Paul Ryan's Ayn Rand Worship

From the Lizza profile of Ryan I've been talking about today:

Like many conservatives, he claims to have been profoundly affected by Ayn Rand. After reading “Atlas Shrugged,” he told me, “I said, ‘Wow, I’ve got to check out this economics thing.’

Apparently he was very keen to have the staff in his congressional office read the work of the Russian emigre, from whose resolute atheism he is quick to distance himself, and was even known to make Christmas gifts of 'Atlas' for his young interns. He has given speeches to groups like the Atlas Society, a group for Randian devotees and ardent Objectivists, and has even gone so far as to say that "what’s unique about what’s happening today in government, in the world, in America, is that it’s as if we’re living in an Ayn Rand novel right now." Yep. That's what he thinks. "I think Ayn Rand did the best job of anybody to build a moral case of capitalism, and that morality of capitalism is under assault."

I've always aligned myself with the Hitchens line on the subject, which was that there's really no need to have writing advocating selfishness among human beings. "Some things require no further reinforcement." What's more, it seems not only unnecessary for individualism to have an apologist but downright absurd.

For Ryan to characterise democratic capitalism as moral is one thing. (Okay, you might say that. It would be more accurate to say that it's an imperfect but best-fit system, but then some apparently think it's fantastic.) It's quite another for him to openly advocate the work of a person whose main objective was to promote sole interest in oneself to the status of a virtue.

But now it seems Ryan has distanced himself from her in other senses too, not just her views on the divine, dismissing any liking for her as a youthful eccentricity. Now, apparently, Rand's atheism means her worldview is totally opposed to his own. "It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts," he said. "It is antithetical to my worldview." A smart move for someone who needs to court the Christian Right. Ryan's adult Randian streak is disturbing in itself, but his clumsy pivot on the subject to appease Christian voters implies more than an undertone of disingenuousness and insincerity. Take note of Romney's introduction, in which the obsequious Willard took pains to stress the "faithful Catholic" attribute of his potential Vice President. Apparently being called credulous is a compliment. Only in America.