text: Another poster alludes to the fact that Ryan's economic, social and political roots are in the radical atheistic materialism advocated by Ayn Rand.  He has credited her writing with inspiring his political career, and he used to (and maybe still does) require his staff to read her.  When it became politically expedient for him to do so, he tried to cloak his economic theories in the mantle of Catholic social teaching -- but in the image made famous by Sarah Palin, you can put lipstick on a pig ... Ryan's economic ideas, and especially his thinking about health care, are incompatible with Catholic social teaching.