We saw it with George W. Bush. Liberals would lose all sense of balance and proportion, falling into patterns of bitter denunciation. Now it seems to be happening with Paul Ryan. A recent issue of the New Republic features an extended tirade of sorts in which Leon Wieseltier sets out to show that the Paul Ryan “likes his capitalism cruel.”
Wieseltier’s main rhetorical strategy involves turning Ryan into Ayn Rand with a congressional committee appointment. He reminds us that Ryan’s father’s death was a life-defining moment, one that forced him to try to figure out the meaning of life. In this period of searching he read Ayn Rand and developed his lifelong enthusiasm for her work. Out of this fact Wieseltier makes his case.
To do so he collects some of the most egregious quotes from Atlas Shrugged, creating the impression that they are Ryan’s touchstones. For example, Wieseltier cites one of John Galt’s proclamations (Galt is the hero of Atlas Shrugged): “A being who does not hold his own life as the motive and goal of his actions is acting on the motive and standard of death.” It’s typical Rand: to act for the sake of others is a kind of spiritual death. This rules out any sense of collective responsibility that might lead us to make sacrifices for the sake of the common good.
Having conjured this repugnant view, Wieseltier immediately reminds us that Ryan told the audience at the Atlas Society in 2005 that he often returned to John Galt’s speech, as well as other passages in Atlas Shrugged, “to make sure that I can check my premises.” The implication, of course, is that it’s exactly this passage that Ryan is savoring on a regular basis. Wieseltier leaves unmentioned the fact that John Galt’s speech, which comes at the end of Atlas Shrugged, is sixty-four rambling pages long.
Wieseltier works this and other rhetorical tricks in order to create the illusion of evidence for his grand assertion: “Ryan’s philosophy represents a demonization of need and diabolization of weakness.” Precisely this philosophy of life, he argues, is behind Ryan’s various budget plans. A grand and global rejection of need and weakness, and an affirmation of Rand’s mystical embrace of the “radiant selfishness of the soul” explains the Ryan’s efforts to try to limit the federal government to 17 or 18 percent of GDP. Shifting Medicare in the direction of government-funded support for paying insurance premiums does not flow from a belief that hard choices about controlling health care costs are best made by individuals and families rather than a panel of experts, but instead rests on a “demonization of need.” Ryan isn’t a policy wonk; he’s a nefarious metaphysician.
Faced with this performance, where does one begin?
First, let’s not overplay Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged. Wieseltier thinks of her as the sort of writer, who, like Herman Hesse, tends to thrill the impressionable adolescent in search of Big Thoughts. That’s quite right, and it’s also right to point out, as he does, that a reflective person grows and sees that these writers and their ideas are too cartoonish. Apparently Ryan hasn’t done so, as his continued enthusiasm for Rand suggests.
True, but in his attack on Ryan, Wieseltier takes pains to show that Ryan isn’t all that sophisticated when it comes to moral, social, and political philosophy. If that’s the case—and Wieseltier is probably right—then why assume that Ryan was a careful, exacting reader of Rand as a teenager? Why suppose that he zeroed in on Rand’s metaphysical individualism and her most strident assertions of selfish egoism?
Why not assume something a good deal less theoretical? Ryan, whose father had just died, was no doubt feeling an acutely vulnerable and fearful of an uncertain future. Then he read Rand and saw in her the rather commonplace wisdom that a healthy, intelligent young man ought to try to make his own future, even against bad odds? That’s the broad “can do” Americanism that most young readers take from Atlas Shrugged, not Rand’s hyper-individualism and anti-Christian ideology of unrestrained self-assertion.
The second thing to say concerns Wieseltier’s highly theoretical approach. Ryan is questioning the current configuration of the modern welfare state. Wieseltier concludes that this dissent from the liberal consensus reflects a “terrible fear of dependence.” Such hyperventilation is sadly typical of our time. It’s the progressive version of the conservative impulse to see European-style welfare state policies as soul-destroying collectivism. Both substitute apocalyptic fantasies for clear-minded discussion of moral difference between modern conservatives (who rightly worry about excessive dependence on government) and modern liberals (who rightly worry about our weakness and vulnerability in the face of social, economic, and personal pressures that can overwhelm and destroy). These are differences of emphasis along a continuum, not antinomies in a cosmic moral conflict for the soul of Western civilization.
As Whittaker Chambers observed long ago, there are no children in Rand’s novels. It’s a telling omission that accurately reflects the implications of her exaltation of selfish egoism. Today, it’s the places dominated by progressives like Wieseltier that are also largely childless. Manhattan is a good example. Meanwhile, places like my former hometown of Omaha that are sympathetic to the political philosophy of Paul Ryan are more fertile. The difference should give one pause. Perhaps it’s the progressive mentality, which tends to outsource responsibility for others to government, and not American conservatism that creates the most congenial environment for Ayn Rand’s unappealing philosophy of life.
