From 4/27/12: Ryan re-embraces after rejecting after embracing Ayn Rand.

[morningfog]

Paul Ryan Suddenly Does Not Embrace Ayn Rand's Teachings

Posted: 04/27/2012 4:17 pm Updated: 04/27/2012 5:36 pm


Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) tried to send the message this week that, contrary to "urban legend," he is not obsessed with philosopher and author Ayn Rand.

"I reject her philosophy," Ryan told National Review on Thursday. "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."

(but..)

"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," Ryan said during a 2005 event honoring Rand in Washington, D.C., the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in April 2009.

During the 2005 gathering, Ryan told the audience, "Almost every fight we are involved in here on Capitol Hill ... is a fight that usually comes down to one conflict -- individualism versus collectivism." The event was hosted by The Atlas Society, which prominently features a photo of Rand on its website and describes itself as a group that "promotes open Objectivism: the philosophy of reason, achievement, individualism, and freedom."

Ryan also said during a 2003 interview with the Weekly Standard, "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.” He noted that he "looked into" Rand's work when he was younger, but reiterated that he is a Christian and reads the Bible often.

In 2009, Ryan posted two videos on his Facebook page raving about the importance of Rand's views.

* * *

Ryan spokesman Kevin Seifert downplayed the lawmaker's apparent change of tune on Rand.

"I wouldn't make too much of this one way or another. Congressman Ryan was not 'distancing himself' from Rand, merely correcting several false storylines that are out there, such as the myth that he requires all of his staffers to read Atlas Shrugged. Saying he 'rejects Ayn Rand's philosophy' was simply meant to correct a popular falsehood that Congressman Ryan is an Objectivist -- he isn't now and never claimed to be," Seifert said in a statement to The Huffington Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/paul-ryan-ayn-rand_n_1459098.html

[elleng]

1. Plus ca change,

plus c'est la meme chose.

[turtlerescue1]

2. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck-

how can we be sure its NOT a duck?

The one reason I was so sure $romney wouldn't pick Ryan was the Rand-ties. That Rand was a loud atheist, her "Atilla the Hun" and "Witchdoctor" allegories were the straw that left no other logic she was anything but. Mitt the Twit has his own copy of the Book Of Mormon, and in my attempts to understand where there exists a thread that ties all of Christians together started to read their book. On the first page "the angel named Moroni"- I read the Koran/Quaran but that "angel named Moroni" went in the trash faster than anything I've ever gotten rid of before.

SO where does this leave the Conservative Christian Right? Or is there a hope to lessen their impacts on power by the repiglicans? There is something more than is being shown, sadly I'm not smart enough to figure it out.