Paul Ryan, CPAC's Public Intellectual

By Charles P. Pierce, Esquire Magazine

11 February 12

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ake no mistake. You can have your Bachmanns and your Cains. You can have your Coulters and your Malkins and - what the hell - your Breitbarts. You can certainly have your Marco Rubios, who gained 100 CPAC points for making the conference's first teleprompter joke, though there may be several more amongst the murmuring when Willard Romney takes the stage here this afternoon. You can even have your your Santorums and your Ron Pauls. But that zombie-eyed granny-starver Paul Ryan is the wonk every wingnut woman wants and every wingnut man wants to be. He thinks Serious Thoughts about The Big Issues Facing The Nation, and they truly dig him the most. If Ayn Rand, that randy old crackpot, were still alive, she'd whack him over the head, stuff him in a sack, and drag him off to her apartment, where they would make hot Objectivist monkey-love until the rafters knocked and the angels wept.

Paul Ryan is also a remarkably accomplished bullshit artist.

His speech on Thursday night was chock-full of the usual goodies: praise for the brave Republicans who voted for his "budget" last year, the one that would have eviscerated Medicare to the point where Newt Fking Gingrich called it "right-wing social engineering," and that was before Willard had driven Newt around the bend, and the budget that polled so dismally that other Republicans hid under their couches when Ryan walked down the corridor; a vision of Obamian dystopia while mourning the fact that Democrats had mean things to say about his zombie-eyed granny-starving, and a healthy dollop of a bright new world where the entrepreneurial ponies gambol through the fields, and "the only class warfare that threatens America comes from a class of bureaucrats and crony capitalists rising above society - calling the shots, rigging the rules, and securing their places of privilege at our expense."

And, of course, in Paul Ryan's world, government has no regulatory role in stopping this rigging of the rules and calling of the shots. At least that's what he tells the hedge-fund cowboys with whom he dines.

All of that is basically zombie-eyed granny-starving boilerplate, but there was one passage in the speech that was such an amazing outburst of incoherence that the only explanation for it is that it was badly translated from the original Klingon. Ryan got started on rights, and on the current ginned-up controversy about Catholic institutions and birth control. Pretty soon, the English language had him in a hammerlock and he needed very badly to tap out:

For an example of what this means in practice, look no further than the recent conflict between the President's health care law and our religious freedom. This, as the President likes to say, is a "teachable moment." This is what we get when the President applies his progressive philosophy that views "rights," not as inalienable gifts from our creator, but more like revocable privileges from our government. In this view, rights are not universal or timeless - they must change and evolve in the name of progress. And who defines "progress"? Well, whoever happens to be in power at the time. That's how we get to where we are today - a situation where the government can supposedly invent a new "right" that trumps our constitutional right to observe our faith in freedom. You see, if the government is no longer the protector of your natural rights, but the creator of new rights, then government wins and freedom loses whenever the two collide.

Would somebody care to explain to me what this stunning burst of bafflegab actually means, and what in the name of god is has to do with birth control? The Affordable Care Act bestows no "new rights" on anyone. (Ryan may have gotten his gay-marriage talking points mixed in with his contraception talking points here.) Can Ryan cite a single right that was universal at the time of the founding of the country? Is he seriously arguing that our rights should not "change and evolve?" (He should take that up with John Lewis the next time they cross paths in the House.) Can he cite the president saying anything as nonsensical as the words Ryan puts in his mouth? Can he please explain how asking the Church to obey the law and cover birth control for a Presbyterian cleaning lady in one of its hospitals is in any way the establishment of a "new right," or how it in any way trumps his constitutional right to observe his faith in freedom? The Presbyterian chairwoman swallows the Pill and Paul Ryan is in chains. I'm sorry but this is just bananas. If this guy is a public intellectual, I fear greatly for the public's intellect.