Finally, a word needs to be said about Leon Wieseltier’s own Randian tendencies. With great hauteur he points out Ryan’s intellectual failings. With slashing rhetoric he cuts and wounds. His moral outrage annihilates. As a public intellectual he’s pure John Galt: high, mighty, and superior, disdainful of the weak-minded, and quick to destroy those who disagree with him.
Paul Ryan and American conservatism represent a range of moral and social ideals: ordered liberty, limited government and private initiative, a restored sense of moral authority and personal responsibility, and so forth. No doubt these ideals are imperfectly expressed and are in some respects distorted and perverted by the hyper-individualism of Ayn Rand, as well as free market libertarian fantasies that imagine the withering away of the state. But whatever their defects, when it comes to conservative ideals, Leon Wieseltier is a typical member of the liberal establishment. He’s too morally and intellectually superior to actually engage them. From his heights it’s sufficient simply to denounce them.
R.R. Reno is Editor of First Things. He is the general editor of the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible and author of the volume on Genesis. His previous “On the Square” articles can be found here.
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Comments:
http://www.atlassociety.org/ele/blog/2012/04/30/paul-ryan-and-ayn-rands-ideas-hot-seat-again
The non sequitur is this: Obama stinks therefore Ryan is the cat's meow. Medicaid covers 37% of birth deliveries and pre natal care in America. As it shrinks, poor women will find abortion much cheaper than delivering. From the Christian conservatives there is not a word. Obama is still more dangerous in view of Supreme Court appointments in the near future. But Ryan is simply a lesser evil maybe. It depends on which one produces more abortions in those secret non traceable areas of post policy change consequences ...in real life.
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It’s so important that we go back to our roots to look at Ayn Rand’s vision, her writings, to see what our girding, under-grounding [sic] principles are. I always go back to, you know, Francisco d’Anconia’s speech (at Bill Taggart’s wedding) on money when I think about monetary policy. And then I go to the 64-page John Galt speech, you know, on the radio at the end, and go back to a lot of other things that she did, to try and make sure that I can check my premises so that I know that what I’m believing and doing and advancing are square with the key principles of individualism…
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These are not the words of a man who was infatuated by Ayn Rand as a teenager and outgrew her influence. They are the words of a man who returned to Rand again and again to, as he said, "check my premises." R. R. Reno's rather feeble defense is that there is no proof WHICH SENTENCES Ryan agreed with in the passage he returned to again and again to.
Ryan downplayed his devotion to Rand recently, calling it an "urban legend." Certainly given what there is on the record, this was transparently dishonest. I don't believe Ryan is an Objectivist or a secret atheist who slavishly has accepted everything Ayn Rand ever said and wrote. No doubt he has his own *interpretation* of her concept of individualism versus collectivism and the other ideas of hers which he formerly extolled. But in sweeping his devotion to Rand under the rug as an urban legend and claiming it was not the philosophy of Ayn Rand he embraced but Thomas Aquinas, he left Conservative Catholics in the awkward position of having to explain away his devotion to Ayn Rand and her work. They have less to go on in dissociating Ryan from Rand than Wieseltier does in linking them. Perhaps someone from First Things should do an in depth interview with Paul Ryan on his views about individualism versus collectivism. Then we'd find out something about what Ryan really believes—at least if he answered the questions with more honesty and candor than he has in recent interviews on other topics—and we wouldn't have to speculate about which sentences from John Galt's 64-page speech at the end of Atlas Shrugged Ryan embraces and which ones he does not.
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/ED-AP726_1wedge_D_20120905181504.jpg
At the rate the Treasury is printing $'s, it's only a matter of time before bond yields & inflation increase. Then the problems will really increase.
to caricature the American left as careless of life or love, as somehow less intellectually able of critical thought, is to succumb to exactly the sort of intractable partisan hyperbole that R.R. Reno so well admonishes for its role in turning comprehensible differences into irreconcilable chasms.
until we understand that those who disagree with us love life and one another just as we do, and differ from us only in how they express that love, we will not only remain in the dark here on earth but in His Kingdom. right and left, we are brothers and sisters. let us never forget it.
As readers of Rand's novels observe early, Chapter Three of ATLAS SHRUGGED begins with the words "Dagny Taggart was nine years old ... " and that chapter's main characters are four children.
What is it about $800 billion in cuts that looks like a non detail to you? States will either have to raise state taxes or cut net medicaid services. States are less able to raise taxes than the Fed because taxpayers can move to other states but few leave the US over federal taxes.
