Brian Bolduc: Ryan Isn’t a Randian

Brian Bolduc is an editorial associate for National Review.

The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman thinks Representative Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) “isn’t especially interesting” — so much so that he wrote a whole column about him last weekend. In it, Krugman dubbed the congressman “an Ayn Rand devotee,” an oft-employed epithet among Ryan’s detractors....

[This doesn't] prove that Ryan is a Randian.

First, Ryan is a practicing Catholic. Yes, he has cited Rand’s influence on his thinking, but he has also cited the Church’s....

Second, Ryan doesn’t require staffers to read Atlas Shrugged. Aides past and present have denied Beam’s claim. But he does read the Read and Learn Bible with his children — not exactly book-of-the-month material among Randians. (This fact also mitigates the shock that he didn’t accept a Bible from a heckler in 2011.)....