Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand

[Katzndogz]

It is quite simple. This election is about the direction of the nation. Those who want that direction to be toward Saul Alinsky should vote for obama.

 

[Dot Com]

Ayn Rand - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Author Flannery O'Connor wrote in a letter to a friend that "The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail."

On the 100th anniversary of Rand's birth in 2005, Edward Rothstein, writing for The New York Times, referred to her fictional writing as quaint utopian "retro fantasy" and programmatic neo-Romanticism of the misunderstood artist, while criticizing her characters' "isolated rejection of democratic society".[142] In 2007, book critic Leslie Clark described her fiction as "romance novels with a patina of pseudo-philosophy".[143] In 2009, GQ's critic columnist Tom Carson described her books as "capitalism's version of middlebrow religious novels" such as Ben-Hur and the Left Behind series

sounds about right

 

[Luddly Neddite]

Interesting little factoid about Ayn Rand is that even when she got lung cancer, she threw out her opinions about government and got SS and Medicare under her married name. She also said she did not believe science was correct that cigarettes were a causative factor in illness. Her friends refused to take money from a system they hated but hypocrite Rand didn't hesitate.

Sound familiar?

She also idolized a serial killer and based some of her characters on him.

Anyone who wants to know more about the REAL Ayn Rand instead of the empty caricature we hear about, read 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, author McConnell. Much more interesting than her sophomoric books.

 

[Intense]

Bad Fiction? The FountainHead? Atlas Shrugged? Have you even read the Books? Shame on you. What did you think of 1984? Animal Farm? Future Shock? Soylent Green?

The one and only Rand book I read..was the Fountainhead. And I only got through 3/4 of it because I wanted to tear it to pieces.

But it was on loaner to me from a girl I was dating at the time who thought that I was alot like Howard Rourke.

Yeah, I get that.

To the unformed mind, she was interesting. To anyone able to think for themselves, she was anything but.

Funny how some idolize a pro-abortion, pro-nazi doofus.

But then, they hate a man who worked to make life better for children and women and men who were being worked to death by the 1% of his day. That would be, of course, Saul Alinsky.

I have to admit that I didn't know who Alinsky was until the R's went nuts against him. Turns out he was pretty much everything that America is about - all Americans should be able to vote - like Obama believes but the opposite of what some R's believe and work against. He was dead set against Communism - like Obama and he was anti-racism.

Being against him is truly anti-America. If he were alive today, he would still be fighting against voter suppression, just as did then. He would also be fighting against Newt Gingrich saying children should work.

Opening page - Dedication





“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history... the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”

Prologue

"The Revolutionary force today has two targets, moral as well as material. Its young protagonists are one moment reminiscent of the idealistic early Christians, yet they also urge violence and cry, 'Burn the system down!' They have no illusions about the system, but plenty of illusions about the way to change our world. It is to this point that I have written this book."

1. The Purpose

In this book we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace.... "Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.' This means revolution." p.3

"Radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel a road not of their choosing." p.6

"A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage -- the political paradise of communism." p.10

"An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth -- truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations...." pp.10-11

Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals

 

[jwatts195]

if you're wealthy sure she lots to offer

 

[ScreamingEagle]

I wonder if Ryan indicates she is some sort of deity by capitalizing the first letter of a pronoun that refers to her. As I understand it, he no longer requires his staff read her books. Nonetheless, he's a fruitcake for basing so much of his life on a writer of bad fiction.

Bad Fiction? The FountainHead? Atlas Shrugged? Have you even read the Books? Shame on you. What did you think of 1984? Animal Farm? Future Shock? Soylent Green?

The one and only Rand book I read..was the Fountainhead. And I only got through 3/4 of it because I wanted to tear it to pieces.

But it was on loaner to me from a girl I was dating at the time who thought that I was alot like Howard Rourke.

i see you keep company with those of similar intelligence.....

 

[ScreamingEagle]

Interesting little factoid about Ayn Rand is that even when she got lung cancer, she threw out her opinions about government and got SS and Medicare under her married name. She also said she did not believe science was correct that cigarettes were a causative factor in illness. Her friends refused to take money from a system they hated but hypocrite Rand didn't hesitate.

Sound familiar?

She also idolized a serial killer and based some of her characters on him.

