Since Mitt Romney picked Paul Ryan as a running mate, many media outlets have pointed out the Wisconsin Rep's interest in Ayn Rand.
And they should -- Ayn Rand's basic schtick is that selfishness is a virtue and as such, the only ethical economic system is pure capitalism. Under Rand, any social safety net is wrong and unjust and for "moochers " and "collectivists;" true moral exemplars are ultra-rich egoists. What's important about Ryan's Rand affiliation, then, is its fiscal implications (and not-so-subtle dislike of the poor.)
Ryan might have realized that aligning himself with a pro-choice atheist might piss off GOP fundamentalists and partially renounced the pop philosopher, saying before VP talk: "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."
Of course, this is complete bullshit. He hasn't abandoned his interpretation of Rand's economic policies (see first link.) More importantly, though, there's no way Ryan could read Aquinas -- and adhere to his beliefs -- without lying to himself and/or doing some serious mental gymnastics. And that's because Aquinas would have fucking hated Ryan's capitalism.
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Paul Ryan Is In Love With St. Thomas Aquinas; What Does This Mean? (UPDATE)
Victoria Bekiempis
Good analysis. And I do know something about Aquinas. Paul Ryan is no Aquinas.
BTW, the news of Ryan's throwing Rand overboard for Aquinas is all over the news and blogs today. Do I sense a row brewing? I don't think that Ryan can have this both ways.
Moreover, Ryan's glibness is dealing this indicates a lack of political acumen. He is creating more problems for himself than he is resolving. Palin II?
33 comments:
It's a schtick. If you think of Washington as a sort of high school drama club, all the insiders have their little roles. Ryan's (self-chosen) role is to be the studious, personally virtuous lay theologian. The other "players" react with frissons of delight as he puts forward more regressive policies than Newt Gingrich could have dreamt of, all, apparently, without a mean bone in his body. No one will hold it against him because he's really an idealist who's feet don't always quite touch the ground. Who reads Aquinas nowadays anyway? It's not like they're really going to check.
Ayn Rand would hate Paul Ryan too. She was very vocal against libertarians and other "thugs" as she called them because they side-skirted issues and were not honest in what they thought believing the end justified the means. She was completely A=A and any deviation was despised by her.
She was very vocal against libertarians and other "thugs" as she called them because they side-skirted issues and were not honest in what they thought believing the end justified the means. She was completely A=A and any deviation was despised by her.
With Rand, one had to follow her every personal whim on every topic or be excommunicated.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html
Rothbard explained that libertarianism is ONLY a POLITICAL philosophy. It only tells you what you may not do to others. You may not initiate violent force and you may not commit fraud. The end. What you do with your life is an entirely separate sphere of discussion. If 40% of the populace wanted to voluntarily share their property and wealth and create a social safety net, that is their business. If they wanted to have a VOLUNTARY MMT funny money system, that is also only their business. Libertarianism does not speak to that and libertarians would be political tolerant of it. Rand would probably be hysterical.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard12.html
Further, Rand, like Rothbard was of the Austrian School of Economics. Paul Ryan is a monetarist.
I don't think that Ryan can have this both ways.
Maybe it's because I've closely followed Ryan over the last couple of years, but I continue to be amazed at the strategy of selecting Ryan for everything he stands for, and then immediately backing away from everything he stands for.
Or maybe it's because I never paid much attention to politics until the GFC (and zero attention to economics), but has it always been like this? Because this is the best performance art I've ever seen.
"Paul Ryan Is In Love With St. Thomas Aquinas; What Does This Mean?"
I know! I know what it means!
He's a necrophiliac!!!
Princeton professor Robert P George is a Thomist, what does he have to say about Ryan's policies? I'm curious.
John Fremont
Ryan was on TV today talking about Ayn Rand and how she was a poor communist victim and the brutality of communism shaped her views and she was just a good ole all-American freedom fighter. That former part may or may not be true (just gut feeling, but I think she always exaggerated any personal hardships from communism to sell her views because I think she left before anything really bad happened to her.) But my main point: with such organized actions to either distance himself from Ayn Rand or sell her as a simple freedom loving individual without talking about her other points, I think he is concerned that evangelicals might learn about her religious views and then view him negatively because their worldview is typical good versus evil and I think if any of them fully explored her, they would consider her evil. And if that link were made, I think those evangelicals might start viewing the whole "let's keep everything and not help others" of the political right as being evil too and might start some serious rethinking in evangelical political circles.
