So Paul Ryan now rejects Rand's Objectivism.

[killerzX]

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has made no secret of his admiration for Ayn Rand in the past. But as anyone who’s read Rand will tell you, there’s a big difference between a casual admirer and embracing her Objectivist philosophy wholesale. This point is especially difficult to get through to liberals, who tend to conflate one with the other, usually because pure, unleaded objectivism is politically toxic, whereas just thinking Rand has a point about free markets is not.

Paul Ryan has been a persistent victim of this red herring, and now has had to explain to the press that no, just because he happens to admire Rand, that doesn’t mean he agrees with her about absolutely everything ever:

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan told National Review on Thursday. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. 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.”
Note the wording there. “If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas.” Here is a list of things Ryan is not saying:

1. He thinks Ayn Rand is wrong about economics.

2. He thinks Ayn Rand is wrong about politics.

3. He thinks Ayn Rand is wrong about ethics.

4. He thinks Ayn Rand is right about religion.

He is simply saying he rejects Rand’s epistemological claims, which is a very specific subset of philosophy. And indeed, many people (including and especially Roman Catholics like Paul Ryan) would reject that part of her philosophy in favor of Aquinas.

Unfortunately, the Left didn’t quite get that little bit of nuance. So Ryan’s spokesperson had to explain it to them:

Ryan spokesman Kevin Seifert downplayed the lawmaker’s apparent change of tune on Rand.
“I wouldn’t make too much of this one way or another. Congressman Ryan was not ‘distancing himself’ from Rand, merely correcting several false storylines that are out there, such as the myth that he requires all of his staffers to read Atlas Shrugged. Saying he ‘rejects Ayn Rand’s philosophy’ was simply meant to correct a popular falsehood that Congressman Ryan is an Objectivist — he isn’t now and never claimed to be,” Seifert said in a statement to The Huffington Post.
However, this is not a change of tune, based on Ryan’s paper trail regarding Rand. Indeed, he has never claimed to agree with her on religion, or on epistemology. Most of his agreement comes down to sympathy with her individualism – an idea which she shares with any number of other people who explicitly rejected the rest of her philosophy. In short, Paul Ryan is not an objectivist. Nor did he ever claim to be.