Sunday, August 19, 2012 10:31:52 PM
Ryan vs. Rand: Consider yourself dumped
Flip Ryan and flop Romney are a very unattractive and debilitating flip-flopper pair ..
Author Ayn Rand influenced Paul Ryan. (Leonard
McCombe, Time Life Pictures/Getty
Images / December 31, 1969)
By Ron Grossman
August 20, 2012
I, too, have a history with Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan's longtime, but no longer, guru.
Tapped to be Mitt Romney's running mate, the Wisconsin congressman broke off his intellectual love affair with Rand, the novelist prophet of uncompromising individualism. Ryan dumped her, as young people say, which had to surprise his constituents and aides. Ryan has credited his political awakening to Rand, who died in 1982. He gives copies of her books to staffers, like a high school English teacher handing out a summer reading list.
Maybe his romance with her ideas was like a marriage that looks solid from the outside — until it winds up in divorce court, the parties pleading "irreconcilable differences." Rand was an atheist; Ryan is Catholic. She championed abortion even before Roe v. Wade; he opposes abortion.
My own encounter with Rand was much briefer, though it seemed like an eternity. Teaching at Michigan State University in the 1960s I spotted on a bulletin board a note posted by a student driving to New York and looking for a passenger to share expenses. The terms seemed good: split the cost of gas; drive straight through, no motel bills.
What the note didn't say was that the young man had read "The Fountainhead," Rand's novel about an architect who refuses to subordinate his creative genius to the demands of a conformist society. For the student, it was a conversion experience — like St Paul's on the road to Damascus — that he was eager, nay insistent, to share.
Figuring me for a leftist professor (an accurate assumption) he was determined to wean me off Marxism with force feedings of objectivism, Rand's philosophy. More than once, as he pulled up to a fuel pump, I considered making a run for it.
It's exhausting to keep saying "It's not that simple" to someone who is convinced it is. Then as now, I thought capitalism has faults as well as virtues; that money isn't the measure of all things. His hero, Rand, wore a dollar-sign pendant. My companion insisted that we each are, or should be, strictly on our own in life. I vainly tried arguing that he'd asked for my help in financing his trip.
Perhaps Ryan's experience of objectivism was a slow-motion version of mine — with him arguing the pros and cons of Rand's take on life. It couldn't have been easy. Radical individualism — of the anarchist or libertarian type — is just not compatible with a dogmatic ideology, be it secular or religious.
Rand's philosophy essentially comes down to a bit of advice: "Never let anyone tell you what do."
Yet contemporary conservatism and traditional religion do just that. Catholic bishops don't just advise against using birth control. They enjoin it. Evangelical ministers don't just counsel against fornication before marriage. They preach it's the road to hell. Social conservatives demand a constitutional ban on gay marriage and insist on equal time for intelligent design in public schools.
Rand came to America seeking refuge from the thought control the Bolshevik dictatorship had imposed on her Russian homeland. In and out of her books, she was committed to the idea that people should be free to do and think exactly as they please.
Perhaps it's the way she acted out that ideal that has made Ryan belatedly shy away from Rand's philosophy. Years after my midnight ride with the youthful objectivist, I met Barbara Branden, an older and disillusioned follower of Ayn Rand. Once a true believer, Branden owed a lot to Rand, who'd advised her to marry another acolyte, Nathaniel Branden. The two, Rand said, were like characters in her novels.
Eventually, Rand saw something else in her heir apparent, who ran the Nathaniel Branden Institute, which published objectivist texts and organized study groups. Twice a week, Rand's husband would vacate their apartment so Rand and Nathaniel could have their trysts, while Barbara minded the store at the institute.
The affair ended badly. Discovering Nathaniel had still another lover on the side, Rand banished the Brandens from her intellectual paradise. The Brandens' marriage was kaput.
Of such tragic tales are operas made. But they wouldn't play well in small-town Wisconsin, or the Bible Belt where Romney and Ryan hope to turn out voters by casting themselves as champions of old-time social values.
Whatever the case, in a recent interview with Fox News, Ryan ascribed his infatuation with Rand to the innocence of youth: "I later in life learned about what her philosophy was," he said. "It's something I completely disagree with. It's an atheistic philosophy."
Earlier, he nominated a new philosophical mentor: "Don't give me Ayn Rand," Ryan told the National Review. "Give me Thomas Aquinas."
Ryan is a co-sponsor of congressional legislation saying "the life of each human being begins with fertilization." Yet St. Thomas held that the soul — arguably the essential mark of humanity — didn't enter a male fetus until 40 days after conception and, for females, was delayed still longer.
Makes you kind of wonder which way Ryan is heading. What's the next stop on his philosophical journey? Handing out Planned Parenthood literature on the campaign trail?
Ron Grossman is a Tribune reporter and former history professor.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0820-randryan-20120820,0,2706507.story
In any sober and reasonable minded thoughts on R@R taking over the WH there is no 'rest and relaxation' for the USA.
Perhaps it's as simple as just politically pragmatic strategy in Ryan-Romney flip-flopper
minds that has Ryan publicly parroting he prefers Thomas Aquinas to Ayn Rand today.
