David Horsey: Romney-Ryan Republicans pray to Jesus but bow to Ayn Rand

[highplainsdem]

Click the LA Times link below for Horsey's latest 'toon -- which has the caption Jesus is coming soon. Unfortunately, he'll be arriving in Tampa... -- and his new column, "Romney-Ryan Republicans pray to Jesus but bow to Ayn Rand":

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-ayn-rand-20120820,0,1169396.story

Many Republicans believe theirs is the party of Jesus Christ, but, in practice, they are the party of an atheist, Hollywood intellectual named Ayn Rand.

After establishing a career as a screenwriter, Ayn Rand authored two novels, “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged,” that are the intellectual bibles of libertarian conservatives, corporate executives and callow undergraduates. Among the many aspirational young conservatives inspired by Rand’s philosophy was a kid named Paul D. Ryan.

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Despite his renunciation of Rand, Paul Ryan has written federal budget plans that are quite Randian. They cut services for the poor and give benefits and tax breaks to the rich. For this, the Roman Catholic congressman is being criticized by America’s Catholic bishops, as well as the Jesuits and American nuns who preach a social gospel that reeks of the selfless altruism that Rand despised. The religious right, on the other hand, has blessed Ryan’s work. The Americanized gospel of the politicized evangelical churches tends to see success and affluence as evidence of God’s favor, while poverty and joblessness are suspicious signs of weak moral discipline and a proclivity to leech off the hard work of the virtuous.

-snip-

Republicans act as if this approach to government is somehow part of a divine plan, but their philosophy contains very little of Jesus and a lot of Ayn Rand.