The Gospel according to Ayn Rand :: Faith in Public Life
Ever since Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) put out his draconian budget proposal that slashes essential programs for the poor and gives big tax breaks to the rich, Ryan's attachment to the works of Ayn Rand has been in the spotlight. Jonathan Chait, in the pages of Newsweek, calls out Ryan for launching a "War on the Weak" and explains "How the GOP came to view the poor as parasites -and the rich as our rightful rulers." The success of this idea that the rich have the right to rule and the poor don't have any right to their help, is due to the popularity of the philosophy of Ayn Rand on the far right. According to Chait, Ryan is "a Rand nut...Ryan once appeared at a gathering to honor her philosophy, where he announced, 'The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.' He continues to view Rand as a lodestar, requiring his staffers to digest her creepy tracts."
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Conservative Christians who support the Ryan version of radical conservatism based on the atheist individualist philosophy of Ayn Rand have some serious questions to ask themselves and these questions are long overdue. The political alliance between Christian evangelicals and the tea party has already been analyzed by pollster Robert Jones as a "shotgun marriage."
