John Nichols, The Nation‘s Washington correspondent, appears on Democracy Now! this morning for a fascinating discussion on the roots of Paul Ryan’s economic thinking: Ayn Rand. In Nichols’s view, Ryan "melds extreme right-wing Catholicism…with Ayn Rand’s philosophy as regards government and a very kind of selfish image of how we should relate to others," an outlook that could have a devastating impact on America’s social safety net.

—Elizabeth Whitman