For Paul Ryan, it's about individualism vs. collectivism

This is a bit too obscure to make a noticeable difference in the campaign, but illuminating. A Catholic website delves into an old speech by Paul Ryan where he makes his disdain for Medicare and Social Security explicit:

This isn’t from a secret video, it’s from the untranscribed portion of Ryan’s 2005 speech at the Atlas Society’s “Celebration of Ayn Rand.” It fits well with the Romney video because it makes clear that middle class entitlements, “so called defined benefit programs” such as Social Security and Medicare ARE an explicit strategic target because they are collectivistic, socialistic and foster dependency.

The speech has been hidden in plain sight on the Atlas Society website, which offers only apartial transcript. This omits several revealing passages that illuminate Ryan’s philosophy as it relates to policy priorities.

Ryan describes Social Security and Medicare as “collectivist” and “socialistic.”

Ryan’s strategic plan: privatize Social Security and Medicare in order to convert people from “collectivism” to believers in a “capitalistic individualistic” philosophy. So that there will be “more people on our team” who “won’t listen to” Democrats.

This isn't new policy for Ryan. His Roadmap to Middleclass Ruin is riddled with more oblique references to the same thing. Nothing surprising here except how well he's managed to delude the elderly into thinking he intends to protect the program.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]