• • Obama’s Case for Gay Marriage Shows That Invoking Faith Isn’t Just for Conservatives Any 
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Syndicated  | Nearly all of the Republican congressional leaders are Catholic, and they have been made particularly uncomfortable by the resurgence of an active Catholic opposition on the left. Last year, the head of Catholics United approached Ryan with a Bible and asked him to spend more time reading the Book of Matthew than Ayn Rand, who Ryan has said inspired him to enter public service. Video cameras captured Ryan awkwardly speed-walking away from the proffered Bible and into a waiting SUV.      View blog reactions

• • The end of ‘compassionate conservatism’? 
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Syndicated  | The Tea Party movement has embraced what political writer Jill Lawrence calls “Darwinian conservatism.” You could also call it “Ayn Rand conservatism,” after the libertarian philosopher whose work many congressional Republicans praise. In 2010, Republican Senate candidates attacked programs such as Social Security, student loans and unemployment benefits, saying they made Americans lazy.      View blog reactions

• • • Articles of Faith: Did Austerity Politics Kill Compassionate Conservatism? 
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Altruism  |Atheism  |Capitalism  |Egoism  | Marvin Olasky, widely credited as the author of compassionate conservatism and editor of the conservative evangelical magazine WORLD, is still around. And he’s displeased enough with the GOP’s current leadership to rebuke them for embracing the individualism of Ayn Rand. “For nearly a decade Democrats have sought a religious wedge issue that could separate big chunks of white evangelical voters from their Republican home,” Olasky wrote in July. “Now they’ve found it, and are thrusting at the Social Darwinist/Ayn Rand underbelly of American conservatism.”      View blog reactions

• • • Paul Ryan’s Ayn Rand Problem 
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Egoism  |Paul Ryan  |Video  | I am fairly certain that when Paul Ryan first decided to publicly share his admiration of Ayn Rand, he could not have imagined it would lead to him speed-walking to his SUV to avoid a young Catholic trying to give him a Bible and telling him to pay more attention to the Gospel of Luke. But that’s what happened Friday morning in downtown Washington after Ryan spoke to the surprisingly smallish crowd gathered for Ralph Reed’s Faith & Freedom Conference.

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• • • Ayn Rand: The GOP’s Godless Philosopher 
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Atheism  |Atlas Shrugged  |The Fountainhead  |Capitalism  |Individualism  | When George W. Bush declared in a 1999 GOP debate that his favorite political philosopher was Jesus, pundits snickered and wondered whether he actually knew any political philosophers. But the answer was politically canny, establishing Bush’s evangelical bona fides with social conservatives. In contrast, the philosopher GOP leaders quote most reverently these days was vehemently anti-religion, and referred to Christian teachings as “evil” and “monstrous.” Awwwwkward. Fortunately for Republicans, most social conservatives haven’t yet made the connection.      View blog reactions