{"id":1101,"date":"2012-08-17T06:53:04","date_gmt":"2012-08-17T06:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=1101"},"modified":"2012-08-17T08:09:27","modified_gmt":"2012-08-17T08:09:27","slug":"ryan-ayn-and-rachel-the-wretch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=1101","title":{"rendered":"Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand and Rachel the wretch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>by Ilana Mercer<\/p>\n

Even-tempered, tall, dark, handsome and heterosexual: If these qualities were still in demand in Tinseltown\u2019s leading men, the Romney-Ryan Republican presidential ticket would be described as the stuff of Hollywood.<\/p>\n

As goes Hollywood, so go D.C. and the country. None of the constituents the Republicans are told to appease \u2013 if they are to reclaim the White House on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November 2012 \u2013 is partial to upstanding, good-looking, staunchly Christian, white males.<\/p>\n

The ladies, the Latinos, the halt and the lame<\/a>: These identity groups \u2013 political constructs of the left\u2019s making \u2013 will be galvanized to lambaste the two leading Republicans for being too attractive, too macho, too white, too Christian and too rich.<\/p>\n

And for speaking favorably of Ayn Rand. Ostensibly, at least.<\/p>\n

Paul Ryan has come under coruscating attack in the progressive press for admitting that Rand\u2019s peerless defense of the morality of laissez-faire capitalism influenced him.<\/p>\n

Despised by the left, reviled by many on the right, Ayn Rand would have appreciated the picture-perfect aesthetic of the Republican duo, if not its policies and political philosophy.<\/p>\n

According to CNN,<\/a> Ryan once addressed the Atlas Society, \u201ca group dedicated to promoting Rand\u2019s beliefs.\u201d In that 2005 speech, he said this:<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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\u2019s inspired me so much that it\u2019s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff. \u2026 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 the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ayn Rand, of course, was no fan of \u201cpublic service,\u201d unless it was in the service of reversing the damage done to the voluntary economy by legislators. The Republicans\u2019 repeal-and-replace statism doesn\u2019t cut it.<\/p>\n

Order lIana Mercer\u2019s brilliant polemical work, \u201cInto the Cannibal\u2019s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

At MSNBC, Commissar Rachel Maddow ran the Ryan-Rand clip as though she had stumbled upon a crime scene.<\/p>\n

Ryan is \u201cnot a fiscal conservative,\u201d asserted Maddow, after the screening. Rather, the presumptive Republican vice-presidential nominee was an acolyte of \u201cthis person, Ayn Rand,\u201d spat<\/a> the TV talker.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis person.\u201d What disdain the left has for Ayn Rand, who was a trailblazing female \u2013 a Russian \u00e9migr\u00e9 who instantiated in novel form a comprehensive, thoroughly American philosophy of freedom.<\/p>\n

For someone who is considered smart, Maddow sure says a lot of deeply stupid things. Her mindless claim is predicated on the assumption that \u201cfiscal conservatism\u201d and the beliefs of Ayn Rand are mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n

While Ayn Rand was no social conservative, she was fiscally conservative. In fact, \u201cfiscal conservative\u201d is just how a libertarian anarchist \u2013 more radical than Rand \u2013 might describe Rand, who advocated not the absence of government but a night-watchmen government.<\/p>\n

\u201cGive me Thomas Aquinas, Don\u2019t give me Ayn Rand,\u201d proclaimed<\/a> Ryan in a subsequent interview with National Review.<\/p>\n

Why renounce Rand in this manner?<\/p>\n

Mitt Romney\u2019s pick for VP could have calmed down to a blind panic and simply reaffirmed the influence Ayn Rand had on (the better parts of) his political thought.<\/p>\n

The quest for mutually exclusive categories, be it by Maddow or by Ryan, falls flat here. Ayn Rand would have renounced Saint Thomas Aquinas for his faith. But she would be wrong to deny that natural-rights philosophers like herself owed a debt of gratitude to Aquinas, the foremost philosopher of natural law. Aquinas deferred to revelation<\/em> to justify the natural rights of man; Rand to reason<\/em>. But does a difference in justification change the fact that the natural rights of man remain unalienable in both belief systems?<\/p>\n

Unrelenting in maligning Ayn Rand, Maddow ended on<\/a> a loud moo:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Ayn Rand\u2019s novel, she leads her readers to see the wealthiest people as heroes, heroes that must be protected. The rich are heroes and everybody else is a taker. The more the rich have, the better. The better for everyone. That is not fiscal conservatism, either. It is something else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rubbish. Rand scorned those rich whose ill-gotten gains were derived by using the coercive power of the state \u2013 Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, to mention a few. In Rand\u2019s book, these men have not earned an honest crust.<\/p>\n

Rand\u2019s celebrated \u201crich\u201d were the men and women who bring to market the products and services without which life would be miserable, and for which Maddow is a walking ad.<\/p>\n

The clothes she is kitted-out in, her coif, the devices she uses to communicate and transmit her sub-intelligent message, the food she buys cheaply to sustain her efforts \u2013 these are all produced, facilitated or brought to market by the invisible hand she labors to lop off.<\/p>\n

The \u201crich\u201d were voted into riches by the only democratic vote \u2013 the dollar power of the ungrateful masses, who, like Maddow, cannot do without the computers, software, hardware, hand-held devices, air conditioning, airplanes, apparel \u2013 on and on \u2013 the rich provide.<\/p>\n

The left treats \u201cthe rich\u201d as a reified, rigid state-of-being. Ayn Rand \u2013 and all men and women of reason \u2013 understand that \u201crich\u201d is a work in progress.<\/p>\n

Achieved through voluntary cooperation, riches are a reward for work well done. (Which is why this book<\/a> is well-worth buying.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ilana Mercer Even-tempered, tall, dark, handsome and heterosexual: If these qualities were still in demand in Tinseltown\u2019s leading men, the Romney-Ryan Republican presidential ticket would be described as the stuff of Hollywood. As goes Hollywood, so go D.C. and the country. None of the constituents the Republicans are told to appease \u2013 if they … Continue reading “Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand and Rachel the wretch”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,80],"tags":[800,802,12254,743,803,801],"class_list":["post-1101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","category-ilana-mercer","tag-ayn-rand","tag-christian","tag-ilana-mercer","tag-paul-ryan","tag-rachel-maddow","tag-rich"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1101"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1103,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1101\/revisions\/1103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}