Paul Ryan Provides The Landscape For A Rational Discussion, On The National Stage, Of Rand's Ideas Merely Because The Left Hates Her...

[Selene]

Folks:

In my non-humble opinion, the selection of Paul Ryan as the Vice President at this critical juncture in America's electoral history and the "fact" that he is being "tied" to Ayn and her ideas provides us with an excellent opportunity to advance our case.

I find it fascinating that the mere statement by Congressman Ryan that Ayn Rand was influential in his political and philosophical growth has created a firestorm of vicious, hostile and psychotic reaction from many on the left and conservative right.

What are your thoughts OL?

[Selene]

Carol:

Here is an article in the TheStar.com, Toronto. Apparently, the author, on August 14, 2012, provided an "analysis" of Ryan and Rand. Apparently, she believes that only penis possessing individuals can possibly be Randian...

Ryan is fighting the same battles Rand fought in her St. Petersburg

adolescence

. Why he sees the need in a country that so badly tends its own citizens eludes me.

Rand attracts the young, who think they will never suffer or die

. “In the dating world, an infatuation with Ayn Rand is a red flag,” Ann Friedman wrote in a brilliantly funny

New York Magazine essay

this week. Surveying the Rand novels on your date’s bookshelves, “you think back to your conversation at the bar:

He treated flirtation like a conquest, a rationally self-interested sexual manifest destiny

. . . He’s unapologetically selfish, because it’s only rational, he says. Sure, he grew up with money but he

worked

to get where he is today. He’s all about individual responsibility but

he

just

isn’t, metaphorically, into wearing protection

.

”

Illustrating her incredible ability to be completely ignorant and, or, a lying slut about the Weyden-Ryan Medicare Proposal she falsely states:

Ryan — career politician, born to money, married to a

lobbyist

, champion of the U.S. rich and healthy — has called for an end to

Medicare for retirees, to Medicaid for poor people, to tax breaks for

employers who provide health insurance

. He still wants to

privatize Social Security, although

he has been advised to shut up about this.

[Yo...bitch! Source please!]

The news babe continues explaining that:

Ryan thinks this because he is a member of the Rand cult. You’ll be hearing a lot about Rand and you may need some background.

Rand was born Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum in 1905, a Russian Jew who suffered hideously under various phases of communism but obtained a passport in 1925 and escaped to Chicago where relatives took her in. “She never returned to Russia,” her biographer

Anne C. Heller

writes, “but in many ways, she never really left.”

Rosenbaum gave herself a strange mannish name, smoked like a sailor, wore a cloak and a black elf hat, married a kindly florist who appears to have been gay, preached whatever struck her as the opposite of communism, and wrote the male-worshipping

The Fountainhead

in 1943 and

Atlas Shrugged

in 1957. (The books are overwrought, the kind where breasts are always straining against blouses, as if they had a life of their own.)

Rand and her devotees basically formed a New York mountain-man cult based on various sexual entanglements and Stalinist-type denunciations, and a thing called Objectivism.

Continuing her analysis, she explains that:

Objectivism is selfishism. It is a stark,

ultra-rational self-interested approach to life that ignores altruism, religious belief, intuition, sacrifice, all the soft bits

. Rand,

childless

,

saw the universe as a malevolent place

in which the individual pursued the greatest goal of all, money, and thus individual liberty.

Her pathetically inept conclusion drips from her infertile...hmm...I will be kind here "soul" as she mentally vomits that:

Americans can’t do this until election day. In the meantime,

watch for coded Rand campaign references

and Romney’s resentment building as Ryan overshadows him. Watch Obama grinning. The Tampa convention will be Republicans trying not to scream “I want a divorce” at each other. For the sake of the children.

So, this insanely inept bitch believes that Objectivists are about to take over the Presidency and control the most powerful country on the face of the Earth!

Do Ayn's ideas scare them this much?

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1241907--romney-pick-paul-ryan-is-hard-right-theorist-ayn-rand-in-a-prettier-suit

[caroljane]

So what would you expect from the Star? We have the Post and the Sun here too.

Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant and Conrad Black are feted by our thriving group of rightwingers, and our Prime Minister has a hotline to Republican headquarters.

Both sides have polemicists up here too. We just have a bigger middle, that deplores the black white dichotomous world you guys have to live in.

[studiodekadent]

Folks:

In my non-humble opinion, the selection of Paul Ryan as the Vice President at this critical juncture in America's electoral history and the "fact" that he is being "tied" to Ayn and her ideas provides us with an excellent opportunity to advance our case.

