Paul Ryan is trying to shrug off reports that he is a cold, heartless, Rand devotee.
“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.
This is despite the reports that her books were required reading for his staffers.
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I don’t see any news there. I require myself to read all kinds of stuff I don’t agree with. What’s the deal?
I’m all for Rand being required reading for all congressional staffers. I think what is happening is that liberals are trying to use Ryan’s like of Rand to paint him as an extremist, and he is having to walk back his previous somewhat fawning comments about her.