Paul Ryan is no Ayn Randian
Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2012 5:39 am
But that tells only part of the story. For conservatives of my generation (I’m one year older than Paul Ryan) Rand often represented an exit ramp from economic liberalism. Then as now our educational system — both public and private — was steeped in collectivism and deeply critical of capitalism. Reading a Rand character’s epic rants (her novels are full of “monologuing”) was like getting splashed with cold water. When I read Rand’s novels, I was put off by her atheism and painfully bored by her plots but also exhilarated by her dissent from socialism. Sure, Hayek would have been a better first read, but for better or worse (mostly worse) Atlas Shrugged was passed around much more than Road to Serfdom, and for many conservatives reading Rand was part of the rite of passage out of liberalism.
So when Paul Ryan said this:
[T]he 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 the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.
I knew exactly what he meant. But understanding Rand as a critic of collectivism does not mean embracing Rand as a model for policy or morality. In fact, by virtually every objective measure that matters, Ryan is no Randian.
Most importantly, Paul Ryan is a faithful Catholic, counting Thomas Aquinas as a key influence. By contrast, here’s Rand speaking about religion in an interview:
Playboy: Has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered anything of constructive value to human life?
Ayn Rand: Qua religion, no – in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusions of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/frenchrevolution/2012/08/13/paul-ryan-is-no-randian/