Anyone who wants to know more about the REAL Ayn Rand instead of the empty caricature we hear about, read 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, author McConnell. Much more interesting than her sophomoric books.

typical liberal approach......attack the person who wrote about the idea instead of the idea itself......can't you come up with some more pertinent and substantial attacks.....?

 

[ABikerSailor]

There is a distinct difference between you and me....

I don't make snap judgements or assumptions about others, particularly those I've not met [you and I would be a good example of that] nor do I allow others to form opinions for me.

The full character, the totality of a man is not based on a single element occurring withing that life. The reading of a single book no more defines Ryan than attending the church of Jeremiah Wright can fully define Obama.

We are influenced all thru life by an abundance of events and Ryan has stated that he was led to the study of economics while in college by Rand's economic principles, not her objectivism philosophy.

You are perfectly free, if you wish, to attempt to reduce Ryan to a single element within the narrowest of views.

I prefer a broader examination of the totality of the man.

But it appears the liberal attempt to find personal dirt on this man has left them with only this one very weak argument.

You might not, but the GOP sure as hell does, because they said that Obama was influenced by his father (who he never met), or saying that Obama isn't American because he attended Rev. Wright's church, or telling people that he doesn't have an American viewpoint because it's influenced by the way Britian did things in Kenya.

But yeah..................Ryan did say that the whole reason he got into politics was because of the writings of Rand (specifically Atlas Shrugged), and he thought that the economic policies in a fictional land BY A FICTION WRITER is something he based his world view on.

I'm half expecting Romney to tell us that the whole reason he got into politics was because of a work of fiction that he read which showed how a society should work, and then names 1984.

Maybe he'd refer to Animal Farm, because of course, all animals are equal, just some are a little more equal.

 

[midcan5]

Read Albert Camus or Dostoevsky instead. I liked this blog piece check it out.

"One thing to note. Even after I’d finished Atlas Shrugged I still had no idea Ayn Rand was a philosopher. All I knew was that she had written a very long and very dull book. Reading Atlas Shrugged taught me something about The Fountainhead though.

It was a bad book too.

And from this I concluded that Ayn Rand was a bad writer.

I can’t remember when I learned that a lot of people overlooked her bad writing on the grounds that she was a philosopher and what her philosophy was. Before I got to grad school, I think. I immediately spotted two things wrong here.

Nobody had to excuse Camus’ writing.

And there was an obvious flaw in her thinking. Rand assumed it would be self-evident to everyone just who was a Howard Roark or a John Galt and who was not. It didn’t occur to her, or didn’t matter to her, that her philosophy of selfishness and self-indulgent narcissism would appeal to every self-infatuated little prick looking for an excuse to be as selfish and contemptuous of social norms as he liked. For every true Galt and Roark there would be dozens of “parasites” and “mediocrities” who believed Rand had given them permission to be sociopaths and treat other people as “mediocrities” and “parasites” without regard for their rights, needs, or feelings.

What kind of world would we be living in if every selfish, self-infatuated little prick decided he was a Howard Roark or a John Galt?

Seemed to me Dostoevsky had already asked and answered that one.

A world in which selfish, self-infatuated little pricks take axes to the heads of little old ladies.

Dostoevsky would probably point out that Crime and Punishment can be read as a parable.

So that was it. Bad writer. Lunatic thinker. Nothing else to see here. Move along.

For a long while afterwards the only time I thought about Ayn Rand was when I thought about that girl back in college.

I knew her books were still widely read, that they even turned up on high school and college reading lists. But I figured it was for the same reason that students and scholars still read Mein Kampf and The Prince, for the historical interest.

It wasn’t until I started spending time reading blogs that I found out that there were people reading Rand’s work and taking it seriously."

Lance Mannion: For the love of Ayn Rand

 

[William Joyce]

Supposedly the queen of the objectivists, Ayn Rand, was a big influence on Paul Ryan in college. He has since distanced himself from her thinking. Rand championed uber-individualism over collectivism (she was actually Alice Rosenthal or something, a Russian-born Jew, I believe).

Does Ayn Rand have anything to contribute to modern policy? Is "self" the ultimate temporal reality?

What does Rand's religion have to do with anything??

