Paul Ryan Is the Worst Choice for People of Color

Imara Jones, writing at ColorLines, argues that Mitt Romney's vice presidential pick's ideas aren't new. In fact, he says, they're "ripped right out of America's past" and reflect the latest in the "black and brown blame game."

Here again, Ryan's plan clues us in. In it, he argues that a "culture of dependency" fueled by "progressivism" and "The Great Society" is the cause for America's economic crisis. To his mind, policies which promote fairness are the problem. Black and brown America are to blame.

Romney takes Ryan's black and brown blame game a step further.

Earlier this year he said that Democrats "(don't) have the same feelings about American exceptionalism that we do," and that we need "to restore to this country the principles that made this nation the greatest nation in the history of the Earth." New York magazine reports his book "No Apology" echoes the theme. Romney declares that the current economic crisis was caused by a "reorientation away from American exceptionalism." ...

They are devotees instead of the off-the-chain individualist [philosopher] Ayn Rand. Ryan told The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza that, "What I liked about her novels was their devastating indictment of ... too much government." ...

An article on Rand by Sam Anderson in New York Magazine highlights her belief that "Native Americans, having failed for a millennia to create a heroically productive capitalist society, deserved to be stripped of their land." He concludes that she "suffered from some kind of undiagnosed personality disorder."

Read Imara Jones' entire piece at ColorLines.

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