Flip Ryan and flop Romney are a very unattractive and debilitating flip-flopper pair ..
Author Ayn Rand influenced Paul Ryan. (Leonard
McCombe, Time Life Pictures/Getty
Images / December 31, 1969)
By Ron Grossman
August 20, 2012
I, too, have a history with Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan's longtime, but no longer, guru.
Tapped to be Mitt Romney's running mate, the Wisconsin congressman broke off his intellectual love affair with Rand, the novelist prophet of uncompromising individualism. Ryan dumped her, as young people say, which had to surprise his constituents and aides. Ryan has credited his political awakening to Rand, who died in 1982. He gives copies of her books to staffers, like a high school English teacher handing out a summer reading list.
Maybe his romance with her ideas was like a marriage that looks solid from the outside — until it winds up in divorce court, the parties pleading "irreconcilable differences." Rand was an atheist; Ryan is Catholic. She championed abortion even before Roe v. Wade; he opposes abortion.
My own encounter with Rand was much briefer, though it seemed like an eternity. Teaching at Michigan State University in the 1960s I spotted on a bulletin board a note posted by a student driving to New York and looking for a passenger to share expenses. The terms seemed good: split the cost of gas; drive straight through, no motel bills.
What the note didn't say was that the young man had read "The Fountainhead," Rand's novel about an architect who refuses to subordinate his creative genius to the demands of a conformist society. For the student, it was a conversion experience — like St Paul's on the road to Damascus — that he was eager, nay insistent, to share.
Figuring me for a leftist professor (an accurate assumption) he was determined to wean me off Marxism with force feedings of objectivism, Rand's philosophy. More than once, as he pulled up to a fuel pump, I considered making a run for it.
It's exhausting to keep saying "It's not that simple" to someone who is convinced it is. Then as now, I thought capitalism has faults as well as virtues; that money isn't the measure of all things. His hero, Rand, wore a dollar-sign pendant. My companion insisted that we each are, or should be, strictly on our own in life. I vainly tried arguing that he'd asked for my help in financing his trip.
Perhaps Ryan's experience of objectivism was a slow-motion version of mine — with him arguing the pros and cons of Rand's take on life. It couldn't have been easy. Radical individualism — of the anarchist or libertarian type — is just not compatible with a dogmatic ideology, be it secular or religious.
Rand's philosophy essentially comes down to a bit of advice: "Never let anyone tell you what do."
Yet contemporary conservatism and traditional religion do just that. Catholic bishops don't just advise against using birth control. They enjoin it. Evangelical ministers don't just counsel against fornication before marriage. They preach it's the road to hell. Social conservatives demand a constitutional ban on gay marriage and insist on equal time for intelligent design in public schools.
Rand came to America seeking refuge from the thought control the Bolshevik dictatorship had imposed on her Russian homeland. In and out of her books, she was committed to the idea that people should be free to do and think exactly as they please.
Perhaps it's the way she acted out that ideal that has made Ryan belatedly shy away from Rand's philosophy. Years after my midnight ride with the youthful objectivist, I met Barbara Branden, an older and disillusioned follower of Ayn Rand. Once a true believer, Branden owed a lot to Rand, who'd advised her to marry another acolyte, Nathaniel Branden. The two, Rand said, were like characters in her novels.
Eventually, Rand saw something else in her heir apparent, who ran the Nathaniel Branden Institute, which published objectivist texts and organized study groups. Twice a week, Rand's husband would vacate their apartment so Rand and Nathaniel could have their trysts, while Barbara minded the store at the institute.
The affair ended badly. Discovering Nathaniel had still another lover on the side, Rand banished the Brandens from her intellectual paradise. The Brandens' marriage was kaput.
Of such tragic tales are operas made. But they wouldn't play well in small-town Wisconsin, or the Bible Belt where Romney and Ryan hope to turn out voters by casting themselves as champions of old-time social values.
Whatever the case, in a recent interview with Fox News, Ryan ascribed his infatuation with Rand to the innocence of youth: "I later in life learned about what her philosophy was," he said. "It's something I completely disagree with. It's an atheistic philosophy."
Earlier, he nominated a new philosophical mentor: "Don't give me Ayn Rand," Ryan told the National Review. "Give me Thomas Aquinas."
Ryan is a co-sponsor of congressional legislation saying "the life of each human being begins with fertilization." Yet St. Thomas held that the soul — arguably the essential mark of humanity — didn't enter a male fetus until 40 days after conception and, for females, was delayed still longer.
Makes you kind of wonder which way Ryan is heading. What's the next stop on his philosophical journey? Handing out Planned Parenthood literature on the campaign trail?
Ron Grossman is a Tribune reporter and former history professor.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-oped-0820-randryan-20120820,0,2706507.story
In any sober and reasonable minded thoughts on R@R taking over the WH there is no 'rest and relaxation' for the USA.
Perhaps it's as simple as just politically pragmatic strategy in Ryan-Romney flip-flopper
minds that has Ryan publicly parroting he prefers Thomas Aquinas to Ayn Rand today.
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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