Jews exhibit a pattern of being radical intellectual freelancers, and I personally wonder if this isn't part of the Ayn Rand/Alice Rosenthal phenomenon. She is part of what Kevin MacDonald would call "the culture of critique", i.e., she offers a radical critique of the status quo. Not necessarily good or bad, but to be observed. Of course, Marxism itself is a Jewish invention, but on the other hand, so is... objectivism. Are they opposite credos? Or simply different flavors of Jewish attack on the Western status quo?

I am simply advising putting the views of any Jew into perspective: they LOVE to tear down and destroy closely-held beliefs and they revel in upsetting the apple cart. Not always a bad thing, but to be kept in mind when you're weighing the sincerity of what they say. Bernard Nathanson was a prominent abortion doctor, Jewish. He later came out as one of the most fervent abortion opponents. Change of heart? Or was he always just... Jewish, able to excel at whatever view he took on, even if it flipped 180 degrees? Ditto for David Horowitz: he was a lefty with the Black Panthers in the 60's, now he edits right-wing Front Page.com

Whites like Paul Ryan tend to take up idea propounded by the Rands of the world with zeal, not realizing that the propounders themselves were never that serious to begin with.

 

[Pheonixops]

Ryan got his ass kicked regarding Ayn Rand a few months back. Listen to Ayn explain her feelings about abortion.

Ayn Rand on Abortion - YouTube

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmW19uoyuO8]Paul Ryan on Ayn Rand - YouTube[/ame]

Then when called on this by the Catholic Bishops, said that he was an admirer St. Aguines. However, never has he required his staffers to read St. Aquinas as he has required them to read Ayn Rand. This is not a man I would want a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

Here's a little bit on St. Thomas Aquinas it's a good and interesting read.

 

[Pheonixops]

If that's all true and accurate that's pretty funny.

 

[ScreamingEagle]

I think Rand was quite serious as her novels reflect the American ideal of individualism vs collectivism.....she drew from the reality she experienced in her homeland when Russia was taken over by communists...she experienced "...the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."

Ayn Rand grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia.....she experienced the Bolshevik Revolution and the following period of darkness as communism took over freedom.....her father's business was confiscated and they experienced near-starvation. She took American history in high school and thought it to be a model for free men. Later she attended college at Petrograv University majoring in philosophy and history where she witnessed communist thugs take over free thinking...

She got out by taking a "short trip" to America to visit relatives.....and never returned...

 

[Peach]

Well, that is what he states. Does Ryan still require his staffers to read Rand? Bet that order still stands. A little information on Ayn Rand;

Romancing the Stone-Cold Killer: Ayn Rand and William Hickman | Michael Prescott

Objectivism is just CHILDISH, SELF CENTERED, SELFISHNESS wrapped up in a few long words to impress the C students.

 

[swizzlee]

I'm not "the GOP."

Nor am I a lemming believing everything that comes spewing forth from Pub talking heads. They are paid to put forth a partisan view just as the Dems do. But I have no doubt, reading and listening to Ryan, that Rand had an influence on the occupational direction of his life. Nothing more. Idolized her? Worshipped at her feet? Defined his "world view"? Hardly.

I feel sorry for those, no matter the party, who have so little understanding of the complexity of man, that they believe one's life can be reduced to a simple sound byte. They are the life blood of the talking heads, the true Koolaid drinkers, the lemmings unable to think for themselves in order to form an educated opinion.

 

[Vidi]

Personally Ayn Rand offers a view of existence so bleak and heartless one has to wonder at her popularity among many on the right. Whittaker Chambers sums her up in the link in the first URL below.

But the individual as the locus and lord of reality and modern life is a powerful meme in American thought. Only in America could a silly kind of Marxism Libertarianism exist. Americans exist in a sort of fantasy that says all this came about from me, Robinson Crusoe without Friday - without history. So yes, the nonsense Rand wrote serves to continue a myth of magic divorced from responsibility for each other. Odd in a nation that calls itself Christian. 'I got mine, tough for you.'

http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean...on-could-be-a-game-changer-2.html#post5810441
http://www.usmessageboard.com/politics/164072-ayn-rand-conservatives-tea-party-republicans.html
http://www.usmessageboard.com/gener...ult-of-selfishness-on-the-american-right.html


