Anagram

As long as we are talking about presidential politics — and continuing on the general theme of word games — I was fascinated over this past weekend to see the U.S. presidential Republican ticket of “Romney” expand to become the ticket of “Romney and Ryan”.

That added part “and Ryan” is, of course, an anagram for “Ayn Rand”.

This is entirely consistent with the fact that Rand, the well-known Objectivist author and philosopher, has been a muse and moral guide for Paul Ryan for quite some time. He has made a point of quoting her ideas in various speeches as an underlying intellectual justification for his important and gallant proposal to provide economic relief for the top 1%.

Oh ok, actually, the top 0.01%, but let’s not quibble.

Unfortunately, as you may know, Rand recently betrayed Ryan’s faith in her — and by extension the faith of the top 0.01% — by revealing herself to be an atheist (atheism, for those of you who do not know, is in fact the antithesis of faith).

Remarkably, Rand figured out how to achieve this dastardly about-face after having been dead for over thirty years. Which just goes to show what a slippery character she is.