Modern liberalism (that is secular statism) is a religion. It has a god (the state), saints (FDR, Blackmun, any hard left office holder), angels (Marx, Keynes, Sanger), sinners (Reagan, Thatcher, any Roman Pontiff) and demons (Friedman, Hayek, Burke, Acton). Since the leftist god is a false one, it cannot stand on its own-adherents must take swift and certain action against its enemies. Anybody that challenges the unlimited supremacy of the state must be attacked. That Ryan, who was fairly loose with the power of the purse is a tea party favorite, shows that they are pragmatically supporting someone who believes in some limits on government.
These attacks are nothing but an attempt to destroy not only a sinner but a demon with the same ammunition.
But lets consider Rand as a person. She is easily given to caricature and draws few sympathies, but like every other human was a child of God damaged by original sin. Let's not forget, she was exposed to Soviet Communism for the first 21 years of her life. Absent that, would she have been an atheist? Would her philosophy have been absolute individualism, if she hadn't been brought up where the the individual was nothing but a pawn to be manipulated and disposed at the whim of an all-powerful state.
Had she not had to concoct a philosophy, ex nihilo without exposure to God, and individual rights, perhaps she would lent her mordant pen to something that embraces a person's individuality as a result of God's will, that entailed rights AND responsibilities. If you find her repulsive, understand how she arrived at her positions-as a psychologically wounded victim of the Revolution. Anarchy finds its most willing disciples in the victims of totalitarianism. Her philosophical deformities are the obverse of statism and communism.
Yet, understand that nobody could appropriate her philosophy as justification for gulags or mass exterminations. The left, including the Christian left , considers Rand's excesses to be unforgivable sins-but they don't hold Margaret Sanger's or Robert Bird's racism against them. Similarly, we are to dismiss Ryan's for reading Rand, but not to question the far deeper influences and long-held associations of Barack Obama. In these inconsistencies, we find the politics of the mob and viscera, not the mind.
This isn't true, or if it is true, it's only true in the sense that Ryan still thinks there are things to be learned from Rand. He has said, explicitly, that he rejects Rand's philosophy and thinks of his own philosophy as more in line with Thomism. He has also given a speech on social doctrine at Georgetown in which he made the case that reforming entitlements in the way he would do it is actually better for the poor than old-school welfare stateism. While the things you say by way of apology for Ryan's interest in Rand are true, you might have come off as better informed on Ryan had you mentioned more recent developments (which of course haven't been paid attention to by the mainstream press).
I nowhere addressed medicare. Reread please. I addressed Medicaid which covers 60 to 67% of elderly in old age homes and 37% of births and prenatal care in the US. Any elderly in your family who are not millionaires could end up on medicaid in a skilled nursing home if they become very sick prior to death and therefore go through their savings at $60,000 etc. per year after which medicaid pays right now. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 shifted more discretion to states to charge copayments. Ryan would further empower states as he cut Federal money and changed it into block grants. The poor are having many of the abortions already in New York City. If a state loses 16 billion from the Fed, it will cut commensurately and increase co payments. Pregnant poor comparing all bills involved will more so opt for the $400 abortion at ten weeks. That is not Ryan's moral fault if he sees it as a lesser evil than national bankruptcy.; it's the poor's fault but Catholics are pretending Ryan's policies have no abortion consequences.
And how about first we withdraw all the billions we are throwing down the drain propping up people who are murdering us in Islamic countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Egypt. Afghanistan does not qualify as a just war because there must be the possibility of success. It's like a stock that just keeps going down. A hospital we set up at great cost had Afghan soldiers being extorted by staff...money for food. Let's leave tomorrow. McCain can resuit and go himself.
Check out the following article in Forbes: "Who Is The Smallest Government Spender Since Eisenhower? Would You Believe It's Barack Obama?"
Excerpt:
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So, how have the Republicans managed to persuade Americans to buy into the whole “Obama as big spender” narrative?
It might have something to do with the first year of the Obama presidency where the federal budget increased a whopping 17.9% —going from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. I’ll bet you think that this is the result of the Obama sponsored stimulus plan that is so frequently vilified by the conservatives…but you would be wrong.
The first year of any incoming president term is saddled—for better or for worse—with the budget set by the president whom immediately precedes the new occupant of the White House. Indeed, not only was the 2009 budget the property of George W. Bush—and passed by the 2008 Congress—it was in effect four months before Barack Obama took the oath of office.
Accordingly, the first budget that can be blamed on our current president began in 2010 with the budgets running through and including including fiscal year 2013 standing as charges on the Obama account, even if a President Willard M. Romney takes over the office on January 20, 2013.
So, how do the actual Obama annual budgets look?
• In fiscal 2010 (the first Obama budget) spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion.
• In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion.
• In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August.
• Finally in fiscal 2013 — the final budget of Obama’s term — spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. . . . .
No doubt, many will wish to give the credit to the efforts of the GOP controlled House of Representatives. That’s fine if that’s what works for you.
