It’s a common misconception on the left and on the right that Congressman Paul Ryan, architect of the GOP’s de facto budget and entry on every pundit’s vice-presidential short list, is a devotee of Ayn Rand and her philosophy of “objectivism.”
Were this true, it would be deeply unsettling, given that Rand’s philosophy (such as it is) is desperately wicked. As Whittaker Chambers wrote in National Review in 1957, “From almost any page of [Rand's novel] Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To a gas chamber — go!’” Rand’s ultimate hatred of the human race should have no place in the governance of the nation.
But it’s not true that Ryan follows Rand. National Review Online reports on a conversation with Rep. Paul Ryan, in which he disowns her (having never really owned her) and speaks of his devotion to Thomas Aquinas:
“I, like millions of young people in America, read Rand’s novels when I was young. I enjoyed them,” Ryan says. “They spurred an interest in economics, in the Chicago School and Milton Friedman,” a subject he eventually studied as an undergraduate at Miami University in Ohio. “But it’s a big stretch to suggest that a person is therefore an Objectivist.”
“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “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,” who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he says.
The whole piece is worth reading. It’s good to know that regardless of whether one approves of Rep. Ryan’s budget or politics, there are yet a few in Washington trying to wrestle with the issues of the day appropriating substantive philosophies.
What makes the philosophy of Ayn Rand “desperately wicked”?
The atheism?
Because other than that, she only takes the ideas of Adam Smith to their logical climax.
That humans are joined to form society for
mutual safety and preservation was widely accepted in 18th C. Locke derives his philosophy by this premises.
Having read several of Rand’s works, including Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, I would say that the atheism drives what is the real sticking point for Christians — an all-encompassing self-centeredness that essentially becomes the apotheosis of selfishness. Adam Smith said that we served each other best by seeking our own betterment, and thus everyone profited from the best efforts of others to serve them; Rand says other people don’t really matter as long as you yourself are served. There’s very little “mutual” about Randianism.