SHAME ON PAUL RYAN

+Paul Ryan was the guest on Morning Joe, (MSNBC); he was there to sell his book, The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea. Clearly, his philosophy received Joe Scarborough’s full support but he didn’t receive Joe’s endorsement for president. Nevertheless, the show gave Ryan a platform to espouse Ayn Rand seriously faulty beliefs, which are now his. Her ideas were born out of the hate an American immigrant had for the treatment Russia communist authorities gave her family; thus, Paul Ryan’s adopted philosophy is that of a person born in 1905 in St. Petersburg in what was the Russian Empire; there is no place in America for her ideas. Everyone knows Russian communism, as a form of government, failed miserably; redistribution of wealth with destruction of free enterprise does not work. In a more modern era, Fidel Castro proved that on our doorstep in a big way, as we watched. Cubans Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio remind us of this almost daily. It is against human nature not to be able to have opportunity just as it is also against human nature to work hard without commensurate compensation.

It should be obvious that Paul Ryan, like Ayn Rand, takes the extreme views. They intentionally equate socialism with communism with nothing in between. You are either lazy and want to live off the hard work of others (the 47%) or you are hard working, a producer or an entrepreneur (1%). By creating this easy to understand—bumper sticker short—partition of society, you create two moral groups to which you can choose to belong. One is hard working conservative, the other lazy liberals. To Ayn Rand and Paul Ryan, liberty comes from having the freedom to choose which group you want for your identity; dirty lazy, porch setting, welfare recipient liberals or John Wayne, clean, hard working, law-abiding citizen. Ronald Reagan was a prime mover in turning the word ‘liberal’ into a pejorative and tagging conservatives as flag waving patriots; thus, labeling liberals as not only lazy but also cowards.

What Paul Ryan is saying, if you hate communism, you must despise anything that smacks of socialism. Therefore, it is un-American to believe in social programs—f you do move to Russia. However, they, and we as well, seem to forget that we base the entire American system of government on a combination of free enterprise and social programs. Counter to Paul Ryan’s admonition, we want government out of our lives, except for the Pentagon, our constitution demands we have government in our lives; we do not have any reason to vote if the people we vote for do not have anything to do with us. In other words, one man-one vote is nonsense unless the government is in our lives.

Social security has essentially eliminated old age poverty. Affordable Heath Care Act makes health care available to millions who other wise would not have it. Public education has made this country what it is today. The security and Exchange Commission (SEC) makes it safe for old people to invest pension funds in the stock market, which is clearly government “sticking their nose” in our business. Consumer Protection Agency is doing the same thing when it comes to borrowing even small amounts of money. The list of social programs is long; we have a social democracy and as Americans, we are proud of it.

The demand that we “deregulate” is a demand to allow the greedy to have a free hand in the market place. This is so obviously foolish that Paul Ryan should be too ashamed to suggest it. Even more foolish is the idea that if we get rid of government we get rid of taxes. This morning that was Paul Ryan’s theme. If we cut welfare and force everyone to work; lazy people will have to work to eat; those who lose their jobs will go to work when they get hungry enough; teen age girls will stop getting themselves pregnant (it’s a man world) and having babies before they can support them, paraplegics can work as store greeters, and people who sleep on grates to keep warm can get up and go to college and earn a big salary just as he did. If you do these things, he tells you to do, the tax rate will fall to zero and the nation debt will magically disappear; the hard working people can keep every penny they earn—they worked hard for it; it is their money. The bumper sticker can say “I earned it; I keep it”—cool. Paul Ryan had small government conservative +Joe Scarborough vigorously nodding his head in agreement. It was not cool; it was disgusting. Clearly, Ryan does not want to renew the American idea, as his book title suggests; rather, he wants to destroy it because communism was bad. 

URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated