And Paul Ryan claims that his lifelong love of Ayn Rand is an “urban legend.”
Except it isn’t.
A tape of his talk to the Atlas Society, from 2005, has surfaced, and here’s some of what he said:
- “I just want to speak to you a little bit about Ayn Rand and what she meant to me in my life and [in] the fight we’re engaged here in Congress. I grew up on Ayn Rand, that’s what I tell people.”
- “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.”
- “It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff. We start with Atlas Shrugged. People tell me I need to start with The Fountainhead then go to Atlas Shrugged [laughter]. There’s a big debate about that. We go to Fountainhead, but then we move on, and we require Mises and Hayek as well.”
- “But 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 when you look at the twentieth-century experiment with collectivism—that Ayn Rand, more than anybody else, did such a good job of articulating the pitfalls of statism and collectivism—you can’t find another thinker or writer who did a better job of describing and laying out the moral case for capitalism than Ayn Rand.”
- “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.”
- “Because there is no better place to find the moral case for capitalism and individualism than through Ayn Rand’s writings and works.”
And now he defames Ayn Rand, highlighting her atheism as his reason for rejecting her, knowing that it’s the most unpopular thing about her among Republican and Christianist conservatives, and that it primes a negative and dismissive perception of her.
What an ungrateful, lying, backstabbing bastard Paul Ryan is!
Mitt Romney should remember this before putting Paul Ryan on the ticket with him for 2012. As Shakespeare has the father of Desdemona say to Othello,
“She has decieved her father, and may thee!”
Paul Ryan has betrayed his mother, and may one day betray Mitt Romney.
Prometheus Unbound 
Lawrence O’Donnell is a fucking tool who will say whatever he needs to to attack Republicans. Paul Ryan agrees with Ayn Rand’s economic and political views but rejects her atheism. I disagree of course, but that hardly makes him a hypocrite. Lawrence O’Donnell is taking less than 10 words (“I reject her philosophy… it’s an atheist philosophy.”) and extrapolating a whole straw man from that. This is only hypocrisy if Paul Ryan is indeed an atheist.
I can’t decide if it is ironic or completely fitting that someone who would reject her writings on account of her materialism would nevertheless work to make her defense of selfishness into national policy,
It’s rational self-interest for any politician to distance themselves from Ayn Rand. Think of it as an hommage : )
I can’t tell if that’s a joke, but if it isn’t then I have to say that I disagree. If a politicians agrees with em, but is willing to lie to be elected, then they don’t really agree with me about the importance of honesty and integrity, and those values supersede all other values in Objectivism.
I don’t see how honesty and integrity could be supreme values since that would be a violation of the individual rights of those who lack honesty and integrity. Also, it is very clear to see what would happen to someone trying to compete in say journalism, advertising and many other fields if they held these values above their self-interest – they would be outcompeted.
But I was also referring to the fact that people don’t like Ayn Rand and her philosophy. That’s why Ryan should be an honest loser and accept his life as a marginalized Objectivist. But it seems her followers are pragmatic above all – whatever works works.
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