I find it fascinating that the mere statement by Congressman Ryan that Ayn Rand was influential in his political and philosophical growth has created a firestorm of vicious, hostile and psychotic reaction from many on the left and conservative right.

What are your thoughts OL?

Whilst this may draw more publicity towards Ayn Rand and Objectivism, it also provides an opportunity to associate Rand with Ryan's own social-conservative warmongering corporatist voting record. It could easily become even worse than Greenspan's association with Objectivism.

[Reidy]

I don't think this association is going to happen. The media coverage I've seen has been admirably clear about the differences between them and about Ryan's declarations of these differences. Maureen Dowd and Rachel Maddow may be the only two people left in the US who still think he's a Randian.

Lawrence O'Donnell has been good on this. The Related Videos will link you to the other episodes.

[caroljane]

I've mentioned elsewhere that Ryan's Washington insider experience is a big plus. As VP he could be effective in liaising betweentthe executive and legislataive branches, already having the contacts.He could help get bills passed and achieve the presidential aims.

The downside is on the campaign where the other side will note that he wants to cut the government payroll which has been his sole source of professional income. "Pull up the ladder, I've got mine.?"

[syrakusos]

I agree with Reidy on this.

First, the Hollywood Maxim - and Rand was a Hollywood person - is "there is no such thing as bad publicity." Another way to say it is: "It doesn't matter what they say about you, as long as they keep talking." Rand's biographers noted that her description of Howard Roark's rising public image presaged her own: everyone heard other people discussing it, and some fraction knew enough to be informed; and some smaller number of them were on his side with most others against; and of those a friendlies were supporters and admirers of his work for the right reasons. So, it is with Ayn Rand. Anyone with brains will recognize a hatchet job. On the other hand, Lawrence O'Donnell was honest in his representation by taking direct quotes. Do you really care what idiots claim to think, if, alternately, a thinking person wonders enough about an atheistic champion of egoism and capitalism who opposed Ronald Reagan and the war in Viet Nam, while advocation for reproductive rights, to read one of her books.

Sales of Ayn Rand's books have been steady for decades. But with the Bush Bailouts and then the election of Barack Obama, coupled with the release of the movie, sales took off. If Pres. Obama had actually engaged some special left wing agenda, it would have been bad enough, but he continued the Bush Bailouts, the wars, Guantanamo. The Republicans were handed a Tea Party victory in 2010 and did not use it - and even before that, from 2008-2010, if they had been principled opponents, they could have held up the process in every way, but they did not. They compromised with the Democrats on minor points and concurred with the Democrats on major issues. So, of course, Atlas Shrugged and the other books sell well.

Now, here we are.

That Paul Ryan repudiates Ayn Rand, while Objectivists deny Paul Ryan only keeps Ayn Rand and Objectivism in the news.

Atlas Part II will be released in October. Paul Ryan is going to be playing Jim Taggart to President Obama's Wesley Mouch. Today's CNN front page promoted an opinion piece about "Catholic voters: Biden versus Ryan." But if you add up the numbers, more people do not believe, doubt, refuse to answer, and are unsure than there are Catholic voters. We like to complain about our (America's) lack of educational achievement compared to the rest of world, but, in truth the average American leads the averages of all other industrialized nations in scientific understanding.

In terms of American history, this could be like the election of 1824. Jackson lost, but the "Era of Good Feeling" was over. So, too, here, is the potential for a watershed.

[Selene]

Folks:

I thought that I was clear in my tittle for this thread. It does not matter whether Ryan is a secret Randian, or, whether he was influenced by her to the degree some believe,

It is the fact that with the movie, the failed marxist agenda of the Imperial Incompetent O'bama, the Ryan nomination and Ryan's clear enunciation on several occasions and speeches of his direct connection to Ayn's ideas that provides us with an phenomenal opportunity to get out into our communities and speak about Rand while discussion Johnson or Ryan.

Adam

[Selene]

GO GET EM JAMES!!!!

Randier Than Thou

The left's weirdest attack on Paul Ryan.

By JAMES TARANTO

President Obama plans "an audacious effort to paint former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and the majority GOP as radical libertarians that have abandoned mainstream American politics," the Daily Caller reported back in June. Although the president himself didn't use the L-word, he did accuse Republicans of having "gone from a preference for market-based solutions to an absolutism . . . a belief that all regulations are bad; that government has no role to play."

Obama singled out Romney's future running mate for criticism: "If you look at Paul Ryan's budget or you look at Governor Romney's proposals, what they're talking about is something that is fundamentally different from our experience."

