Romney Shrugged...

Ayn Ryan's Express

Fantasyland

August 15, 2012

In 2005 Paul Ryan, then an up-and-coming libertarian heartthrob, attended a gathering to celebrate Ayn Rand’s 100^th birthday, which she was fortunately not around to enjoy.  Ryan offered up this heartfelt homage to his beloved inspiration, “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...you can’t find another thinker or writer who did a better job of describing and laying out the moral case for capitalism,” adding  “It’s so important that we go back to our roots to look at Ayn Rand’s vision, her writings, to see what our girding, under-grounding [sic] principles are.”  More recently Ryan gushed, “I give out ‘Atlas Shrugged’ as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it.”  For anyone keeping score, Ayn Rand makes Saul Alinsky look like Ronald Reagan.

Rand railed against Social Security and Medicare throughout her life, until she needed them.  Then she did everything she could to avail herself of them, including hiding her true identity by getting her benefits under her departed husband’s name.  Some people might consider this hypocrisy.  These people clearly don’t understand Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism “a philosophy based on objective reality.”  That objective reality, of course, is the one rattling around between Ms. Rand’s impenetrable ears and is therefore unavailable to the rest of humankind.  The rest of us can only glimpse this ruse by reading her works of fiction.  Russian ex-pat Rand, (born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum) wrote fiction and she was fiction.  Rand was a self-serving political surrealist who believed selfishness is a virtue and that man’s “highest moral purpose is the achievement of his own happiness.”  So much for social structure.  Her ideas sound quite appealing on some level, but have no practical application in the world outside her own shoes, a world where other people might have the impertinence to exist.



Ryan didn’t have to use a pseudonym or wait until he was elderly American to take advantage of Social Security.  Ryan’s father passed away when Paul was only sixteen leaving the son with Social Security payments for the next two years, which enabled him to afford college, which enabled his political aspirations, which enabled him to spout off about killing Social Security in part by co-sponsoring George W. Bush’s so-called mandate to end the greatest social safety net.  Anyone remember how that worked out for the two of them?

I understand that a sixteen year old wouldn’t have the sophistication or foresight to turn down free money from the government he would later try to dismantle.  I assume that once he got older and became a full-fledged douchebag, slathering his affections on Ayn Rand he immediately returned the dirty money.  I could be wrong about this. 

More recently, in 2009, while Rand Ryan was squawking about the evil stimulus package, he was simultaneously petitioning the Energy Secretary for millions of stimulus dollars for his district.  I guess you call that hypocrisy rational self-interest - I know Ayn Rand would.

Now that Ryan is working his way up the food chain it is becoming clear that not everyone, that is, practically no one, other than Ron Paul who named his idiot son after her, finds Ayn Rand to be an inspiration.  So Ryan has disavowed his love for Ayn Rand in public for all to see, claiming that his unbridled devotion to Rand in an urban legend.  The extensive video record claims otherwise.



Ryan, who constantly whines about the federal deficit and has created a budget plan endorsed by the entire Republican’t party including Mutt Romney, also voted in complete lockstep with George W. Bush’s deficit ballooning policies for eight years.  Some people might consider this hypocrisy.  These people clearly don’t understand Paul Ryan’s malleable philosophy of Supply Side Objectivism - do as I say, not as I do.  Maybe Mr. Ryan, after becoming the next Sarah Palin, will immigrate to Russia and write the next great Russian novel: maybe The Emptyhead or Asshole Shrugged.

I. Mangrey reporting.

Thanks for listening. Responsible comment (not Ayn Rand) invited.