Friday, August 24, 2012

Adam Davidson — Prime Time for Paul Ryan’s Guru (the One Who’s Not Ayn Rand)


It's Friedrich Hayek. Paul Ryan is an Austrian, sort of.

New York Times Magazine
Prime Time for Paul Ryan’s Guru (the One Who’s Not Ayn Rand)
Adam Davidson

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Davidson is a right-wing hack who is just making this stuff up. He knows many small government conservatives and libertarians worship Hayek, and also that Hayek was a serious scholar who carries substantially more gravitas and reputation than Ayn Rand, the half-witted writer of crude and pompous children's novels. So he is trying to smear a quick coat of intellectually respectable coming out paint over the juvenile and mixed-up Mr. Ryan.

But the record is quite clear that it is the infantile Rand who is Ryan's inspiration and hero, not the scholarly and professorial Hayek.

Tom Hickey said...

Looks to me like the portrayal of Ryan as into Rand, then Aquinas, then Hayek is creating a picture of someone who doesn't know what he believes. I doubt it is helping him with any of these constituencies.

Trixie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bob Roddis said...

Ryan in 2002:

Well how about that. It seems Paul Ryan decided to vigorously support stimulus spending after all. Just look at what Congressman Ryan is saying about the value of government support in the aftermath of a recession:

“What we’re trying to accomplish today with the passage of this third stimulus package is to create jobs and help the unemployed,” Ryan said.

“What we’re trying to accomplish here is the recognition of the fact that in recessions, unemployment lags on well after a recovery has taken place,” Ryan said. “We have a lot of laid-off workers, and more layoffs are occurring. And we know, as a historical fact, that even if our economy begins to slowly recover, unemployment is going to linger on and on well after that recovery takes place.”

“You have to spend a little to grow a little,” Ryan told constituents at a town hall in Wisconsin. “What we’re trying to do is stimulate that part of the economy that’s on its back.”

“We’ve got to get the engine of economic growth growing again, because we now know because of recession, we don’t have the revenues that we wanted to, we don’t have the revenues we need, to fix Medicare, to fix Social Security. To fix these issues we’ve got to get Americans back to work,” Ryan said. “Then the surpluses come back, then the jobs come back. That is the constructive answer we’re trying to accomplish here on, yes, a bipartisan basis.”


http://blogs.detroitnews.com/politics/2012/08/19/paul-ryan-loves-stimulus-spending/

Hayek in 1977:

Hayek: You see, another political element was that, of course, politicians just lapped the argument and Keynes taught them if you outspend your income and run a deficit, you are doing good to the people in general. The politicians didn’t want to hear anything more than that -- to be told that irresponsible spending was a beneficial thing and that’s how the thing became so influential.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N364sN5E0hQ

Matt Franko said...

"we don’t have the revenues that we wanted to, we don’t have the revenues we need, to fix Medicare, to fix Social Security. To fix these issues we’ve got to get Americans back to work,” Ryan said. “Then the surpluses come back, then the jobs come back."

Ryan is a moron Bob... this VP pick is a disaster...

Bob Roddis said...

Whatever Ryan is, he sure isn't a Hayekian, Randian or Misean. However, it sure is pretty funny when people telegraph their total ignorance of the subject by claiming that he is.

Bob Roddis said...

Ryan is a big spending military Keynesian.

DeHaven's point that Ryan is a military Keynesian, who believes military spending creates jobs, without looking as to where the money comes from for such spending and the jobs lost because that money is coercively taken

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/08/paul-ryan-as-military-keynesian.html

Anonymous said...

Rob Roddis youre pathetic person.
Your Austrian School buddy Friedrich August von Hayek had nothing against
Military rule and even the use of Military smashing all sorts civil activity like unions,liberals,democratic activism or what so ever.
Professor Greg Grandin a NYU wrote:
"http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/11/17/the-road-from-serfdom

"Like Friedman, Hayek glimpsed in Pinochet the avatar of true freedom, who would rule as a dictator only for a "transitional period," only as long as needed to reverse decades of state regulation. "My personal preference," he told a Chilean interviewer, "leans toward a liberal dictatorship rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism." In a letter to the London Times he defended the junta, reporting that he had "not been able to find a single person even in much maligned Chile who did not agree that personal freedom was much greater under Pinochet than it had been under Allende." Of course, the thousands executed and tens of thousands tortured by Pinochet’s regime weren’t talking.