It's possible that the president intended his Friday the 13th speech--"you didn't build that"--to be a part of this effort. Perhaps he meant merely to imply that his opponents were crazy enough to deny that man is a social animal or that some degree of government is necessary. If so, he failed. Instead of a straw man, the president set up a reductio ad absurdum. It was he who came across as a radical, a collectivist who contemns individual achievement or denies it altogether.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443989204577601341410326750.html?mod=djemBestOfTheWeb_h

This is an excellent article. Taranto explains The Nation's Ben Adler's distinction of Ryan from Rand, as essentially a distinction without a substantive difference:

On only one of these topics, abortion, does Ryan clearly disagree with Rand. She defended the practice with characteristic bluntness, as quoted in the

Ayn Rand Lexicon

: "A piece of protoplasm has no rights--and no life in the human sense of the term. One may argue about the later stages of a pregnancy, but the essential issue concerns only the first three months. To equate a

potential

with an

actual,

is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable."

Adler's other three issues are immigration, gay rights and voting rights. "Libertarians believe in open borders, but Paul Ryan doesn't," Adler asserts. Well,

some

libertarians believe in open borders. Ron Paul, for one, does not. What about Rand? She did not express a view on the subject, at least as far as we can tell from searching the lexicon. Its editor,

Harry Binswanger

, published an essay in 2010 endorsing open immigration, but his two supporting quotes from Rand are highly abstract and do not specifically address immigration.

Rand does not seem to have given much thought to the question of homosexuality, much less same-sex marriage and gays in the military, the specific questions on which Adler posits a Rand-Ryan conflict. That's hardly surprising. She died in 1982, years before almost anyone had thought about these matters.

Adler's lamest suggestion is that Rand would have disagreed with Ryan's support for voter ID requirements.

The lexicon entry for "

Voting

" shows Rand's concerns to have been entirely substantive. She wrote in the 1970s: "The right to vote is a

consequence,

not a primary cause, of a free social system--and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny."

He concludes with the understanding that will destroy this marxist ideologue on election day because as Taranto astutely notes:

But even some on the left seem to be realizing that individualism, not collectivism, is at the heart of the American creed. In the final weeks of the campaign, it will be interesting to see whether that dawns on Barack Obama.

When the individual citizen voter gets in that booth/behind the curtain on November 7th, 2012, alone with his individual thoughts, he will instinctively know to cast out this marxist malignancy from the White House and walk out of the voting precincts with his head held high.

Adam

[Reidy]

McGurn is wrong about Rand not taking a stand on immigration. Laissez-faire immigration falls out straightforwardly from the major premise of laissez-faire. She didn't need to go into it at length.

She probably would have opposed same-sex marriage and gays in the military, and she probably would have thought that these positions follow from her upstream theories. Whether or not they do is a separate question.

[caroljane]

Ryan's devotion to individual rights apparently includes only those individuals who cannot get pregnant, i.e. half the population.

[caroljane]

The Ryan/Akin bill (essentially the same as the GOP platform plank ) would legislate forcible birth in all circumstances. It is the moral equivalent of the Chinese government policy of forcible abortion.

[Selene]

The Ryan/Akin bill (essentially the same as the GOP platform plank ) would legislate forcible birth in all circumstances. It is the moral equivalent of the Chinese government policy of forcible abortion.

Carol:

You are much too smart to make judgments based on left wing media sources.

Your post above is flat out incorrect.

"Let’s explain the bill’s history.

The legislation -- known as the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act -- was first introduced on July 29, 2010 by New Jersey Congressman Chris Smith (R-4th Dist.). Ryan and Akin signed on as co-sponsors at the time of the bill’s introduction.

That version of the bill prohibited federal funding for abortions, except in certain cases -- including "forcible rape."

But with Democrats still in control of the House, the bill didn't move forward.

After the GOP took control of the House, Smith re-introduced the bill on Jan. 20, 2011. Again, at the time of introduction, Ryan and Akin became co-sponsors, and the legislation still contained the phrase "forcible rape."

Yet that term ignited an outcry among various critics, who said the phrase would exclude victims of statutory rape or rapes involving drugs.

By early February 2011, Smith had agreed to remove the term "forcible" from the legislation. When the House passed the bill in a 251-175 vote on May 4, 2011, the legislation allowed federal funding for abortions in all cases of rape.

The final version of the bill said such funding was permissible if "(1) if the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest; or (2) in the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself."

Ryan and Akin voted for the bill, along with Smith and the other five GOP congressmen from New Jersey. Seven House Democrats from New Jersey voted against the bill."

http://www.politifact.com/new-jersey/statements/2012/aug/22/john-wisniewski/paul-ryan-and-todd-akin-co-sponsored-bill-limiting/

<<<<Politifact is certainly not biased in favor of the pro-life side of the argument.

