Romney, who has taken on diametrically opposed values from his previous incarnation as governor of a liberal state, has the deserved reputation of doing anything to realize his ambition for the presidency.
The latest addition to these anythings is his selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate. He is everything that Romney is not--he is an ideologue who has never budged from his core values. Now can you have any doubts, Romney seems to be saying, that I am a severe conservative!
By now everyone knows that if the Republican Party were less extreme, Romney would be touting himself as a moderate, standing by his record as governor of Massachusetts. Like a chameleon, he adopts the shade of his party's background--which is now very red--without a hint of any permanent hue. Ryan, however is a "severe" conservative indeed.
You have probably already heard that over 60% of the massive cuts Ryan proposes will come from programs that hurt the most vulnerable. You have probably also heard that his cuts will not save any money for a long time, since they are offset by tax reductions for the wealthy. You have probably also heard that this would be the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle class and the poor to the already wealthy in the nation's history. These are not the policies of someone trying to balance the budget; it is the attempt to stiff the majority of Americans by means of a rigid, specious, extremist ideology.
It all comes down to individualism vs. collectivism, he tells us. He also tells us that it is the philosophy of Ayn Rand that has shaped his identity. He hands out copies of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, to his interns and staff. He gives the book to various people as a present at Christmas. In TV commericals for his reelection to Congress in 2009 he mentioned that America is, as it were, in the dire situation depicted in the novel. For any American politician to mention a novel during a TV ad, he must indeed be a true believer of its author's philosophy. He has mentioned Ayn Rand so much that his inner core is a combination of the two, Paulayn Ryand.
As you know, Ryan is an active noodler, which entails shoving your hand down a catfish's throat and wrestling it to shore. I suggest a new sport: randling. This entails throwing Atlas Shrugged, which is over 1,000 pages long, at a pesky Canadian goose, followed by a copy of The Fountainhead to finish him off. I think, though, Ryan would prefer to continue throwing those books at us.
Ayn Rand was a Russian immigrant who suffered much during the Russian Revolution. The Bolsheviks confiscated her father's successful pharmacy business; the family fled to the Crimea. When they came back to Petrograd (as St. Petersburg was then called) the situation was so dire that at times they were close to starvation. She was allowed to visit relatives in New York in 1926 and never returned. It is understandable that she hated the extremism of the Soviet Union. But she countered it with an extremism of her own, laissez-fair capitalism, without any regulation at all. In fact, she referred to the highly corrupt pre-trust busting era of the late nineteenth century America as the Golden Age.
If you haven't read Atlas Shrugged, don't. It is a terrible novel. I'm not talking about content, I'm talking about craft. It is the story of a strike of all the so-called productive members of society against the rest of society--which in Rand's eyes is the useless, needy majority, composed of people who put restraints on the creative ones. The Social Contract in any form is a as heinous as the Nuremberg Laws. Well, the master race goes on strike and society falls apart. The leader of the strike, John Galt, ending the strike on his own terms, gives a radio apeech at the end of the book describing his (that is, Ayn Rand's) philosophy. You make your own values, you create your own life, you have no obligations to anybody you choose not to have obligations to. You follow reason and unadulterated self-interest. John Galt presents this philosopy in seventy (small print) pages, yes, seventy pages full of language so abstract and tedious you just can't get through it. I propose the Dorsett Aesthetics Test. Those who can finish reading this speech and like it have absolutely no aestheic sense and should not waste their time with art. Those who either fall asleep or start laughing after a page or so are Mozarts, the majority of us giving up well before the seventieth page.
Ayn Rand was modest too. She referred to herself as the greatest thinker alive. She said there were only three philosophers of importance, Aristotle, Aquinas and Ayn Rand.
This advocacy of extreme individualism, which Ryan so assiduously supports, makes the dialogue which we should be having impossible. There can indeed be too much government; there can indeed be detrimental effects of unregulated capatalism. I would think that sane conservatives and liberals could agree that there should be minimum standards for everyone: adaquate schools, adequate health care, clean, simple housing in a safe environment. The debate would be between those who claim that we can only afford the bare minimum for the needy, while the liberals would claim we could do a little bit more. Once these minimum standards have been achieved, well, then, let's talk about tax cuts. Similar sane conversations could be had regarding defense, bank regulation, etc.
Any effective modern country must have both collective aspects and aspects that foster entrepreneurship. The balance can tip in either direction with damage to the country's well being either way. That's the word that both Ryan and Rand lack: balance. Any program such as Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps, Pell Grants, and God, forbid, Obamacare, is, to their way of thinking making the mumified Lennin smile in his mausoleum.
Why can't Ryan realize that all Americans must be represented, including the poor, weak and elderly? In Ryand's view the poor are exploiters of the rich. Alan Greenspan in Wonderland. The Bland Hatter is running for president! The True Believer has been taken through the Looking Glass to help him get elected! This is no fiction: the choice this November is between extremism and moderation. Let's agree to have a battle.
