryan contradicted himself.

Directly. Repeatedly. And completely.

Ayn Rand is popular only with stupid, ignorant people who have never read anything else. No wonder she is popular with Libertarians who are essentially similar in that way.


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

Ayn Rand is popular only with stupid, ignorant people who have never read anything else. No wonder she is popular with Libertarians who are essentially similar in that way.

I haven't asked them, but I'd be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that to a man or woman, every single Libertarian I know knows that genocide wasn't invented by Christians and the definition of the word "affluence"....

[rubato]

Ayn Rand is popular only with stupid, ignorant people who have never read anything else. No wonder she is popular with Libertarians who are essentially similar in that way.

I haven't asked them, but I'd be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that to a man or woman, every single Libertarian I know knows that genocide wasn't invented by Christians and the definition of the word "affluence"....

And yet none of them could grasp the idea that people who are affluent also have more free time than the non-affluent?

You really are amazingly stupid. More than most.

yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

people who are affluent also have more free time than the non-affluent

And I'll bet they would also recognize at once the fact that statement bears absolutely no resemblance to this one:

The defining characteristic of affluence is free time

Since they no doubt also know the meaning of the words "the" "defining" and "characteristic".....

[Gob]

ROTFLMFAO!!

Oh he does love to shoot himself in the foot, does he not?

[Lord Jim]

he does love to shoot himself in the foot, does he not?

Yes, if anyone's thinking of buying rube a gift, a pair of Kevlar Hush Puppies would do nicely....

[Econoline]

HI, MY NAME IS ATLAS....AND, UH........OH, WHATEVER........
/