Hayek’s University of Chicago colleague Milton Friedman got the grief, but it was Hayek who served as the true inspiration for Chile’s capitalist crusaders. It was Hayek who depicted Allende’s regime as a way station between Chile’s postwar welfare state and a hypothetical totalitarian future. Accordingly, the Junta justified its terror as needed not only to prevent Chile from turning into a Stalinist gulag but to sweep away fifty years of tariffs, subsidies, capital controls, labor legislation, and social welfare provisions — a "half century of errors," according to finance minister Sergio De Castro, that was leading Chile down its own road to serfdom."

Anonymous said...

"Republican strategist Roger Stone made an allegation that takes things to a whole new level. Stone claims that unnamed "sources" tell him the Koch brothers lobbied the Romney campaign hard to pick Paul Ryan as his running mate, and that they sealed the deal at a July 22 fundraiser with Romney, where David Koch pledged an additional $100 million in support to SuperPACs and C-4s (another type of political non-profit for influencing elections) in exchange for picking Ryan. Stone claims that David Koch's "wife Julia had been quietly lobbying for Ryan," but the brothers had already been one of Ryan's biggest donors in his Congressional races, and they're his single biggest donor from the energy industry...". Cenk Uygur and comedian Jimmy Dore discuss on The Young Turks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU9rkdeGJ7Q&list=UU1yBKRuGpC1tSM73A0ZjYjQ&index=5&feature=plcp

*Read more here from Alex Moore in Death And Taxes: http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/187612/did-the-koch-brothers-buy-paul-ryan-pick-with-a-100-million-pledge/

Tom Hickey said...

"Like Friedman, Hayek glimpsed in Pinochet the avatar of true freedom, who would rule as a dictator only for a "transitional period," only as long as needed to reverse decades of state regulation. "My personal preference," he told a Chilean interviewer, "leans toward a liberal dictatorship rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism." In a letter to the London Times he defended the junta, reporting that he had "not been able to find a single person even in much maligned Chile who did not agree that personal freedom was much greater under Pinochet than it had been under Allende." Of course, the thousands executed and tens of thousands tortured by Pinochet’s regime weren’t talking.


Of course, Marx or Lenin could have said this in another context. Their views were based on "transitional dictatorship" also, and Bakunin had criticized the idea roundly when Marx floated it, resulting a break in their relations.

Ann Robertson, The Philosophical Roots of the Marx-Bakunin Conflict

Tom Hickey said...

Matt, you might like this.

New interpretation of temple seal

Just to aid my understanding, I asked one of our scholars here at the Ecole Biblique, who had also read the story, if the worshipper, after paying the required amount, would then exchange such a token for an actual animal, which he would then take to yet another priest in order to carry out the sacrifice. OR, did the transaction with the token fulfill the worshipper’s obligation, with the rest of the sacrificial process conducted out of his sight. The scholarly response I received (not surprisingly) was that it was not at all clear, and the subject of much debate.

BTW, this temple token associated with a pure offering is different from the "temple tax" of a half-shekel that every male Israelite over 20 was bound to pay for the support of the temple.

Tom Hickey said...

Matt, temple token were not unique to Israel. Google "temple tokens." They are still found in India. They are very ancient and bear out the anthropological accounts of money.

Anonymous said...

Exactly Tom!Indeed Hayek´s use of of a "transitional period," seems almost lifted out from "Marxist Leninist pamphlet",ironacally!And yes Bakunin critique of Marx´s authoritarian tendencies is very correct.And there been lot disputes as you know how to interprent Marx views on democracy, state etc.But i don´t think his very rarely mentioned dictatorship of the proletarians was as harsh meant,as the Pinochet variant.The Leninist version,yes, but on the few places one could get a clue what this "dictarorship" means it mostly Engels words about it there he put up Paris-commune as an example,very democratic for it´s time.But it´s not to any use these old concept and rejected of democratic socialist at least since about 100 years now with Bernstein and Kausky etc.And Allende as you know was not a advocate of such "dictatorship" his "marxism" was a democratic and reformist version.But Hayek, even thought that Socialdemocratic moderatly mixed and moderatly planned economies would lead to"serfdom" Hayek seem to be one those rare persons that get all things wrong all the time,both as economist and political philosopher