Friday, September 07, 2012

Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand, and Catholic Charity

I'm probably a bit overly attentive to this than most people are, but as a Catholic who was quite turned off by Ayn Rand's dismissiveness of Christian charity (hell, ANY charity) in her objectivist philosophy, I find it quite curious that Paul Ryan thought it fit to provide his Congressional staff with gifts of that avowed atheist's book "Atlas Shrugged" rather than a copy of the bible or Saint Augustine's "City of God" or even G.K. Chesterton's "Orthodoxy."

To me, if he absolutely had to put essential reading materials into the hands of his staff as one of his first actions with his staff and as a signal of the values he hoped to inculcate in his office culture, his decision to privilege Rand's and her godless selfishness over God and His call for self-sacrificial charity in what to push his staff to read tells me a good bit about his moral priorities, none of it all that admirable.

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