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Wealth & Poverty Review Paul Ryan on the Indivisibility of the Social and the Fiscal


Paul Ryan is an interesting Vice Presidential candidate for the Republican ticket because his nomination confirms our argument in Indivisible. Ryan is best known for his economic and fiscal views. But perhaps more than any other Member of Congress, Ryan has consistently maintained the essential link between so-called “social” and so-called “economic” issues.
Back in 2009, I was privileged to work with the Heritage Foundation to put together a collection called Indivisible: Social and Economic Foundations of American Liberty. (This volume is not the same as my 2012 book with James Robison.) The volume brought together well-known social and fiscal conservatives. To mix things up, however, we asked contributors best known for their economic views to write on a social issue, and contributors best known for their moral/social views to write on economics. One of the contributors was Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan. Ryan wrote, not on entitlement reform or the importance of fiscal restraint, but on the connection between life and liberty. His chapter was entitled “The Cause of Life Can’t be Severed from the Cause of Freedom.” It’s a compelling read that has been widely distributed.
If you want a quick sample of how Ryan thinks, this article is a good place to start.

Jay W. Richards

Senior Fellow at Discovery, Senior Research Fellow at Heritage Foundation
Jay W. Richards, Ph.D., is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, and the Executive Editor of The Stream. Richards is author or editor of more than a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers Infiltrated (2013) and Indivisible (2012); The Human Advantage; Money, Greed, and God, winner of a 2010 Templeton Enterprise Award; The Hobbit Party with Jonathan Witt; and Eat, Fast, Feast. His most recent book, with Douglas Axe and William Briggs, is The Price of Panic: How the Tyranny of Experts Turned a Pandemic Into a Catastrophe.