How dare a lying, savage sociopath like PRyan babble on about "the moral foundation of America"?

The Shame of Wisconsin shows that for right-wingers
there's no such thing as "a lie too big" or "a lie too many"


Apparently PRyan has lost all recall of the days when he was a shameless apostle of the greed and selfishness of Ayn Rand. Maybe this will help him remember.

"Maya Angelou warned us: 'Believe people when they tell you who they are. They know themselves better than you do.' Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have told us exactly who they are. The American people would do well to listen."

-- Tobias Barrington Wolff (see below)

by Ken

My first response to the news that the Shame of Wisconsin, Rep. Paul Ryan, is now claiming it's an "urban legend" that he's an acolyte of Ayn Rand is that, really and truly, there is no limit to the number or breadth of the lies right-wingers are now allowed, if not encouraged, to put over on an endlessly gullible American public and our endlessly coconspiring media.

Then I take a moment to reflect on the historic American romance with flim-flammers, con men, and scam artists of certain kinds, and I'm considering that this may be the so-far-unremarked-on calculation of Willard Inc. in putting an unmitigated creep like PRyan on his ticket. It would be a shameless pander (and if there's anything Willard lives for, or by, it's shameless pandering) to the extensive chunks of the voting public who will chant, "Tell us more whoppers, Uncle Paul. Talk to us about the moral foundation of America." Of course the next thing PRyan learns about the moral foundation of America, or morality of any kind, will be the first.

I apologize for quoting a third time this portion of Adam Gopnik's New Yorker piece "I, Nephi: Mormonism and its meanings":

The most striking feature of Mitt Romney as a politician is an absence of any responsibility to his own past -- the consuming sense that his life and opinions can be remade at a moment's need. Romney, according to Romney, never favored the individual mandate, or supported abortion rights, or opposed the auto-industry bailout, or did any of the other things he obviously, and on the record, did. . . .

Better to have a new revelation about, say, health-care mandates that renders the previous one instantly inoperable than spend time apologizing for the old ways. When, in 1978, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abandoned the rule prohibiting blacks from serving as priests, one church leader, Bruce McConkie, explained, "It doesn't make a particle of difference what anybody ever said about the Negro matter before the first day of June 1978." You could find, or think you've found, a similar logic behind Romney's blithe amnesia when it comes to the things he used to think and say. . . .

Look at PRyan from this vantage point, and you have to think that Willard found his man. Now that -- finally! -- it has begun to be a bit toxic to be spouting the "wisdom" of that toxic dump of pseuo-intellectual greed and savagery Ayn Rand, suddenly this man who has spent his public career quoting her babbling as political gospel makes believe that the divine Ayn isn't such a big deal to him.

Well, he sure wasn't being so modest about his Ayn worship in his blithering to The New Yorker's easy-mark DC scribbler Ryan LIzza in his famous puff piece a few weeks ago. Or in the clip at the top of this post, which was passed along, by way of reminder, by my colleague Tobias Barrington Wolff, a hot-shot law professor who's not only one of the smartest people I know but one of the wisest -- not at all the same thing.

Clearly one of the points that has caused PRyan to pull back on the public Ayn worship is the small problem (and I mean "small" in the most sarcastic way possible) of her hostility to religion. It's not just that she was an atheist but that she was actively and virulently anti-Christian. Naturally like any red-blooded right-wing American demagogue, PRyan tries to pass himself off as a living fount of Christian values.

Yesterday Tobias put up a sensational post on HuffPost, which seems to me to go to the heart of the Problem with PRyan. T is much classier than I am, so he doesn't come right out and say that the scumbag is nothing but a heap of filthy stinking garbage, a perversion of human protoplasm, a debased creature who should be locked up in either a loony bin or a kennel. Luckily, I don't need to put words in his mouth. He has an excellent way with words.

Tobias Barrington Wolff
Professor of Constitutional Law and Civil Procedure, University of Pennsylvania Law School

The Virtue of Selfishness: Romney, Ryan and Rand
Posted: 08/14/2012 7:31 am

The poet and memoirist Maya Angelou wrote this about how to judge a person's character: "Believe people when they tell you who they are. They know themselves better than you do." With his selection of Representative Paul Ryan as a running mate, Mitt Romney has told us exactly who he would be as President: a selfish capitalist. A Romney-Ryan White House would elevate selfishness above all else.

