{"id":501,"date":"2011-05-24T19:13:30","date_gmt":"2011-05-24T23:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/?p=501"},"modified":"2011-05-24T19:14:47","modified_gmt":"2011-05-24T23:14:47","slug":"the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/05\/the.html","title":{"rendered":"The Ayn Rand Republicans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I confess to feeling a little bit queasy about the <a href=\"http:\/\/americanvaluesnetwork.org\/aynrandvsjesus\/\" target=\"_blank\">American Values Network&#8217;s new video<\/a> hoisting Rep. Paul Ryan, Sen. Rand Paul, Rush Limbaugh, and other GOP luminaries on the petard of Ayn Rand and her atheistic philosophy of objectivism. Take a look.<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ayn Rand &amp; GOP vs. Jesus\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0TxCWbTqz9s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<p>Yes, it&#8217;s delicious. But what&#8217;s the precise point? In his email announcement, AVN executive director Eric Sapp puts it this way:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Republican leaders are praising Ayn Rand and saying her teachings inspire their politics and the values in their budget.\u00a0 Yet Rand not only rejected Christ, but she condemned all those who believed in him and said his teachings were evil. Our new video exposes the wolves in sheep\u2019s clothing in Washington.\u00a0 As Rand herself made clear, people cannot support her teachings and morality while also claiming to support Judeo-Christian values.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The implication here is that because Rand rejected Christ, her acolytes in Washington do likewise. They pretend to be good Christians while advancing anti-Christian legislation.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not difficult to make the case that the Ryan budget plan has a lot more in common with Rand&#8217;s teachings than Jesus&#8217;. Yet there have been devout Christians in the past who have embraced draconian social policies towards the poor. Call me prissy, but I&#8217;d have been happier if the video traded less heavily in guilt by association with an anti-Christian atheist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I confess to feeling a little bit queasy about the American Values Network&#8217;s new video hoisting Rep. Paul Ryan, Sen. Rand Paul, Rush Limbaugh, and other GOP luminaries on the petard of Ayn Rand and her atheistic philosophy of objectivism. Take a look. Yes, it&#8217;s delicious. But what&#8217;s the precise point? In his email announcement,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[60,1,57,59,58],"class_list":["post-501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-republicans","tag-ayn-rand","tag-news","tag-paul-ryan","tag-rand-paul","tag-rush-limbaugh"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Ayn Rand Republicans - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/05\/the.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Ayn Rand Republicans - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I confess to feeling a little bit queasy about the American Values Network&#8217;s new video hoisting Rep. Paul Ryan, Sen. Rand Paul, Rush Limbaugh, and other GOP luminaries on the petard of Ayn Rand and her atheistic philosophy of objectivism. Take a look. Yes, it&#8217;s delicious. But what&#8217;s the precise point? In his email announcement,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/05\/the.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-05-24T23:13:30+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-05-24T23:14:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Ayn Rand Republicans - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/05\/the.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Ayn Rand Republicans - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"I confess to feeling a little bit queasy about the American Values Network&#8217;s new video hoisting Rep. Paul Ryan, Sen. Rand Paul, Rush Limbaugh, and other GOP luminaries on the petard of Ayn Rand and her atheistic philosophy of objectivism. Take a look. Yes, it&#8217;s delicious. But what&#8217;s the precise point? In his email announcement,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/05\/the.html","og_site_name":"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2011-05-24T23:13:30+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-05-24T23:14:47+00:00","author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/05\/the.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/05\/the.html","name":"The Ayn Rand Republicans - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-05-24T23:13:30+00:00","dateModified":"2011-05-24T23:14:47+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/05\/the.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/05\/the.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/05\/the.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Ayn Rand Republicans"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/","name":"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d","name":"Mark Silk","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","caption":"Mark Silk"},"description":"Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":503,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501\/revisions\/503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}