If I were running a democratic PAC, I would get a clip of the Donahue show (or was it Dick Cavett) with Ayn Rand from the late 1970s, where she said that all these preachers and religious people denouncing a women's right to abortion seemed so much like barbaric cavemen that they proved evolution in her eyes and then she went on to say that when she dies, there will be no more world because to her, nothing matters but her, and that everything else is over when she dies. That one clip played on half a screen with other half of the screen showing the many public talks were Paul Ryan says he learned economic morals from Ayn Rand's view would likely sink him in real evangelical circles - they would just sit out the election and not vote in my guess.
I'm with Trixie. Politics is like watching a dramatization of an Agatha Christie story.
~450 twits spend a session locked up in a House, plus 100 Joint session guests ... but everyone starts dropping like flies. No one can figure out who's committing all the political suicides. :)
What's that say about the viewing public?
Main purpose is a vehicle for selling necrophilia ads & flypaper? :(
Ayn Rand on Donahue 1979
Here is a good rebutal to Ayn Rand when an audience member asks Ayn Rand a question:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q7cje1I3VM
6:00 minute mark
Wasn't Rand a big Acquinas fan? Second only to Aristotle.
Tom,
Do You have a link to a good noneditorialized version of Ethics V.5 that she refers to?
RSP,
"... but I continue to be amazed at the strategy of selecting Ryan for everything he stands for, and then immediately backing away from everything he stands for."
My gut tells me it's a test, rather like a marketing survey. The same way Quayle and Palin were a test of the effective level of stupidity of the electorate. Lets them know what they can get away with after the election.
If the Tea Party were consistent (as they have been), they would have already threatened to primary him and Romney in the event they win. And Ryan in his district if they lose.
The Ryan budget is their bible. Ayn Rand is their hero. Gays should be treated as second class citizens. Contraception is something we should "take another look at". As for reproductive rights? We've tried that and it clearly hasn't worked.
Speaking of Ayn Rand…
Does the Romney/Ryan ticket even have a chance if the Dems broadcast ads like this all accross the country?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6LSpFgxL94
Rachel Maddow does an excellent bit on Paul, and I was wondering if anyone on this blog would share it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9SYodykMJQ
but I would suggest finding a better quality version
If the Democrats play this right, they have not only this election but Congress in the bag, due to what should be (if the Democrats don't screw this up) a terrible choice by the Republicans
"You may not initiate violent force"
Yeah great but then of course you define taxation and money creation as "violent force", which is stupid.
Maybe it's because I've closely followed Ryan over the last couple of years, but I continue to be amazed at the strategy of selecting Ryan for everything he stands for, and then immediately backing away from everything he stands for.
I think this was Romney's aim. He was getting pounded for a couple of weeks for his tax avoidance issues, association with Bain capital, etc.
Now he names Ryan, and then distances himself from Ryan's budget. This allows Romney to exit the spotlight, and try to re-position himself as a centrist with the Dems on one side, and his own Tea Party darling running mate on the other side. An unusual tactic.
Short attention span Dems have cooperated by completely dropping their very effective attacks on Romney and running in a mad dash after Ryan.
Aristotle wrote two books on ethics — the Nicomachean Ethics and the Eudemian Ethics. When just "the Ethics" is mentioned, it is presumed to be the Nicomachean Ethics. Here's a link to the W. D. Ross translation online.
Matt, Aramaic speakers say that "eye of a needle" is a metaphor for the gates of ancient cities, which had a very low lintel, requiring camels to squat down to get through.
This is a metaphor for rich people being so proud that they cannot bow down. It is not the riches that get them, but what riches do to most people that have them. Just as power is corrupting, so is wealth.
Pursuit of fame, fortune, power and pleasure puff up the ego, and as Meher Baba pointed out, the devil is a religious symbol of the ego and the temptations of self-interest, self-importance and self-centeredness, all of which separates one from God (Unity) a "sin" is defined as separation from God, i.e, seeing oneself as a separate being. The opposite of the this is love, which is holistic apprehension of unity (spirituality) in the world (materiality). In religious art, this is depicted as a devil sitting on the left shoulder whispering the ear and an angel on the right doing to the same. Pursuit of fame, fortune, power and pleasure incline one to listen on the left and the pursuit of virtue to listen on the right.
