Paul Ryan is a true believer in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
...Rand’s thinking is “sorely needed right now” because we are “living in an Ayn Rand novel” and that “Ayn Rand, more than anyone else, did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism, and this, to me, is what is [sic] matters most.”
In case you’ve never slogged through the book, the story is about hero capitalist makers struggling against the evils of collectivist socialism and parasitic takers who couldn’t survive without them. A super-genius leads a resistance movement to get them to realize all they have to do is walk away and let nature take its course. Throw in some babble about super-science, lots of turgid social commentary, add a dash of rape-fantasy sex, and there you are.
John Rogers 2009 homily on the difference between the Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged continues to age well:
-- There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
That fourteen-year old is alive and well inside Ryan. The happy ending of Atlas Shrugged (Spoiler Alert) is this:
The poor oppressed hero capitalists know they have won when they see the lights of New York City go out. Government has collapsed across the country, there’s no transportation left, industry and agriculture have collapsed too, and the rest of the world is in even worse shape. Millions face starvation, disease, and death.
The heroes fly off in their airplanes to their secret hideout somewhere in the Rockies to wait for the mass die-offs. Once all the inconvenient takers are out of the way, they will return to the world to remake it to their hearts desire, no longer oppressed by having to give a damn about anyone but themselves.
Ryan’s may be leaving Congress, but he’s still going to do everything he can to free the rich from the burdens of having to support the rest of us. Cutting their taxes so there will be no money for Social Security or Medicare (but plenty for the military) may not be as dramatic as the ending of Atlas Shrugged, but he’ll take what he can get.
And who knows? Donald Trump, the epitome of selfishness, may yet pull off that collapse. So much winning...