Thank goodness someone finally told Leon Wieseltier to use paragraph breaks. A good deconstruction of Paul Ryan as “intellectual” or even “adult.”
Ryan, too, is moved more by wealth than by need. “They take more from society than they provide for themselves”: Who? The jobless? The aged? The sick? The desperately poor? Of course they take more, financially. They do not do so recreationally, or because they are nefarious wastrels cunningly exploiting a gullible government. They would rather be employed and young and healthy and secure. But have they, in their infirmities and their disadvantages, no legitimate claim on our conscience that justifies a sacrifice of wealth to need? Ryan’s philosophy represents the demonization of need and the diabolization of weakness. To require assistance, to ask for assistance, to receive assistance: it is, in Ryan’s world of winners, a disgrace.
