Paul Ryan forces staff to read works of Russian atheist

by David Safier

Frankly, I am shocked to hear that Congressman Paul Ryan, who calls himself a conservative Republican and is the author of the Republican House budget plan, makes his staff read books by Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum. She was born in Russia, then came to this country and used fiction to twist people's minds to accept her atheist, pro-abortion, libertine philosophy.

Rosenbaum was happy to espouse her anti-religion views in the pages of Playboy magazine:

Playboy: Has no religion, in your estimation, ever offered anything of constructive value to human life?

Ayn Rand: Qua religion, no – in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusions of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason. . . . [A]s philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate, but in a very contradictory context and, on a very – how should I say it? – dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith.

And she has made numerous statements supporting abortion, including:

"A piece of protoplasm has no rights — and no life in the human sense of the term."

And:

[B]y ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living."

I won't go into her views on sexual freedom and promiscuity, which are three steps to the left of "Whoopie!"

When she was in the U.S. Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum diguised her Russian origins by using the name Ayn Rand instead.

I only have one question. Is Paul Ryan an unwitting or a witting dupe of Ayn Rand, né Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, whose beliefs fly in the face of so many tenets of the modern conservative movement?

(h/t to Paul Krugman, who reminded me of these strange bedfellows in today's column.)