Does the Romney/Ryan ticket even have a chance if the Dems broadcast ads like this all across the country?
The ad barrage has barely started and it looks like both parties are going to go negative big time. This is not going to be a chivalrous campaign, and both sides are ready to "do what it takes." The GOP has a history of the this and will resurrect Lee Atwater. Obama has already shown in military policy, foreign and domestic, that he is ruthless, too. Look for blood.
I hope, hope, hope that he's asked one simple question about Aquinas in the debates. It'll be hilarious.
"Though heretics must not be tolerated because they deserve it, we must bear with them, till, by a second admonition, they may be brought back to the faith of the Church. But those who, after a second admonition, remain obstinate in their errors, must not only be excommunicated, but they must be delivered to the secular power to be exterminated." --St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, vol. iv., p. 90.
(St. Thomas Aquinas was a 13th century monk and noted Roman Catholic theologian.)
Interesting person to chose to be in love with.
What amazes me the most about all this 'greed ist gut' rhetoric in USA is the mental gymnastics done by the defenders of the ideology considering the roots from where they are launched.
Crook and moron Paul Ryan for example claims to be a catholic and goes against every damn thing catholicism stands for in theory, his adamant love for the emotionally unbalanced Ayn Rand (I disagree with the people that call her psychopath; she wasn't really a psychopath, but was a very unstable and emotional challenged person, demonstrated by some personal life episodes) is totally against faith of any religion.
This man is dumb, but what is worse is the mental state of a big part of the american public has regressed to the mental state of a small child (pre-5 years old) in the last decades.
I blame entertainment industry, marketing and drugs (abussive medication).
Paul Ryan:
"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,"
(2009)
what is worse is the mental state of a big part of the american public has regressed to the mental state of a small child (pre-5 years old) in the last decades.
I remember in the Sixties when I was in Germany a German friend of mine telling me that Americans were known there as "Die Kinder" (the children). So may be we are regressing from an already immature place.
My grandmother, who was from Vienna (as was my mother), called Americans "the barbarians." :o
Lev & Tom,
Its like the whole basis of his life is all false.... 'out of money ', 'we can't afford ....', 'debt to grandchildren '.... how humiliating.
Propagating and trading in all these falsehoods is his only 'claim to fame', and they are all false with him left too stupid to figure this out, how could it get worse for a human? Now I am starting to feel sorry for him.. .. rsp
Matt, boils down to scarcity thinking v. prosperity thinking. The morons think that because of scarcity we have to retrench domestically and project power externally to maintain and extend global dominance. This the age of overt American empire as the ruling elite seeks to dominate global resources and practice eliminationism at home and abroad to deal with "scarcity." Gonna get ugly.
"The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, is because I worship the rich and despise the poor"
(2009)
How about the unspoken irony in some of these "conservative" politician…
They howl every day about how bad government is, and how great the market is, and many of these howlers have spent nearly their entire career 'on the public dole'
The whole thing is absurd. Allen West might be one of the biggest hypocrites in this vein.
And I've got a question, how many of these anti-government politicians opt out of the health care options.advantageous they receive has employees of the federal government, to instead seek healthcare from the 'free market'? Give me a break.
Rich people will do anything to ignore what Jesus said to avoid parting with any of their loot. This includes making up some interpretation about Jesus and "the eye of a needle", saying Jesus was using a metaphor when there is zero historical or linguistic evidence for this.
Jesus had plenty to say about rich and poor. The rich have been trying to wriggle out of it for two thousand years. They prefer to use religion as a club against the poor. Funny how when it came to sexual indiscretion, Jesus said "let him without sin cast the first stone", yet when it came to wealth he said "go, sell your possessions and give to the poor". Totally different attitude toward wealth, isn't it? You might take him at his word.
Note you can check Wikipedia on "eye of the needle" if you doubt me. Hopefully you will stop citing confabulations and take to heart what Jesus was trying to say about inequality and how severely it distorts the human soul.
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