In 2005, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) heaped praise on Ayn Rand, a 20th-century libertarian novelist best known for her philosophy that centered on the idea that selfishness is “virtue”. The New Republic wrote:

“The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.”

Ryan also noted in a 2003 interview with the Weekly Standard, “I give out ‘Atlas Shrugged’ as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it. Well… I try to make my interns read it.”

But today, Ryan is singing a far different tune.

From an interview with National Review’s Bob Costa this week:

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas,” who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he says.

It’s understandable why Ryan would back off his former political muse. She described altruism as “evil,” condemned Christianity for advocating compassion for the poor, viewed the feminist movement as “phony,” and called Arabs “almost totally primitive savages.” Learn more about Ayn Rand in this short ThinkProgress video:

Despite Ryan’s newly-professed distaste for Rand, were she alive today, she would likely applaud Ryan for his draconian GOP budget, which cuts food stamps and other programs for the poor, ends Medicare as we know it, gives $3 trillion in tax breaks for corporations and the rich, and raises taxes on the poorest Americans.

Many of the most visible members of both the Republican Party and the conservative media have heaped praise on libertarian philosopher Ayn Rand. For instance, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has said, “Ayn Rand, more than anyone else, did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism.” Rush Limbaugh has called her “brilliant.” And both Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) are avowed fans. Nevertheless, Yaroom Brook, the current president of the Ayn Rand Institute, is seemingly unimpressed by their devotion. In an interview published today by the Daily Ticker, Brook told host Aaron Task that no one in the GOP field is a true follower of Rand’s philosophy and, in an unusual moment of clarity and honesty, said anyone who was “wouldn’t be electable” in American politics.

TASK: Is there anyone in the party or in national politics these days who you think really follows and adheres to the Randian philosophy?

BROOK: No. And I think the reason is that they wouldn’t be electable. I mean, Ayn Rand was a laissez faire capitalist. She believes in lassies faire capitalism, which means no government regulation, no government controls and intervention in the economy. […]

So I don’t think that position today in America is one that would get a lot of votes. That’s a fact.

Watch it:

In truth, Brook is almost certainly correct. As ThinkProgress laid out in a previous video, Ayn Rand’s philosophy as she herself described it is remarkably extreme and emblematic of the GOP’s agenda:

On the level of policy, Rand advocated total separation of state and economics: She opposed any and all forms of government regulation, as well as all programs to support the poor and middle class. (To pick just one telling example, she described Medicare as morally equivalent to robbery and murder for the sake of acquiring a yacht and some champagne.) At the same time, the moral framework upon which Rand based her policy preferences was one in which altruism was denigrated as “evil,” while self-love and the pursuit of self-interest were held up as the highest of moral ideals.

While Brook may feel the Republicans have failed to live up to Rand’s ideals, the GOP certainly can’t be faulted for not trying. Between their state-level attempts to gut public programs while cutting taxes for the wealthy and the House Republicans’ budget proposal to massively cut Medicare, Medicaid, aid to the poor, and public investment while again transferring enormous sums of additional wealth to the rich, the modern-day GOP is adhering to Rand’s unpopular philosophy.

While religious conservatives and Republican political leaders gathered at the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington this weekend, another group of religious leaders held a small gathering across the street to warn against the perils of the Republican Party’s fiscal priorities.

Four members affiliated with the religious group Faith In Public Life held a brief press conference during FFC’s afternoon intermission to denounce the GOP’s adherence to the philosophies of anti-government, anti-religion author Ayn Rand. The leaders — Rev. Jennifer Butler, Jim Wallis, Rev. Derrick Harkins, and Father Clete Kiley — asserted that the GOP efforts to cut funding from many anti-poverty programs while balancing the budget on the backs of the poorest Americans were not in line with Christian values:

The sky is falling on poor people in this country. The sky is falling. This time it really is. In the past, when we’ve done deficit reduction — and we’ve done it before — we’ve done poverty reduction at the same time. You can do both together. And every previous attempt there has been a bipartisan agreement to a given, a principle, that poor and low income people are not the ones to make hurt more when you’re making tough decisions. … They don’t bear the brunt of our fiscal irresponsibility because they didn’t cause it. We did not get into fiscal trouble because of poor people. … The poor didn’t cause this. Let’s not make them pay for it.

What we’re saying in the faith community, across the spectrum, is that a nation is judged — our Bible says — by how we treat the poorest and most vulnerable. Period. That’s what God says to us. That’s God’s instruction to us. To be faithful to God, we have to protect poor people.

Watch it:

Wallis and Butler repeatedly asserted that political leaders could not adhere to the teachings of both Rand and the church. “This budget has more to do with the teaching of Ayn Rand than the etchings of Jesus Christ,” Butler said. “I read [Rand] in high school, and she said, ‘You have to choose me or Jesus,’” Wallis added. “And so I did. She lost.”

Religious leaders have recently spoken out to House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) — both of whom are practicing Catholics — telling them that the cuts in their budget disproportionately target poor Americans and are thus out of line with Christian and Catholic teaching. Early in May, a group of Catholic bishops sent Boehner a letter denouncing the budget cuts. Ryan, meanwhile, has attempted to persuade Catholic bishops that his budget is in line with religious teaching. Kiley was skeptical today, however, saying Ryan handpicked phrases from Catholic teaching in attempts to justify his budget cuts, largely ignoring the majority of Catholic teaching.

A film adaptation of the 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, opened this past Friday. The release of the film has coincided with a resurgence of popularity for Rand on the American Right. The trailer for Atlas Shrugged had its world premier at this year’s CPAC conference, the Tea Party group FreedomWorks has rolled out a massive campaign to promote the film, and the story’s opening line — “Who is John Galt?” — has appeared on numerous signs at Tea Party rallies.

At the same time, some of the right’s leading political and media lights have heaped praise upon Rand. The author of the Republicans’ new budget plan to gut Medicare and Medicaid, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), has said Rand is the reason he entered politics, and requires his staff to read her work. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) have both declared themselves devotees of her writing. Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has his law clerks watch the film adaptation of Rand’s book The Fountainhead. She’s also received accolades from right-wing pundits Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, John Stossel, and Andrew Napolitano.

During her lifetime, Rand advocated “the virtue of selfishness,” declared altruism to be “evil,” opposed Medicare and all forms of government support for the middle-class and the poor, and condemned Christianity for advocating love and compassion for the less fortunate:

Rand also dismissed the feminist movement as a “false” and “phony” issue, said a female commander in chief would be “unspeakable,” characterized Arabs as “almost totally primitive savages,” and called government efforts to aid the handicapped and educate “subnormal children” an attempt to “bring everybody to the level of the handicapped.”

As for the new Atlas Shrugged film, it made $1.7 million in its first three days in theaters, reasonable but unspectacular numbers for a limited release on 299 screens. The movie scored a paltry 8% on the leading film critic site Rotten Tomatoes. But box-office watchers looking to see if the Tea Party represents a discrete market would have been disappointed. The movie grossed just $5,608 per theater over that time period, hardly a sign that groups were buying out theaters or that the movie was a pop culture phenomenon.

By contrast, An Inconvenient Truth took in $70,333 per theater during its first five days on screens. That number fell to $17,615 per theater in its second week, but that number is still higher than Atlas Shrugged’s more widely-available debut. And Atlas Shrugged’s numbers look positively puny next to another culture-war adaptation of a popular book, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, which raked in $125,185,971 over its first five days in theaters.

[/update]