| killerzX said: 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. |
The GOP had better end up clarifying what they view Rand is. As it was, they were trumpeting Rand as something awesome. Ryan even said Rand was suitable to provide a moral basis for capitalism. These are his words. I would also suggest people be careful what they are saying now, particularly yourself here. As it is now, you have turned Ryan into some sort of ink blots to make him say what you want him to say.
A think about politics, ethics, and philosophy, is that, if you go around trumpeting a view as awesome to score points, and don't clarify the limitations when you can, then you open yourself up to being defined in ways that may not be correct. Tooting the Rand horn was excellent to score political points, until it started to get a theological backlash.
You saw the start of this asking for clarification, if not outright denouncing of Rand happen, even back in 2011. You can see one of individuals involved with compassionate conservatism end up addressing the issue here in this piece:
http://www.worldmag.com/articles/18283
Take a stand against Rand
The religious left finds a real wedge issue | Marvin Olasky
(End of article):
Half a century ago two Christian conservative icons decried Atlas Shrugged. Flannery O'Connor wrote to a friend, "I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail." Whittaker Chambers wrote in National Review, "Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. . . . It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. . . . From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: 'To a gas chamber—go!'"
And this, sadly, is the book that a budget expert I admire, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., recommends—apparently without caveat—and tells his staffers to read. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., is also a Rand fan. This does not mean that they subscribe to her atheism: They may just be looking for a novel that shows young readers how capitalism turns individual self-interest into service to others, and in the process helps the poor far more than socialistic schemes do.
But Ryan and others, if they want support from Christians, cannot merely react to the left's criticism with a shrug: They should show what in Rand they agree with and what they spurn. The GOP's big tent should include both libertarians and Christians, but not anti-Christians.
In this article, Olasky goes into the problems with Rand, and why the GOP is asked to end up denouncing Rand and getting rid of her from GOP politics. This has led to clarification and denouncing of aspects of Rand, if not most of it. Back in 2009-2011 Rand was a big deal and trumpeted as awesome. And that is the crux of what is happening with Paul Ryan now, and what is worth discussing. Of course, good chance this will morph more into discuss Obama, so don't have to think about impact of Rand on GOP politics. Distract, rather than focus, is easier, when you don't want people to look.