The latest addition to these anythings is his selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate. He is everything that Romney is not--he is an ideologue who has never budged from his core values. Now can you have any doubts, Romney seems to be saying, that I am a severe conservative!
By now everyone knows that if the Republican Party were less extreme, Romney would be touting himself as a moderate, standing by his record as governor of Massachusetts. Like a chameleon, he adopts the shade of his party's background--which is now very red--without a hint of any permanent hue. Ryan, however is a "severe" conservative indeed.
You have probably already heard that over 60% of the massive cuts Ryan proposes will come from programs that hurt the most vulnerable. You have probably also heard that his cuts will not save any money for a long time, since they are offset by tax reductions for the wealthy. You have probably also heard that this would be the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle class and the poor to the already wealthy in the nation's history. These are not the policies of someone trying to balance the budget; it is the attempt to stiff the majority of Americans by means of a rigid, specious, extremist ideology.
It all comes down to individualism vs. collectivism, he tells us. He also tells us that it is the philosophy of Ayn Rand that has shaped his identity. He hands out copies of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, to his interns and staff. He gives the book to various people as a present at Christmas. In TV commericals for his reelection to Congress in 2009 he mentioned that America is, as it were, in the dire situation depicted in the novel. For any American politician to mention a novel during a TV ad, he must indeed be a true believer of its author's philosophy. He has mentioned Ayn Rand so much that his inner core is a combination of the two, Paulayn Ryand.
As you know, Ryan is an active noodler, which entails shoving your hand down a catfish's throat and wrestling it to shore. I suggest a new sport: randling. This entails throwing Atlas Shrugged, which is over 1,000 pages long, at a pesky Canadian goose, followed by a copy of The Fountainhead to finish him off. I think, though, Ryan would prefer to continue throwing those books at us.
Ayn Rand was a Russian immigrant who suffered much during the Russian Revolution. The Bolsheviks confiscated her father's successful pharmacy business; the family fled to the Crimea. When they came back to Petrograd (as St. Petersburg was then called) the situation was so dire that at times they were close to starvation. She was allowed to visit relatives in New York in 1926 and never returned. It is understandable that she hated the extremism of the Soviet Union. But she countered it with an extremism of her own, laissez-fair capitalism, without any regulation at all. In fact, she referred to the highly corrupt pre-trust busting era of the late nineteenth century America as the Golden Age.
If you haven't read Atlas Shrugged, don't. It is a terrible novel. I'm not talking about content, I'm talking about craft. It is the story of a strike of all the so-called productive members of society against the rest of society--which in Rand's eyes is the useless, needy majority, composed of people who put restraints on the creative ones. The Social Contract in any form is a as heinous as the Nuremberg Laws. Well, the master race goes on strike and society falls apart. The leader of the strike, John Galt, ending the strike on his own terms, gives a radio apeech at the end of the book describing his (that is, Ayn Rand's) philosophy. You make your own values, you create your own life, you have no obligations to anybody you choose not to have obligations to. You follow reason and unadulterated self-interest. John Galt presents this philosopy in seventy (small print) pages, yes, seventy pages full of language so abstract and tedious you just can't get through it. I propose the Dorsett Aesthetics Test. Those who can finish reading this speech and like it have absolutely no aestheic sense and should not waste their time with art. Those who either fall asleep or start laughing after a page or so are Mozarts, the majority of us giving up well before the seventieth page.
Ayn Rand was modest too. She referred to herself as the greatest thinker alive. She said there were only three philosophers of importance, Aristotle, Aquinas and Ayn Rand.
This advocacy of extreme individualism, which Ryan so assiduously supports, makes the dialogue which we should be having impossible. There can indeed be too much government; there can indeed be detrimental effects of unregulated capatalism. I would think that sane conservatives and liberals could agree that there should be minimum standards for everyone: adaquate schools, adequate health care, clean, simple housing in a safe environment. The debate would be between those who claim that we can only afford the bare minimum for the needy, while the liberals would claim we could do a little bit more. Once these minimum standards have been achieved, well, then, let's talk about tax cuts. Similar sane conversations could be had regarding defense, bank regulation, etc.
Any effective modern country must have both collective aspects and aspects that foster entrepreneurship. The balance can tip in either direction with damage to the country's well being either way. That's the word that both Ryan and Rand lack: balance. Any program such as Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps, Pell Grants, and God, forbid, Obamacare, is, to their way of thinking making the mumified Lennin smile in his mausoleum.
Why can't Ryan realize that all Americans must be represented, including the poor, weak and elderly? In Ryand's view the poor are exploiters of the rich. Alan Greenspan in Wonderland. The Bland Hatter is running for president! The True Believer has been taken through the Looking Glass to help him get elected! This is no fiction: the choice this November is between extremism and moderation. Let's agree to have a battle.
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