However, you don’t get to have it both ways. Credit whom you will, but if you are truly interested in a fair analysis of the Obama years to date—at least when it comes to spending—you’re going to have to acknowledge that under the Obama watch, even President Reagan would have to give our current president a thumbs up when it comes to his record for stretching a dollar.
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/05/24/who-is-the-smallest-government-spender-since-eisenhower-would-you-believe-its-barack-obama/
I think it is interesting, and telling, that the author of the Forbes piece appended this note:
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NOTE: Some of the comments to this piece have gotten well out of control, involving threats and obscenity to other commenters and myself. While I welcome and encourage comments from all points of view, obscene remarks are removed and not tolerated. I’ll be happy to jump back into the conversation and reply to some comments when those who are misusing the forum settle down.
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So be nice!
You say: "That may just be the beginning of what needs to be done. As to what you support in its stead, perhaps you can enlighten us?"
Your premise seems to be that one may not criticize an $800 billion cut in funding that hurts the poor without proposing a budget of one's own. I don't recall the US Conference of Catholic Bishops proposing their own budget when they criticized the Ryan budget. And in any case, the Ryan budget had massive cuts for programs that served the poor plus massive tax cuts for the rich and superrich. I don't hear anyone—other than Republicans running for office—who says deficits can be brought under control with spending cuts AND tax cuts. In fact, I don't hear anyone saying it can be brought under control without some tax INCREASES.
Not First Things, but an interview nonetheless:
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2Fc2t4zx8&h=aAQGW-mcH&s=1
I am hardly convinced that Ryan is without blemish, but one of the most interesting things I find about him - which I find with virtually no other politician - is that he explicitly says that his interpretation of the application of Catholic doctrine to the current situation *isn't* the only correct one - it is simply the final model he's arrived at as most likely to suceed and he's continually open to modifying it. That statement, versus the, "Ryan / Romney / Republicans' plans are evil," that keeps coming from the political Left, speaks volumes about the man.
Though I am no expert on Rand, what works of hers that I have read have convinced me that there are nothing but children in her novels - childish characters depicted in childish prose.
That Ryan is opposed to abortion is basically an irrelevant matter when discussing his budget, unless, of course, it can be demonstrated that his budget is likely to either increase or decrease the rate of abortion. I think it was a bit of an embarrassment that Ryan, who was opposed to abortion under any circumstances, accommodated himself to Romney's position of making exceptions in cases of rape, incest, and threat to the life of the mother. Ryan is now a little less pro-life than he was before he became a vice-presidential candidate.
If you are a one-issue voter, then Ryan's budget is unimportant. He could eliminate every program that helped the sick, the elderly, the poor, and the disabled, and as long as he opposed abortion, he'd still be the one-issue voter's hero.
The only significant question is where are the speeches he made on Thomism before he became a Vice-Presidential candidate? Anybody here heard of any?
This is, after all, the most logical reason for any philosophical change of heart Mr. Ryan may have had. If so, it's only worth purchasing at a very large discount.
The irony of all this is that we may just have the best of both worlds, Obama for President and a working test of Ryanomics after January 1, 2013, which should settle once and for all just exactly how good it will be for the country. After several months, or maybe even several weeks, of such a test I think we'll be able to reach a broad based consensus about the matter, and it won't include Mr. Ryan. Particularly since he is unlikely to suffer much from it personally.
It might even include some of the commenters here, since most people do not realize how dependent even they are on Government "entitlements" no matter how much they despise such things.
For all the harm it will do, it might just be the reality check we've been needing.
And then I saw the video of Romney dismissing virtually half the entire American electorate as irresponsible parasites who believe EVERYTHING must be given to them for free from the government, and who pay no taxes. And he stated that he isn't in any way concerned with people like that. They apparently don't rate his concern. All I can say is that Rand's corpse must be wearing a ghoulish grin right now!
My uncle was almost killed by a torpedo at Pearl Harbor. My father flew seaplanes in the Pacific War. I was president of an NRA rifle club in Texas, and I served my country as a B-52 crewmember in SAC. My eldest son just started his ROTC training at Holy Cross College, determined to be an army officer who can craft new military strategies for his country. And this "parasite" now has no doubts about voting for Obama.
Since it is true a person is not a thing, nor a thing a person, the fact that Roe v. Wade has served to objectify the human person by denying the self-evident truth that every son and daughter of a human individual can only be a human individual, a right to privacy can never trump the unalienable Right to Life that has been endowed to every son and daughter by God.
Why not begin at The Beginning? Paul Ryan respects the Sanctity of every Human Life and the Sanctity of Marriage and the Family because he recognizes the truth about the personal and relational essence of the human person, who, from the moment of conception, has been created In The Image of God, equal in Dignity, while being complementary as male and female, to reflect authentic Love.