Ryan and Rand

I was watching MSNBC tonight and saw an excellent segment on "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell." The topic was Rep. Paul Ryan's famous devotion to novelist Ayn Rand, which included claiming that she was the influence that guided the development of his political philosophy. In fact, when Ryan first started attracting attention with his budget plan, it became chic among the tea geezers to make references to John Galt and Atlas Shrugged. At the time, Ryan was a congressman from a podunk district in Wisconsin, and most people didn't know who he was or give a fuck about his crush on Ayn Rand.

Lawrence O'Donnell devoted the segment tonight to an overview of Ayn Rand's philosophy, using an interview she did ca. 1967 with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. Turns out that Ayn Rand was an atheist of Russian descent who did not believe the family was a fundamentally significant social unit, but did believe that women had total freedom of choice when it came to abortion. She was also against the Vietnam war, which she described as useless and unnecessary. Now that Paul Ryan is running for VP, he's trying to lie his way out of all his previous positions on the importance of Ayn Rand. I guess he's as big a pussy as Willard when it comes to standing up for his beliefs. This is getting interesting...

Ayn Rand vs Jesus

Just finished reading a good editorial in USA Today about the irreconcilable differences between the philosophy of Tea Party heroine Ayn Rand and the principles of Christianity. Conservative Republicans like Paul Ryan and Ron Paul use references to Rand's books to support their arguments in favor of slashing federal spending, and geezers at tea party rallies have been photographed carrying posters with allusions to her character John Galt.

I'm not a fan of Ayn Rand, and I've never read her books. From what I understand, her recurring themes would appeal to people whose outlook on life can be summed up like this: I've got mine, go fuck yourself. As for the contradictions between Rand and the Bible, I doubt most RWers have read more than the Cliffs Notes versions of either one.