After Paul Ryan vowed that he wouldn’t reduce time spent with his family even if he became Speaker of the House, quite a few liberals accused the Wisconsin congressman of hypocrisy given that he has, in the words of one feminist site, “spent much of his political career fighting laws that promote realistic work-life balance for parents.”
Lefty pundit Amanda Marcotte believes that Ryan is even worse than a hypocrite. In a Thursday column for Salon, Marcotte asserted that Ryan’s “family time” stand “is a perfect distillation of the Ayn Rand-constructed worldview he has, where all the goodies are reserved for the elite and the rest of us can go hang…Increasingly, the Republican worldview is one where even basic things like love, connection, and other basic human needs are being reclassified as privileges that should only be available to the wealthy.”
After Marcotte blasted Ryan and his fellow Republicans for opposing abortion; “cutting off access to affordable contraception”; “resist[ing] any efforts to make family and maternity leave available”; and “cutting food stamps,” she grumbled, “In Paul Ryan’s America, you aren’t allowed to take care of your babies, but you aren’t supposed to have birth control or abortion to prevent babies, either. So what, exactly, are you supposed to do?...You can’t have sex without making babies and you can’t have babies until you’re privileged enough to take care of them without any help or family leave. That’s the vision Republicans have of life for the rest of us.”
Marcotte’s peg was an “obnoxious Facebook post” by Sheryl Sandberg “congratulating…Ryan for using his power to get weekends home with the family. It’s complete with [a] photo of him at a Packers game with the kids.”
From Marcotte’s column (bolding added):
[W]hat is wrong with Ryan’s libertarian-inflected conservatism goes far deeper than mere hypocrisy. In fact, I’d argue that Ryan isn’t really a hypocrite at all, but that this move to preserve his family time is a perfect distillation of the Ayn Rand-constructed worldview he has, where all the goodies are reserved for the elite and the rest of us can go hang. And by “goodies,” I don’t just mean NFL tickets and first class plane tickets every weekend. Increasingly, the Republican worldview is one where even basic things like love, connection, and other basic human needs are being reclassified as privileges that should only be available to the wealthy.
Take, for instance, the great paradox of the so-called family values set, where they claim to be “pro-life” but also refuse to do a damn thing to take care of the lives they insist women bring into the world whether they like it or not…Now that [Republicans have] come so far on eliminating access to legal abortion, they’ve turned their attention to cutting off access to affordable contraception and other non-abortion sexual health care, repeatedly calling for the elimination of funding that goes to pay for non-abortion services at Planned Parenthood…If you take a look at the big picture, it’s clear that the end goal here is to make non-procreative sex a privilege available only to those who can pay cash for it.
But it’s also clear that Republicans really don’t want the people who are cut off from reproductive health services to have children, either. It’s not just that Republicans continually resist any efforts to make family and maternity leave available…Paul Ryan is a big advocate for cutting food stamps…The only solution Ryan ever has for anything afflicting ordinary people is a demand that they work more hours, full stop, no debate about it.
In Paul Ryan’s America, you aren’t allowed to take care of your babies, but you aren’t supposed to have birth control or abortion to prevent babies, either. So what, exactly, are you supposed to do?...
You can’t have sex without making babies and you can’t have babies until you’re privileged enough to take care of them without any help or family leave. That’s the vision Republicans have of life for the rest of us.
