From the FB page of my graduate student Dan McCool…
Paul Ryan: “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.”
Ludwig von Mises to Ayn Rand: “You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the efforts of men who are better than you.”
Update (9:15 pm)
Another FB friend, Kevin Fathi, points me to this letter from Cornell political scientist Ted Lowi to the New York Times, reminiscing about what Hayek said about Rand:
Back in 1961, Friedrich A. Hayek was visiting Cornell, and he graciously accepted my invitation to speak to my political economy class. His comments were not on the free market but rather on the rule of law. Afterward, he took questions, which were mostly about Ayn Rand and “Atlas Shrugged.” The leading questions were “What was Rand really like?” and “What is your evaluation of ‘Atlas Shrugged’?”
Hayek’s responses took on the style of a confession. “Although I tried seriously to read the book, I failed, because there was no romance in it,” he said. “I tried even more diligently to read that fellow John Galt’s hundred-page declaration of independence, and I knew I’d be questioned on all that, but I just couldn’t get through it.”
As for Rand, he said he had met her only once, quite recently, at a party given in their honor — “and you should never have two lions at the same party.” The host eagerly brought the two together for the introduction. Here are the results, to the best of my memory: “We had a very brief exchange. She swelled in anger and spun away, remaining only long enough to say, ‘You are a compromiser.’ ” Twenty-five years later, Stephen Newman, a professor of political science at York University in Canada, innocently provided the explanation for Rand’s animosity with the title of his book: “Liberalism at Wits’ End.”
Update (10:30 pm)
Dan McCool’s brother Jason gives us a pictorial representation.
Wow. Ayn Rand is known to have had absolute disgust for anyone who is a “public servant.” Regardless of your stance on her, this is uncontroversial. Is Ryan dumb or is he making some underhanded irony here? Indeed, this is the first google result for “ayn rand on public service -”paul ryan”": http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5310
The Institute with her namesake got it right, why can’t Ryan? Perhaps academic factuality would be too “elitist” of him.
“or is he making some underhanded irony here”
Add to the jadedly ironic his making a point to be noted for listening to Rage Against the Machine:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/ryan_worked_his_way_up_to_big_cheese_UzroYJfqgfRDcDKXgljU0O?utm_medium=rss&utm_content=National
LOLZ.
I love me some of that cuddly Rand.
Unbelievable VP pick. Please get all over this. Use your Corey Robin powers for good, not evil, and tear the crap out of this guy and his vile ideology. Albeit, you’ve already made a contribution with your wonderful Rand chapter. I just can’t believe this fascistic garbage is so popular again all of a sudden. Scary, revolting — and stupid!, at least Leo Strauss was smart/a genius — stuff is happening. I didn’t used to think it was this bad but ill fares the land, indeed.
Here is Mark Ames’ piece which connects Rand’s philosophico-ethical sociopathy with just plain old sociopathy.
hmmm…can’t do an href eh? Here’s the link in all it’s raw glory:
WHAT?! Oh well. Go to or google ‘Exiledoneline.com’
Exiled On Line just updated its Ryan ‘coverage’ – well worth a visit there if you haven’t been (no I don’t blog there or profit from it, etc.).
heres another attempt at posting a link
How do we reconcile this with the Law of Comparative Advantage? If I’m trading in a free market with men who are better than me, don’t I have to be benefiting them just as they are benefiting me? And therefore, don’t my superiors owe exactly as much improvement to their inferiors as my fellow inferiors owe to our superiors?
I had no idea Hayek would be such an astute literary critic! I might complain a bit about his use of the word “romance,” although I know exactly what he means. “Passion” would have been a better word. Rand’s characters seem only to have a kind of brittle intellectual passion that I’ve never seen in the real world. Who else but Rand thinks the ultimate first date is a rape?
Paul Ryan in one short vid. Laughing and joking as a 71 year old constituant is thrown to the ground and handcuffed for challenging Ryan.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/08/11/paul-ryan-cracks-joke-as-71-year-old-citizen-is-forced-to-the-ground-videos/