We'll Always Have Reagan.
Somebody finally broke it to Ayn Rand's leading Congressional Republican acolyte that the kook on whom he has based his entire public career was, well...
"Atheist?"
"She was a fucking atheist!?"
The fact of Ayn Rand's public repudiation of the idea of God as a sign of mental illness and/or unalloyed moral depravity -- a central tenet upon which fully one-half of the corpus of Ayn Rand's philosophy rests -- and her open ridicule of people of faith apparently evaded the notice of the Republican's #1 brain wizard right up until the moment it became a political liability to his status as Jesusland's fastest rising star.
At which point...
...in an interview published Thursday in National Review, Ryan made it a point to dismiss as “urban myth” the notion that he draws inspiration and guidance from Ayn Rand, the libertarian philosopher-queen who celebrates the self over all else and who dismisses the very notion of a social contract.The author -- Jay Bookman -- goes on to point out the many, many places where pre-repudiation Paul says things like this.
Ryan was pretty explicit:
“I reject her philosophy. It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. 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.”...
“I give out Atlas Shrugged as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it. Well… I try to make my interns read it.”And this.
“Ayn Rand, more than anybody else, did a fantastic job explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism, and that, to me, is what matters most.
And hey, there'e even video!
But now, alas, he has to put her on that plane and say goodbye to her forever.
For, um...the good of the cause!
Yeah! That's the ticket!
So will Paul Ryan's latest, gigantic lie work?
Ayn Rand: When I said I would never leave you.
Paul Ryan: And you never will. But I've got a job to do, too. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of. Ayn, I'm no good at being noble (And I mean that literally. I am congenitally incapable of it: it's like lactose intolerance but with nobility), but it doesn't take much to see we will have to lie our damn asses off and fuck over a lot of little people if we want to amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that
Oh hell yes!
If the history of the last +30 years has hammered home one fact beyond dispute it is this: the anti-science, anti-reason, anti-fact fundamentalist base of the Party of God will choke down whole, planet-sized lies from their wingnut Brain Caste goons and ask for seconds as long as their ludicrous superstitions are pandered too and their bigot dog-whistles are blown loud enough to shatter steel.
Paul Ryan understands this basic fact of Republican political life intimately, which is why he knows that...
When two wingnuts woo
They still say "I Rove You".
On that you can rely.
The fundamental(ist) things apply
As time goes by...
13 comments:
As a huge fan of Casablanca, I love the way you worked this in to the story! What a hypocrite he is.
The public rejection of the idea of god is not a sign of depravity or mental illness it is a sign of the acceptance of one aspect of reality. That Ayn Rand was a sociopath and her reasoning with regard to the nature of social processes and values was utterly depraved and that she sighted the nonexistence of god in her reasoning is just another aspect of her damaged psyche.
Well, which is the bigger story. The fact that the "granny starver" just figured out that mama was a welfare sucking, medicare dependent atheist....or the fact that ..., for the last half century, they were able to ignore that mama was a welfare sucking, medicare dependent, atheist??
Oh, sure - I suppose next you're going to tell me that Ryan doesn't believe in unicorns, too.
Horn goes in, horn goes out. Can't explain it, blue eyes.
;>)
Apparently Ryan didn't get the hint after trying to go in and lecture the Jesuits - the friggin Jesuits! - about the value of doing things for the poor and subsidium-vs-subsidiarity.
Ryan (my very own congressman) is a cypher. I'd bet what little money I don't have that I have read more of Ayn Rand than he has. Saint Thomas Aquinas is his moral compass? Charlie Pierce quickly grabbed his at home copy of Summa Theologica and posted the verbatim passage that makes Ryan out to be a full of shit hypocrite.
Doesn't matter. American conservatives are a cult. Pointing out facts and contradictions, logical incongruities, blatant hypocrisy - all for naught.
Sam, I thought I told you never to play that song again!
I'm shocked, shocked to find that hypocrisy is going on in here!
I was at a conference in DC on the anniversary of the publication of the "Atlas Shrugged." A Christian woman there was incensed that the audience kept laughing when the subject of God came up. She asked the speaker, the philosopher David Kelley, if Rand's philosophy couldn't be reconciled with Christianity. He explained, politely and carefully, the dozen reasons why that is absolutely impossible.
You must remember this...
Oops. Well, maybe not.
Cognitive Dissonance is the "invisible hand" guiding the Republican party and it's members. When your goal is the only thing that matters, the ability to reason "backwards" allows you to pick any number of arguments to support your goal. When one argument is proven wrong, you just switch to another, until that one is proven wrong. Ad nauseam.
It's why conservatism never fails, but conservatism is failed. The arguments for it ALWAYS fail, but it doesn't mean they can't think of another one.
Oooooo. Ilsa ... Ilsa ... Ilsa. Marsha ... Marsha ... Marsha. Judy ... Judy ... Judy.
You have to go a ways to get the Shock Troops of the Papacy (Duh Jesuits) ti call out a snivelling limp-dick worm like Ryan.
And yes you HAVE done exactly that every day in every way, Mr. Driftie. But, how the hell did you get David Brooks of Flaccid Elitism in the same photo as Flat-Earth Tommy Friedman???
You're a genius, Mr. Drift.
Hello driftglass. I am an avid listener to your podcast. This topic is of extreme polar opposites of what Christian morality and Randian morality constitute.
I have had this discussion with conservative members of my family, in a biblical perspective. They trot out all kinds of lines left and right about how the poor are oppressing the wealthy and have for thousands of years, the wealthy are tired of dragging dead weight and such.
It seems as though they only selectively pick and choose which passages are divinely inspired. For instance Acts 4v29-37 and Acts 5v1-11. They do not take kindly to those passages. Also Revelation chapter 18 will tell you who the Whore of Babylon is. Does it sound familiar?
Even if they are Old Testamenters, I do not remember reading about how the prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos and others were prophesying about how the poor would come to want for oppressing the "job creators". Jesus warned about the leaven of the Pharisees just as much if not more than the deviousness of the devil. Just sayin'. How does it go? Don't shoot the messenger?
"Here's throwin' you under the bus, kid."
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