"I was raised to be ashamed of my ignorance, and to try to do something about it if at all possible. I carry that burden to this day, and have successfully passed it on to my children. I don’t believe I have the right to an opinion about something I know nothing about—constitutional law, for example, or sailing—a notion that puts me sadly out of step with a growing majority of my countrymen, many of whom may be unable to tell you anything at all about Islam, say, or socialism, or climate change, except that they hate it, are against it, don’t believe in it. Worse still (or more amusing, depending on the day) are those who can tell you, and then offer up a stew of New Age blather, right-wing rant, and bloggers’ speculation that’s so divorced from actual, demonstrable fact, that’s so not true, as the kids would say, that the mind goes numb with wonder. “Way I see it is,” a man in the Tulsa Motel 6 swimming pool told me last summer, “if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for us.” Mark Slouka 'Harper's'

Rands popularity is really quite simple. Her entire philosphy is that of an adolesent. Selfish greed wedded to an overblown sense of worth. When I was a teen, I found Rands philosphy enthralling. I found it to be correct and exactly what this country needed.

And then I grew up and I put away childish things.

Paul Ryan on the other hand lives on the street he grew up on, his brother only a block away. After his father died, Ryan drew on his fathers social security to help put himself through college, where he double majored in Economics and Political Science. From college, he went straight to work in Washington.

Ryan went straight from his sheltered life in Janesville to work in government. He has never had a private sector job as his primary and only source of income ( he worked as a waiter and a fitness trainer to suppliment his income he recieved from the government. ) . In fact, as his double major indicates, his goal has always been government.


When the 2008 meltdown occured, Paul Ryan voted AGAINST the GM loan. That had consequences. GM closed the plant in his hometown of Janesville, WI. 3800 middle class jobs lost and Ryan did nothing. Though to his credit, Ryan did vote against the extention of unemployemnt benefits for those same 3800 workers.

In his 13 years in the House, Ryan has passed just two pieces of legislation. The first, in 2000, changed the name of a post office, the second, in 2008 while the country was in full on economic meltdown, changed the way an excise tax was levied on arrows.

At a salary of $174,000 a year, the American taxpayer has paid Paul Ryan 2.26 million dollars, or 1.13 million dollars per piece of legislation. At his current rate of production, if Paul Ryan stays in the House, we should expect to see his next great piece of legislation sometime in 2016.

Ryan, as a foloower of Rands philosophy, believes that a man should only be entitled to that which is produced by his own hand. What has Paul Ryans hand produced? Ryan has said that he believes that welfare, unemployment, social security, medicare are all things the governemnt should not be doing. All things that he wishes to privatize, because government is the problem, NOT the solution.

Yet, the government gave him his fathers social security money so Ryan could got to school. Ryan chose majors which would lead him directly into government. He has never had to rely on a private sector paycheck as his main source of income. And the sweat from Paul Ryans brow produced only 2 pieces of legistlation in 13 years.

 

[flacaltenn]

She's kind of like Rand Paul and Paul Ryan. All three taking government money and benefits while telling others it's evil because it steals from others.

Ayn Rand has nothing at all to offer. Her philosophy Objectivism is the celebration of the sociopath, nothing more. In the end, she was just like every other fool who proclaims boldly that everyone must fend for themselves or be labeled parasite, she took government assistance...to pay for her medical treatments...for lung cancer...because she smoked.

When Ayn was found out, her lawyer said:



Aint it great when the hypocrites are found out?




( and yes, I have read The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged and We, The Living. Ive read some of her non fiction as well as several books by her follower and one time lover, Nathaiel Branden.

Objectivism is a joke. )

It IS evil to steal from others.

Asking that others not steal from you is not.

There's nothing hypocritical at all there Vidi? What's the name on her grave marker? Is it Ayn Rand or Ayn O'Connor? ((I know the answer)). Which is her name for IRS reporting?

Taking Medicare and Social Security is NOT hypocritical unless you're a leftist that thinks these programs are just for the needy but DEMANDS that everyone participate.. Ayn Rand was FORCED to participate in these programs as am I. That's why I intend to collect. Because coercion was used on me and I intend to get my share of the benefit.

And all that speculation about whether she could have paid for it is pretty useless and apparently VERY wrong.

