This is the other part of the story not being told ...
Ryan Shrugged
Representative Paul Ryan debunks an “urban legend.”
Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist, recently called Ryan “an Ayn Rand devotee” who wants to “slash benefits for the poor.” New York magazine once alleged that Ryan “requires staffers to read Atlas Shrugged,” Rand’s gospel of capitalism. President Obama has blasted the Ryan budget as Republican “social Darwinism.”
These Rand-related slams, Ryan says, are inaccurate and part of an
effort on the left to paint him as a cold-hearted Objectivist. Ryan’s
actual philosophy, as reported
by my colleague, Brian Bolduc, couldn’t be further from the caricature.
As a practicing Roman Catholic, Ryan says, his faith and moral values
shape his politics as much as his belief in freedom and capitalism does.
“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.
Ryan enjoys bantering about dusty novels, but it’s not really his
bailiwick. Philosophy, he tells me, is critical, but politics is about
more than armchair musing. “This gets to the Jack Kemp in me, for the
lack of a better phrase,” he says — crafting public policy from broad
ideas. “How do you produce prosperity and upward mobility?” he asks.
“How do you attack the root causes of poverty instead of simply treating
its symptoms? And how do you avoid a crisis that is going to hurt the
vulnerable the most — a debt crisis — from ever happening?”
Ryan will try to answer these questions on Thursday in a lecture at
Georgetown University. Over 90 faculty members at the university
criticized his views on Catholic social teaching in a letter published
days before his visit to the campus in northwest Washington, D.C.
Father Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit priest at Georgetown, told the Huffington Post that
Ryan’s views do not reflect the tenets of their shared faith. “I am
afraid that Chairman Ryan’s budget reflects the values of his favorite
philosopher Ayn Rand rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said.
“Survival of the fittest may be okay for Social Darwinists but not for
followers of the gospel of compassion and love.”
Ryan quarrels with Reese’s assessment of his philosophy and political
agenda, but he doesn’t mind the debate, and looks forward to detailing
how the House budget he authored will lift poor and middle-income
Americans. “Liberals have accused me of not being a good Catholic,” he
says. “It’s important to try and elevate the tone of this dialogue to a
more civil tone — discussing how we exercise prudential judgment as lay
people in the Catholic Church in public life. I’m delighted to have the
conversation.”
Ryan cites Light of the World,
a book-length interview of Pope Benedict XVI, as an example of how the
Catholic Church takes the global debt problem seriously. “We are living
at the expense of future generations,” the pope says. “In this respect,
it is plain that we are living in untruth.” Ryan takes those words
seriously. “The pope was really clear,” he says.
Ryan’s budget, which was passed by the House earlier this year, cuts
spending and reduces taxes. It also reforms Medicare and Medicaid, he
says, in order to keep them solvent for future generations. But to Ryan,
his plan is more than a fiscal document, meant to tinker with the
bloated federal bureaucracy: It is part of a push to return money and
federal power, as well as certain services where feasible, to the
people.
Ryan mentions the Catholic principle of subsidiarity as an influence
on his thinking. He believes that the best government is a government
closest to the people. He is a strong believer in the power of civil
society, not the federal government, to solve problems. Community
leaders and churches, he says, can often do more for the poor than a
federal bureaucrat who scribbles their names on a check, sustaining
dependency.
Ryan’s goal, with his budget and future projects, will be to “combine
the virtues and principles of solidarity,” which stresses the benefits
of the common good, with subsidiarity. The debt crisis, he says, demands
an effective solution, but that doesn’t directly correlate with
enlarging the federal government or raising taxes. He doesn’t want to
cede that argument to liberals, especially those within his own faith
community. “To me, those two principles are interconnected,” he says. “I
think a lot of folks have been selective in advocating some parts of
the teaching.”
“This is about more than numbers,” Ryan says. “It’s about what kind
of country we want to be, what kind of people we want to be. It’s about
perfecting the American idea — a land of opportunity and upward
mobility. That idea is at risk of being severed for the next generation
if we get it wrong. We’re at a very precarious moment in our nation’s
history. We need to see it for what it is, and it’s important to reapply
those core founding principles which are so consistent with Church
teachings, to get back to an opportunity society with a safety net.”
As our conversation closes, I remind Ryan that last summer, in June
2011, he told me that he wanted to play a “Kemp-like role” in this
presidential campaign. Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who has been touted
as a vice-presidential contender, isn’t interested in playing pundit and
speculating on his chances; but he says nothing has changed since that
earlier comment. Kemp, he says, was a congressional voice who connected
conservatism to the empowerment of the poor. He wants to do the same.
“The way Jack always said it is, you can’t help America’s poor by
making America poor,” Ryan says. “The president’s policies are failing
the poor. We have more of them than ever before. [Liberals] are walking
us toward a debt crisis which will hurt everybody in society. We know
this and see it and have a moral obligation to prevent it.”
“It’s important for conservatives to never cede the moral high
ground,” he says. “We shouldn’t and we don’t have to. We have just as
equal a claim.”
— Robert Costa is a political reporter for National Review.
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