Your whole statement about "forcible birth" had, and has, nothing to do with the Ryan/Akin Federal proposed bill.

It primarily dealt with the Federal Funding of abortion and never made, or, makes, abortion illegal, or, forcing the birth.

======================================================================================

Finally, and this is an ethical question that troubles anyone who supports a woman's "right" to controlling her own body, or any modification of the "right."

Additionally, this ethical question applies to whether we believe the fertilized egg is a potential life, or, a life at the point of conception, or, is a life at some other stage of the birth cycle.

Why is it that of the three entities involved in the creation of that potential life, only the completely innocent entity is put to death?

I have had honest intimate discussions with feminists who are, both pro choice [death] and pro life and have had an abortion. To the woman, not one single lady does not resent having killed that life.

http://www.feministsforlife.org/who/aboutus.htm Here is the link to the Mission Statement of a forty year old organization called Feminist For Life.

There is a moving quote on the page attributed to Susan B. Anthony.

I am relatively relatively certain that none of us even knew that this organization existed.

Adam

[caroljane]

Adam, to ban federal funding for abortions would presumably not allow any medical facility that received federal funds toperform them, wouldn't it? Or any patient who only had government health insurance to get an abortion? How is that different from making abortion illegal?

As to the ethical question, this is an issue so deeply complex, and does indeed concern everyone because it is about human life and society. I do not believe I have a special authority to make decisions for others because I am female or have had children. Maybe sometime I will explain my thinking. but not now.

I will just say that when my best friend had an abortion I tried to talk her out of it. I was surprised at myself. I believed the abortion was her right. This was before I got pregnant for the first time.I am instinctively "pro-life" and assume most people are; we repel at the thought of ending a life that has begun.

I have often been sorry I did that as it must have made things harder for her. I went to the clinic with her for the procedure and supported her as best I could.

I believed then as now that it was not my right, nor the government's, nor anyone's to take away her choice. If the father wants the child born while the mother doesn't, they must try to work it out as a couple, but if they can't, her will s should prevail.

[Selene]

Adam, to ban federal funding for abortions would presumably not allow any medical facility that received federal funds toperform them, wouldn't it? Or any patient who only had government health insurance to get an abortion? How is that different from making abortion illegal?

As to the ethical question, this is an issue so deeply complex, and does indeed concern everyone because it is about human life and society. I do not believe I have a special authority to make decisions for others because I am female or have had children. Maybe sometime I will explain my thinking. but not now.

I will just say that when my best friend had an abortion I tried to talk her out of it. I was surprised at myself. I believed the abortion was her right. This was before I got pregnant for the first time.I am instinctively "pro-life" and assume most people are; we repel at the thought of ending a life that has begun.

I have often been sorry I did that as it must have made things harder for her. I went to the clinic with her for the procedure and supported her as best I could.

I believed then as now that it was not my right, nor the government's, nor anyone's to take away her choice. If the father wants the child born while the mother doesn't, they must try to work it out as a couple, but if they can't, her will s should prevail.

Carol:

Thank you for an open and honest response to the ethical issue.

As to the "legal issue" of Federal funds to hospitals, etc., that is a financial issue for the institution, the clinic, or the service facility. State funding, or, private funding can certainly provide the services required.

Now, if the state, also passes a state law, now, you have an issue that would "effectively" block abortion, except for the three (3) generally accepted parameters.

This would cause choice by moving to a different state, or, black market abortions, with all the attendant destruction that that would cause.

However, the removal of federal funding is a non-issue because of the Hyde Amendment...

The Hyde Amendment:

After

Roe v. Wade

decriminalized abortion in 1973, Medicaid covered abortion care without restriction. In 1976, Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL) introduced an amendment that later passed to limit federal funding for abortion care. Effective in 1977, this provision, known as the Hyde Amendment, specifies what abortion services are covered under Medicaid.

Over the past two decades, Congress has debated the limited circumstances under which federal funding for abortion should be allowed. For a brief period of time, coverage included cases of rape, incest, life endangerment, and physical health damage to the woman. However, beginning in 1979, the physical health exception was excluded, and in 1981 rape and incest exceptions were also excluded.

In September 1993, Congress rewrote the provision to include Medicaid funding for abortions in cases where the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. The present version of the Hyde Amendment requires coverage of abortion in cases of rape, incest, and life endangerment.

Here is the entire link from the National Abortion Federation: http://www.prochoice...ic_funding.html

[caroljane]

But the GOP abortion plank calls for the removal of all exceptions!

[anthony]

I'm pro-choice, with reservations.

