_NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE_ (http://www.nationalreview.com/)
_Ryan Shrugged_
(http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/297023/ryan-shrugged-robert-costa)
By _Robert Costa_ (http://www.nationalreview.com/author/385)
_April 26, 2012 4:00 A.M._
(http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/297023/ryan-shrugged-robert-costa)
‘You know you’ve arrived in politics when you have an urban legend about
you, and this one is mine,” chuckles Representative Paul Ryan, the Budget
Committee chairman, as we discuss his purported obsession with author and
philosopher Ayn Rand.
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_
(http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/295806/ryan-isn-t-randian-brian-bolduc)
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_
(http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/297023#) 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_
(http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/297023#) 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_ (http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/297023#) 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_
(http://www.nationalreview.com/redirect/amazon.p?j=1586176064) , a book-length
_interview_
(http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/297023#) 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.”
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
