Paul Ryan is one of the most seriously deranged and dangerous individuals in contemporary government, and the very idea of his being one dressage accident away from the Presidency fills Mr. Blunt and Cranky with dread. Ryan’s personal ideology is hugely wacked-out, but hidden behind an earnest exterior and Eddie Munster hairdo, so most Americans are not aware of just how great a threat he poses to us as citizens, and to the future of our nation as a whole.
“Conservative” Catholics (and like-minded Christians of other varieties) tend to cherry-pick biblical verses that align with their prejudices and make life easier for themselves: take one part Jesus, two parts Paul, add a dash of Leviticus, mix vigorously and voila! Custom-made theological comfort food. That is, b y the way, a pretty fair representation of the formula used by the Conference of Catholic Bishops, Southern Baptists and others who oppose choice, and support the destruction of the safety net and the abolition of the separation of Church and State. By trolling the Bible and selecting which bits and bobs suit their existing natures, they can come up with a way to call themselves Christians without having to work too hard at all that difficult loving, non-judging, forgiving stuff.
Paul Ryan adds a scary new dimension to this paradigm. To the selflessness of Jesus, and the sternness of Paul and the Old Testament, he adds the selfishness and Atheism of Ayn Rand. This allows him to think himself a Christian while allowing the poor to starve, women to be abused, minorities oppressed and so on. He can apply Atheistic Darwinian Ayn Rand thinking to anyone he doesn’t like or want to deal with, and the Christian bits to those that he does like. If you think about it, this is a very succinct and cogent analysis of Paul Ryan and his growing legion of adherents. It also explains how someone who claims to be a Catholic can take the seemingly heartless and anti-Christian (indeed, sometimes inhumane) positions that Ryan espouses.
Yes, we know, he claims to embrace Ayn Rand’s egocentric and socially Darwinian philosophy while rejecting her Atheism. Unfortunately, it is impossible to do this. Don’t believe it? Read her books. Then read the Gospels. They are fundamentally incompatible. What Ryan is doing is intellectually, morally, spiritually and constitutionally inconsistent, and the fact that he is able to think in such a manner indicates that he has some pretty serious mental competency issues.
The reason this is dangerous? Americans come with values and belief systems aplenty, but you would be hard-pressed to find, say, a Hasidic pagan. Or a Moslem running a pork barbecue. Such self-contradictory attitudes are clearly ridiculous, and would be laugh-lines in a comedy sketch at best; but never a seriously considered moral code. Ryan’s contradiction goes beyond even those crazy examples: he simultaneously acts on a belief in God and the absence of God, and further seems quite comfortable with that. The man is a lunatic, plain and simple: too, Ryan intends to impose his insane “moral” views upon the rest of us, whether we like it or not.
Abortion? He picks Paul over Ayn. Feeding the poor? He picks Ayn over Jesus. The Constitutional guarantees of equality? Ayn over the Bible and the law of the land. And so on. Whatever is easier, more comfortable, or enhances his wealth or that of his family and friends, that is what he considers moral at any given time.
No one, be they Atheist or religious, can count on Paul Ryan. He will flip-flop and switch sides as it suits him and his paymasters. Whatever he wants to do at any moment, he can find a source within one of his contradictory value sources to justify his greedy, egotistical, self-centered mood du jour. Beyond one single constant (“What’s good for Paul is good for the nation”), he cannot be predicted, and thus he cannot be trusted.
An Atheistic Christian for President? If you are not scared s***less by that prospect, you are not paying attention.
Mr. B & C
bluntandcranky 