"And when Ryan riffed on the handful of jobs he briefly held, his Ayn Randian roots were clear."

Writes Joan Walsh at Salon. Here's what Paul Ryan said that Walsh thinks is "straight out of Rand, and ’50s anti-Communist paranoia":

“When I was waiting tables, washing dishes, or mowing lawns for money, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life... I was on my own path, my own journey, an American journey where I could think for myself, decide for myself, define happiness for myself. That’s what we do in this country. That’s the American Dream. That’s freedom, and I’ll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners.”

If you believe the individual can think and decide for himself and pursue happiness as he defines it... you're delusional — in Walsh's view. You see what she's saying? She's saying you didn't build that — the very phrase Obama is straining to disown. You didn't build that, you can't build that, and you're psychotic if you imagine that you can. She's deeply into the collectivism the Democrats don't want to openly embrace.

But she doesn't think she's openly embracing it. She thinks Ryan is paranoid to imply that the Democrats favor "the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners." Pressed, she might — I assume — assert that it's fine for individuals to try to come up with their own ideas about what they want to do with their lives and to set out to achieve their goals, but that it's inaccurate to portray this enterprise as solitary and in defiance of the larger efforts of government and society (which they depend on no matter what they do).

But that's not what Walsh says. She's stirring up partisan discord and not inclined to concede that our differences, in the United States, are only a matter of leaning toward individualism or collectivism as we mostly keep to the middle of the road.