A sensible Anarchist at the GOP Convention

[David Morris]

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/paul-ryan-new-york-times-profile-11644919?click=main_sr

The Paul Ryan Origin Story Is a Heaping Pile
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/us/politics/family-faith-and-politics-describe-life-of-paul-ryan.html

But the death of his father when Mr. Ryan was only 16 punctured his
life of math tests and bike riding, and in that fissure, the seeds of
his worldview were planted. "Paul went to work at McDonald's and began
to pull his own weight, and becomes class president the same year,"
said his brother Tobin. "It is remarkable that he chose a path of
individual responsibility and maturity rather than letting grief take
a different course." He added: "Some of his political views did begin
to coalesce around the time of my father's passing." His self-reliance
followed him to summer camp, where as a counselor he canoed and hiked,
and into young adulthood, where he took up deer hunting, a fact noted
in his engagement notice in 2000 in The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
"Ryan is an avid hunter and fisherman," the paper reported, "who does
his own skinning and butchering and makes his own Polish sausage and
bratwurst." It followed him into college, where he immediately took a
passionate interest in the canon of conservative economic theorists
and writers — Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and Ludwig
von Mises — who inspired the up-and-coming generation of
libertarian-minded activists and lawmakers.
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Charles Pierce:

How can you possibly write that passage and dismiss idly as a
"contradiction" the ironic — not to mention hilariously hypocritical —
fact that, after his father passed, and while working the fry station
and toting canoes at a YMCA summer camp, Ryan was also the beneficiary
of Social Security survivor's benefits? These did precisely what they
were designed to do, which was to help young Paul Ryan get the
education that would help him become the adult Paul Ryan who's been on
one government payroll or another since he left college, and who goes
around telling half-dim audiences that people on government assistance
are mired in a "culture of dependency."