In 2012, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the chair of the House Budget Committee, proposed a budget featuring big tax cuts for the wealthy and draconian cuts for middle- and low-income people. The Urban Institute determined that Ryan's budget would cause as many as 27 million people to be dropped from Medicaid, while cutting reimbursement to hospitals and doctors by 31%.
While he has been in office, Ryan has produced several budgets, all of which have featured severe cuts to the nation's entitlement programs and the transfer of national government obligations for the welfare of the nation's citizens to the states. Ryan's latest unveiling of the House Republicans' agenda for the nation continues that trend line.
The question arises: What was Ryan's formative source for his aversion to the national government having a major role in securing the welfare of the nation's people? Paul Ryan is a devotee of Ayn Rand, who after suffering a traumatic upbringing in Russia, then the major component of the Soviet Union, rose to become the founder and proponent of an extreme individualistic creed, which she called "Objectavism." The creed specifies that people should not be bound by moral concerns and should embrace their rapacious self-interest. Greed is good, and altruism -- which she taught to be the motivating impulse of the Bolsheviks -- was the stuff of evil.
It is acknowledged that an unrestrained state can become a tyrannical force but so can extreme individualism.
Rep. Ryan has put himself in an unsustainable position with his recent characterization that Donald Trump's assault on Judge Gonzalo Curiel is "a textbook case of racism." Trump has more recently said that even Muslim judges might not be able to render impartial justice. How can Ryan continue to support and pledge to vote for Donald Trump, who has made so many racist statements and has a long history of extreme disparagement of women?
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