Ayn Rand, Mike Wallace and Wisconsin

Rand is the reason Paul Ryan went into politics

'Very few of us are worthy of love.'

No, the line is not from a tape of David Prosser talking to his brethren.

It's from Ayn Rand, the macabre muse of the moment for Paul Ryan [Ryan requires staffers to read Rand and calls Rand "the reason I got involved in public service"], Rick Perry and the GOPartiers who assure us that getting rid of Social Security and Medicare/caid is necessary to save America and advance "rational" morality.

Paul Ryan, Rick Perry and Scott Walker are so out-of-touch that it's hard to believe these guys are actually carrying the ball for the hedge fundies who bring up Ayn Rand with approval and no sense of irony.

Ayn Rand was interviewed in 1959 [video below] by a skeptical Mike Wallace who successfully got Ayn Rand on the record emitting her philosophy that Rand's project is to engage in reason, as opposed to the rest of the world which denies Rand's revolutionary creed that can proved by means of "logic."

Caught this at Naked Capitalism [where more of the interviews can be seen], posted by Yves Smith. Smith notes, "[T]he questions that Wallace raises with Rand illustrate how much social values have changed in 50 years."

Smith is referring to the Randian Scott Walker-Paul Ryan insistence (Chait. TNR) that working class families are inherently less-than in Rand's grand philosophy.

And Smith is noting the seeming natural inclination of the the 1950s press to comfort the afflicted whom Rand and Walker-Ryan (today) oppose; and to treat claims such as Rand's as nonsense.

Hanging out in D.C. with hedge fund managers and rightwingers is moral behavior that the world [and apparently Ryan's constituents] need to understand for its own good. This seems an absurd proposition to Mike Wallace in 1959.

In 2011, Randism is just as absurd.

Sit through the interview, preferably with a $350 bottle of red wine.