Ayn, Under The Bus, Bitch!

Oh my, Ayn - you've gone and gotten known and now your acolytes will have to ditch you.  Paul Ryan may want to make an urban myth out of his statement regarding Ayn:

"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," Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead." ...

At the Rand celebration he spoke at in 2005, Ryan invoked the central theme of Rand's writings when he told his audience that, "Almost every fight we are involved in here on Capitol Hill ... is a fight that usually comes down to one conflict--individualism versus collectivism."

Since the Jesuits made a bit of a deal about Ayn's atheism and creed of greed and her link to Paul Ryan's budget ideas his outfit has been flailing around a bit.  He informed those Jesuitical god-botherers that the Church's ideas about the poor had spit to do with government - unlike unmentionable lady-parts - and nothing to do with opposing big government.  There was still that bit about Ayn floating around where the religious whacks he counts on might see it so:

 “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."

 So, I guess he'll no longer be handing out copies of her junk novels as Christmas gifts and requiring interns to read them.  Do you suppose he's been watching Mitt deny ever having anything to do with anything he stood for when it became momentarily inconvenient and he also figures nobody'll notice?

*BTW, I'm no religious scholar but I'd bet Thomas Aquinas would kick Paul's ass for using him this way.

Chris Matthews is no hero of mine but he asked a question (paraphrased) that I'd like an answer to as well, 'How do you reconcile the idea that the way to get poor people to work harder is to cut their money and to get the rich to work harder is to let them have more money?'

( I used to be able to manage fonts - now?)