To understand the values of Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan, it is necessary to understand their intellectual forebear, Ayn Rand. Ms. Rand was one of the most extreme public intellectuals of the twentieth century. As her central creed, she rejected the idea that people in a community should approach each other with charity, compassion, and altruism. According to Ayn Rand, a charitable heart is for suckers. Selfishness is the way to go. Lest you think I am exaggerating, one of Ayn Rand's important works, a collection of philosophical essays, is entitled "The Virtue of Selfishness," and it is an extended attack upon the idea of altruism.

Mitt Romney is already well known for his lifelong commitment to ruthless self-enrichment. Governor Rick Perry famously observed during the Republican primary that Mr. Romney devoted his career to the practice of Vulture Capitalism. He would buy up companies and do to them whatever was necessary to extract the most profits for Bain Capital and its investors, even when that meant firing workers, outsourcing jobs, and loading up companies with so much debt that they were forced to declare bankruptcy. When companies would fail, Bain and Mr. Romney often extracted massive profits.

There is nothing illegal about these practices. But there is nothing admirable about them either. Many Americans go into business in order to build something -- they make money while also creating jobs and contributing to their communities. Just so, some venture capitalists approach their work with the spirit and desire to strengthen institutions at the same time they make a profit. That was not Bain Capital. As Americans have learned more about how Mr. Romney made his money at Bain, Mr. Romney has talked about Bain less, apparently discovering that "I didn't break the law" is not much of a message. With questions still unanswered about how much or how little Mr. Romney paid in taxes on his hundreds of millions of dollars in Bain profits, the Romney campaign has become desperate to change the conversation.

Enter Paul Ryan. The selection of a running mate always makes a splash, and Representative Ryan is having his moment in the spotlight. Youthful, handsome, with blue eyes and a quick mind, Mr. Ryan has created a flurry of excitement on the far Right. But Mr. Romney's selection of Paul Ryan has ensured that the focus of this election will remain squarely on the values that both men would bring to the White House. And Mr. Ryan has told us what his governing value would be: Ayn Rand's brand of Selfishness.

Paul Ryan has identified Ayn Rand as his greatest inspiration. Her work has shaped his thinking more than any other single person, throughout his career in politics. Mr. Ryan has made campaign videos extolling the work of Ayn Rand, saying that Rand's writings are "sorely needed" in today's America. According to Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand "more than anyone else" understood "the morality of Capitalism."

That morality is one of selfishness -- the selfishness of the rich, the selfishness of the corporation, the selfishness of the powerful -- joined with utter contempt for the virtues of charity, community, and the imperative to love your neighbor as yourself. Ayn Rand's response to the second of Christ's "greatest commandments" would have been "Forget that. What's mine is mine. You can't have any." That is the "morality of Capitalism" that Paul Ryan is urging upon America. It is a perfect fit for the Vulture Capitalism that Mitt Romney practiced for decades.

Ayn Rand spent a lot of time attacking government programs that are based on a public-minded spirit -- programs like Social Security and Medicare, which aim to ensure that everyone can lead a stable and dignified life in their later years, even if they are not wealthy. Politicians like Paul Ryan often emphasize Rand's attacks on government when they invoke her name. But make no mistake: Private acts of altruism and charity were equally pathetic and worthless to Ayn Rand. If a disaster struck your community, would you pitch in to help your neighbors, doing what you could to make sure they were safe and had adequate food and shelter? Ayn Rand would ask, "What's in it for me? Where's my profit?" Hers was the Vulture Capitalist response.

What does the Romney-Ryan-Rand worldview mean for you in practical terms? The answer is straightforward.

Did half your retirement disappear because high-flying Wall Street investors made risky gambles and left you paying the tab? Romney, Ryan and Rand say, "If you weren't keeping tabs on the Wall Street investors then it's your own fault. They didn't break any laws when they made that money."

Did a predatory lender dupe you into taking a sub-prime mortgage that you couldn't afford, leaving you with balloon payments that forced you into foreclosure? Romney, Ryan and Rand say, "If you couldn't outwit the mortgage broker or predict the collapse of the housing market then it's your own fault. You deserve to go into foreclosure when the market hits bottom."

Did you lose your job because a company had to close its doors, or outsourced your job to another country, leaving you unable to find work? Romney, Ryan and Rand say, "If you aren't a valuable enough worker, then it's your own fault. Corporations are people, my friend, and they're just looking to make a profit. Maybe your parents will lend you some money."

Maya Angelou warned us: "Believe people when they tell you who they are. They know themselves better than you do." Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have told us exactly who they are. The American people would do well to listen.

Of course people also do a lot of fudging and outright lying about who they are. Occasionally, though, they do tell us, and as T says, the least we can do is listen.

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