Paul Ryan, the budget plan-toting and P90Xing representative from Wisconsin, was recently chosen by Mitt Romney as his running mate on the Republican ticket, yet a hatred for big government and love of washboard abs aren’t the only things he feels strongly about. Ryan has had a life-long fascination and appreciation of Ayn Rand, author of philosophical novels like “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged.”

“It’s so important that we go back to our roots to look at Ayn Rand’s vision, her writings, to see what our girding, under-grounding [sic] principles are. I always go back to, you know, Francisco d’Anconia’s speech (at Bill Taggart’s wedding) on money when I think about monetary policy. And then I go to the 64-page John Galt speech, you know, on the radio at the end, and go back to a lot of other things that she did, to try and make sure that I can check my premises so that I know that what I’m believing and doing and advancing are square with the key principles of individualism…”

Ryan certainly latched on to Rand’s primary strands of philosophical thought, continuing in his Atlas Society speech “there is no better place to find the moral case for capitalism and individualism than through Ayn Rand’s writings and works.”

Yet now, perhaps in a bid to appeal to independent voters who don't want to hear about Objectivism in the wake of the Great Recession, Ryan has tempered his obsession with Rand, though given his outspoken nature on the topic, it will be a hard sell to convince the population he isn’t sleeping with “The Fountainhead” under his pillow.

“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,” he says.

William Edward Hickman (1908 – October 19, 1928) was an American criminal responsible for the kidnapping, murder and dismemberment of Marion Parker, a 12-year-old girl. The Los Angeles Times referred to Hickman's actions as "the most horrible crime of the 1920's".[1]

In 1928, the writer Ayn Rand began planning a novel called The Little Street, whose hero, Danny Renahan, was to be based on "what Hickman suggested to [her]." The novel was never finished, but Rand wrote notes for it which were published after her death in the book Journals of Ayn Rand. Rand wanted the hero of her novel to be "A Hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me."[3] Rand scholars Chris Matthew Sciabarra and Jennifer Burns both interpret Rand's interest in Hickman as a sign of her early admiration of the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche, especially since she several times referred to Hickman as a "Superman" (in the Nietzschean sense).[4][5]

Originally posted by RealSpoke
reply to post by chasingbrahman

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She worshiped him because he had the ability to not care about others....She praised his psychopathy....normal people do not do that. Do you admire Dahmer for his ability to kill and torture people?