Classically Liberal: Lying about Ayn Rand and Social Security

in 1966 Rand's Objectivist Newsletter said that not collecting from programs that one is forced to finance would be wrong. It said:

[B]...the victims, who opposed such laws, have a clear right to any refund of their own money—and they would not advance the cause of freedom if they left their money unclaimed, for the benefit of the welfare-state administration.[/B]

<<Amen>>

The AlterNet smear also claimed that Rand said that the link between smoking and cancer was a hoax. She actually never said that. She said she was not convinced that the case had been made, and at the time it hadn't been fully made. She never said it was a hoax and she stopped smoking instantly when her physician showed her a dark spot on her own lung's x-ray.


According to AlterNet one Evva Joan Pryor, "who had been a social worker in New Yorker" said that "I remember telling her that this was going to be difficult. For me to do my job she had to recognize that there were exceptions to her theory." What job was that? Well, if you believe AlterNet she was "social worker" during this period. The implication being that Rand had to seek out a social worker to help her. Some smear-mongers of Rand have argued with me that she died penniless as the result of the evils of capitalism and that was why she sought out this social worker.


Pryor was NOT a social worker. She worked for the law firm of Ernst, Crane Gitlin & Winick which handled all legal matters for Rand. Nor was Rand penniless or in need. She was penniless when she arrived in America but during this period she had cash reserves of a few hundred thousand dollars and a steady income from book royalties.

Rand had sufficient resources to cover the health issues she faced. In fact, she had sufficient funds to pay for heart surgery for her brother-in-law from Russia. Rand's estate had a substantial sum of cash at the time of Rand's death indicating that Pryor's concerns that health costs could "bankrupt" Rand never took place. And, since Pryor argued that Rand should have these things in case health care bankrupted her, it is entirely possible that Rand never got a cent. We just don't know. But if she did, there is nothing to attack her over either.

Leftists will stop at nothing including lying and misrepresention when discussing this lady. At the same time AVOIDING discussion of the ideas and concepts she presented.

May I suggest that once you've caught a sewer like "Boing Boing" lying to you THIS immensely --- that you should consider going to the library instead...

 

[flacaltenn]

Rands popularity is really quite simple. Her entire philosphy is that of an adolesent. Selfish greed wedded to an overblown sense of worth. When I was a teen, I found Rands philosphy enthralling. I found it to be correct and exactly what this country needed.

And then I grew up and I put away childish things.

Pardon me -- if I don't give a rat about Paul Ryan or his review of Ayn Rand. But I DO care about YOUR review Vidi.. Obviously you're quite disturbed about anyone whole heartedly supporting INDIVIDUALISM, logic and Reason over COLLECTIVISM, feelings, and coercion.

If you witnessed as a teenager (as Rand did) , a Marxist regime TAKING your family's pharmacy business and turning your dad into a complete slave for the State -- you'd probably STILL be yearning for "adolescent" ideas about individual freedoms.

Are you GREEDY about your time? Would you object to someone DEMANDING that you spend 2 hours a week LESS on USMB and spending it at a political rally? There's no difference between our choices to spend our lives and the TIME we have allotted and Money and how we share that commodity. You would no doubt RESENT any demand on your TIME that took away from your business, your family, or your pursuits of happiness.
Did I get that right?

So we are ALL GREEDY actually. The argument is just TOO fixated on money.

Funny thing -- Ayn Rand said immensely nasty things about tthe young Libertarian party, yet she is referenced by them as Ryan has done. Her problem with the Lib Party (which was inspired by her literature) was that they were not JUDGEMENTAL ENOUGH. In an attempt to be "Pro-Choice on Everything" -- the Lib Party forgot that you don't HAVE to CONDONE a behaviour to allow it to be legally pursued.

This brings up the side of Objectivism that leftists won't touch with a 10 Meter pole. And that is the idea of "non-coercion" that backs up the philosophy. It's like garlic to vampires as far as the leftists are concerned. And secretly they object MORE to that -- than anything having to do with Greed or Individualism.. It's just that GREED is their favorite target and they wouldn't want to call attention to COERCION now would they???

 

[flacaltenn]

Bad Fiction? The FountainHead? Atlas Shrugged? Have you even read the Books? Shame on you. What did you think of 1984? Animal Farm? Future Shock? Soylent Green?

The one and only Rand book I read..was the Fountainhead. And I only got through 3/4 of it because I wanted to tear it to pieces.