"A choice between bad and worse"- is how a medical pal of mine calls it, and I've heard

of nothing that describes it better. (I 'went through' one, once.)

The debate will go on forever, it seems - and every person will decide for themselves,

according to their ethics and emotions.

BUT NO GOVERNMENT OR PERSON CAN INTERCEDE IN THIS, THE MOST PERSONAL AND PRIVATE CHOICE OF ANY.

[caroljane]

I'm pro-choice, with reservations.

"A choice between bad and worse"- is how a medical pal of mine calls it, and I've heard

of nothing that describes it better. (I 'went through' one, once.)

The debate will go on forever, it seems - and every person will decide for themselves,

according to their ethics and emotions.

BUT NO GOVERNMENT OR PERSON CAN INTERCEDE IN THIS, THE MOST PERSONAL AND PRIVATE CHOICE OF ANY.

Tony, I wrote in an old post about a book I read once, by a woman doctor. about her work in an abortion clinic. Its title was, "In Necessity and Sorrow."

[Selene]

But the GOP abortion plank calls for the removal of all exceptions!

Carol:

Sorry to inform you, but party platforms are political wet dreams that rarely, or, never, see the light of the sausage making process in our Congress.

Adam

[caroljane]

I know that, but they express the aims of the predominant members of the party. They are endorsed by the presidential candidate, and if he wins they are dreams he has pledged to make come true.

[caroljane]

I know that, but they express the aims of the predominant members of the party. They are endorsed by the presidential candidate, and if he wins they are dreams he has pledged to make come true.

Say he wins and the Reps get their majority and the bill gets passed as proposed in the platform. We know Romney does not personally support a no-exceptions abortion ban. Is he going to use a presidential veto on it and enrage the social conservatives who have been working towards this for thirty years? I don't think Mitt is the man to do that.

[anthony]

I'm pro-choice, with reservations.

"A choice between bad and worse"- is how a medical pal of mine calls it, and I've heard

of nothing that describes it better. (I 'went through' one, once.)

The debate will go on forever, it seems - and every person will decide for themselves,

according to their ethics and emotions.

BUT NO GOVERNMENT OR PERSON CAN INTERCEDE IN THIS, THE MOST PERSONAL AND PRIVATE CHOICE OF ANY.

Tony, I wrote in an old post about a book I read once, by a woman doctor. about her work in an abortion clinic. Its title was, "In Necessity and Sorrow."

Good for her, Carol. Let's hear the facts, and know the feelings involved.

From both sides.

Too much of the time it is only men who discuss abortion. Endless debates on O'ist

forums have always been all men. Although I basically take the Objectivist position -

individual rights, first trimester only, etc. - I thought often that moralizing on the rationality of abortion, can turn rationalistic (and for a few, slightly paternalistic.)

So, it is novel to see a woman (you) enter the fray.

[Selene]

I know that, but they express the aims of the predominant members of the party. They are endorsed by the presidential candidate, and if he wins they are dreams he has pledged to make come true.

Say he wins and the Reps get their majority and the bill gets passed as proposed in the platform. We know Romney does not personally support a no-exceptions abortion ban. Is he going to use a presidential veto on it and enrage the social conservatives who have been working towards this for thirty years? I don't think Mitt is the man to do that.

First of all, he would.

Second, as the Supreme Court is currently constituted, it would not stand up to Constitutional muster.

Thirdly, if it were to pass all those hurdles, it would represent the will of the American people and become law.

Adam

[caroljane]

I know that, but they express the aims of the predominant members of the party. They are endorsed by the presidential candidate, and if he wins they are dreams he has pledged to make come true.

Say he wins and the Reps get their majority and the bill gets passed as proposed in the platform. We know Romney does not personally support a no-exceptions abortion ban. Is he going to use a presidential veto on it and enrage the social conservatives who have been working towards this for thirty years? I don't think Mitt is the man to do that.

First of all, he would.

Second, as the Supreme Court is currently constituted, it would not stand up to Constitutional muster.

Thirdly, if it were to pass all those hurdles, it would represent the will of the American people and become law.

Adam

OK, I feel a little better for my American sisters now.

[Reidy]

Certain positions that candidates and parties take are throwaways. They get the hard core fired up, but the tacit understanding is that they'll never become law. This is one example. A flag-burning amendment and, for Democrats seeking union support, Taft-Hartley repeal, are some others. The ERA, after about 1975, was yet another example.

They tend to be constitutional amendments for the reason Selene mentions - amendments are almost impossible to pass.

It's reprehensible, but we shouldn't take it to mean that if the candidate wins these enactments are going to happen.