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Selfishness As Virtue: The Narcissistic Politics Of Paul Ryan
by Joe Conason
Often labeled a reformer for his determination to privatize Medicare and Social Security, Paul Ryan on closer inspection appears to be simply another Republican politician like his new patron Mitt Romney whose first priority is his own self-interest.
Both the ideology and the legislation he champions prove that he is utterly sincere in his admiration of Ayn Rand, the kooky libertarian author who elaborated her philosophy in a book candidly titled The Virtue of Selfishness. (The flavor of this 1964 essay collection can be gleaned from its original title, The Fascist New Frontier. Its first draft included a Rand screed that compared President John F. Kennedy with Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.)
Ryan is a millionaire one of the most affluent members of Congress chiefly owing to a series of inheritances from his own family and the family of his wife, an Oklahoma heiress. And like Romney, he would certainly benefit from the tax proposals in the Ryan budget, which provides even greater benefits for wealthy families like his own than the Bush budgets that he supported during the past decade. The Romney-Ryan tickets chief policy preoccupation, in fact, is cutting their own taxes yet again while gutting government functions that serve the middle class (while raising taxes on them).
But the self-serving short-sightedness epitomized by Ryans ideas extends well beyond cutting taxes for himself and people like him. Consider his voting record on energy and environmental issues, where he has been a faithful servant of Big Oil and skeptic of climate change caused by carbon emissions.
Both the ideology and the legislation he champions prove that he is utterly sincere in his admiration of Ayn Rand, the kooky libertarian author who elaborated her philosophy in a book candidly titled The Virtue of Selfishness. (The flavor of this 1964 essay collection can be gleaned from its original title, The Fascist New Frontier. Its first draft included a Rand screed that compared President John F. Kennedy with Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.)
Ryan is a millionaire one of the most affluent members of Congress chiefly owing to a series of inheritances from his own family and the family of his wife, an Oklahoma heiress. And like Romney, he would certainly benefit from the tax proposals in the Ryan budget, which provides even greater benefits for wealthy families like his own than the Bush budgets that he supported during the past decade. The Romney-Ryan tickets chief policy preoccupation, in fact, is cutting their own taxes yet again while gutting government functions that serve the middle class (while raising taxes on them).
But the self-serving short-sightedness epitomized by Ryans ideas extends well beyond cutting taxes for himself and people like him. Consider his voting record on energy and environmental issues, where he has been a faithful servant of Big Oil and skeptic of climate change caused by carbon emissions.
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http://www.nationalmemo.com/selfishness-as-virtue-the-narcissistic-politics-of-paul-ryan/
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Selfishness As Virtue: The Narcissistic Politics Of Paul Ryan (Original Post)
ProfessionalLeftist
Aug 2012
OP
Yep. Non-disordered people grow out of that around 6 years old. Not these guys. n/t
ProfessionalLeftist
Aug 2012
#3
kestrel91316
(51,666 posts)1. Adult selfishness >>>>> sociopathy and malignant narcissism.
Two-year-olds are selfish because they don't know better and think the world revolves around THEM. What's Ryan's excuse?
meow2u3
(24,772 posts)2. He's still two years old--emotionally!
ProfessionalLeftist
(4,982 posts)3. Yep. Non-disordered people grow out of that around 6 years old. Not these guys. n/t