But it was on loaner to me from a girl I was dating at the time who thought that I was alot like Howard Rourke.

i see you keep company with those of similar intelligence.....

Get OUT !!! I've always pictured you as a metrosexual Howard Rourke .... What a coincidence...

 

[ScreamingEagle]

Personally Ayn Rand offers a view of existence so bleak and heartless one has to wonder at her popularity among many on the right. Whittaker Chambers sums her up in the link in the first URL below.

But the individual as the locus and lord of reality and modern life is a powerful meme in American thought. Only in America could a silly kind of Marxism Libertarianism exist. Americans exist in a sort of fantasy that says all this came about from me, Robinson Crusoe without Friday - without history. So yes, the nonsense Rand wrote serves to continue a myth of magic divorced from responsibility for each other. Odd in a nation that calls itself Christian. 'I got mine, tough for you.'

http://www.usmessageboard.com/clean...on-could-be-a-game-changer-2.html#post5810441
http://www.usmessageboard.com/politics/164072-ayn-rand-conservatives-tea-party-republicans.html
http://www.usmessageboard.com/gener...ult-of-selfishness-on-the-american-right.html


"I was raised to be ashamed of my ignorance, and to try to do something about it if at all possible. I carry that burden to this day, and have successfully passed it on to my children. I don’t believe I have the right to an opinion about something I know nothing about—constitutional law, for example, or sailing—a notion that puts me sadly out of step with a growing majority of my countrymen, many of whom may be unable to tell you anything at all about Islam, say, or socialism, or climate change, except that they hate it, are against it, don’t believe in it. Worse still (or more amusing, depending on the day) are those who can tell you, and then offer up a stew of New Age blather, right-wing rant, and bloggers’ speculation that’s so divorced from actual, demonstrable fact, that’s so not true, as the kids would say, that the mind goes numb with wonder. “Way I see it is,” a man in the Tulsa Motel 6 swimming pool told me last summer, “if English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for us.” Mark Slouka 'Harper's'

Rands popularity is really quite simple. Her entire philosphy is that of an adolesent. Selfish greed wedded to an overblown sense of worth. When I was a teen, I found Rands philosphy enthralling. I found it to be correct and exactly what this country needed.

And then I grew up and I put away childish things.

Paul Ryan on the other hand lives on the street he grew up on, his brother only a block away. After his father died, Ryan drew on his fathers social security to help put himself through college, where he double majored in Economics and Political Science. From college, he went straight to work in Washington.

Ryan went straight from his sheltered life in Janesville to work in government. He has never had a private sector job as his primary and only source of income ( he worked as a waiter and a fitness trainer to suppliment his income he recieved from the government. ) . In fact, as his double major indicates, his goal has always been government.


When the 2008 meltdown occured, Paul Ryan voted AGAINST the GM loan. That had consequences. GM closed the plant in his hometown of Janesville, WI. 3800 middle class jobs lost and Ryan did nothing. Though to his credit, Ryan did vote against the extention of unemployemnt benefits for those same 3800 workers.

In his 13 years in the House, Ryan has passed just two pieces of legislation. The first, in 2000, changed the name of a post office, the second, in 2008 while the country was in full on economic meltdown, changed the way an excise tax was levied on arrows.

At a salary of $174,000 a year, the American taxpayer has paid Paul Ryan 2.26 million dollars, or 1.13 million dollars per piece of legislation. At his current rate of production, if Paul Ryan stays in the House, we should expect to see his next great piece of legislation sometime in 2016.

Ryan, as a foloower of Rands philosophy, believes that a man should only be entitled to that which is produced by his own hand. What has Paul Ryans hand produced? Ryan has said that he believes that welfare, unemployment, social security, medicare are all things the governemnt should not be doing. All things that he wishes to privatize, because government is the problem, NOT the solution.

Yet, the government gave him his fathers social security money so Ryan could got to school. Ryan chose majors which would lead him directly into government. He has never had to rely on a private sector paycheck as his main source of income. And the sweat from Paul Ryans brow produced only 2 pieces of legistlation in 13 years.

it's not "adolescent" to believe in freedom and individualism...

A government is the most dangerous threat to man’s rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. -Ayn Rand

Thank God for good men like Paul Ryan who serve this country....all that he has done has led to his being the VP choice and filling the gap for a much-needed American leader to disarm those who would keep citizens victims....