Paul Ryan’s Contradiction

[Mass]

Yes, this makes no sense:

Either people prefer to be independent OR they will jump at every opportunity to be a freeloader, but they cannot be both. Except in the Conservatives' tortuous mind.

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/paul-ryans-contradiction/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=1&

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – The G.O.P. may look, to outsiders, as if it’s viciously divided between establishment politicians and Tea Party upstarts willing to defy Ronald Reagan’s so-called Eleventh Commandment (don’t speak ill of fellow Republicans) even at the risk of losing very winnable Senate contests — as they did in 2012.

[...
]
That may be so. We’ll see. But as he talked up Republican unity, Mr. Ryan unintentionally betrayed his party by revealing a contradiction at the heart of conservative opposition to “big government.”

Mr. Ryan said, on the one hand, that he and his Republican colleagues oppose President Obama’s health care overhaul and various social programs because they discourage working. Mr. Ryan said: “We don’t want people to leave the workforce. We want people to share their skills and talents with the rest of us.”

[...]



See the contradiction?

In Mr. Ryan’s view, Americans would rather depend on themselves, or their families, than on the government.

And yet, in Mr. Ryan’s view, if these same Americans gain access to government programs, they’ll jump at the chance to abandon their responsibilities, effectively exchanging a “life of dignity” for a “life of comfort.”

That doesn’t make sense. If all or most Americans, like the kid in Wisconsin, want their own lunch rather than a government lunch, then the prospect of a government lunch won’t change their behavior.

[Scuba]

1. When your side owns all the major media, you don't have to make sense.