March 2011, in a conversation with the Economic Club of Chicago, @PaulRyanVP said the world Exceptionalism.

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March 2011, in a conversation with the Economic Club of Chicago, @PaulRyanVP said the world Exceptionalism. I was watching Ryan answering questions from the moderator before a banquet hall of Chicago's finest, and Exceptionalism is practically the last word he spoke on camera. It is amusing to learn that this term, cherished by American neo-conservatives, was first spoken by Joseph Stalin in 1929, chiding a group of American communists. Marxism states that the capitalist societies must collapse because of debt and too much goods that go unsold. That might sound like the financial crisis of the 2008, which American society survived. Our American communists, awfully close to Mother Russia in those days, answered that American ingenuity and resources made us immune to such collapses. And yes, American is exceptional due to the lack of rigid class distinctions. And that's when Stalin pushed back with the term, American Exceptionalism. Stalin didn't think American was an exception to Marxist doctrine. That was the sarcasm of Stalin, who locked up and tortured more American communists than the record reveals. Read the biography of Kenneth Rexroth, who said a final farewell to many American Communists taking a free trip to Russia. From Stalin's lips to Ryan's speech, the term American Exceptionalism has taken a longer linguistic journey than the word Liberalism.

The goal of Rom Bama speaks is to give each candidate a fair hearing. So I have listened again to Mr. Ryan's comments to the economic club. He raises the specter of shared scarcity, a time when the United States Government has to raise tax rates so high to pay off the interest on the American debt, individuals and corporations have to pay tax rates approaching one hundred percent. He also raises the bogeyman of the American bureaucratic elite, which he claims has the power to pick winners and losers, including elites on a medical rationing board with the power to pick who gets essential treatment or not. In many ways, he sounds similar to Governor Rick Snyder, who appeared upon the Michigan political scene as a kind of tax cutting tyrant. Get the economy moving by lowering taxes, make up the numbers with increased economic activity to tax. Problems in a good economy tend to dissolve in the flow of prosperity. The man can speak and speak well, delivering his ideas in a practiced way, polished after nights and nights of town halls in Chicagoland Wisconsin. You have to like the man for his robust manner of delivery and for his knowledge of conservative economics. He raises a cheer by saying: No one has gotten rich betting against the United States. I have to check if that's true. George Soros went up a quantum level of wealth by betting against the British Pound.

When he speaks to answer questions, there is a small tick in his delivery, as if he were about to stutter or speak incorrectly. I have a feeling that's when a burst of alternative thoughts arrive to his mind to be spoken.

In my days of being a Young Gun, I would have followed Paul Ryan and his philosophy. It sounds so much like the philosophy of the men I smoked cigars with at Michigan State University in the 1980s, all of them reading the Chicago school of economics, Uncle Milty Friedman, the National Review and Ayn Rand. Today, I know that he speaks from a strong pole of an American dialectic, and no matter the result of his three month run for Vice President, he will pull the American politic rightward.

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Paul Ryan at the Economic Club of Chicago, May 17, 2011. The man makes great Green Bay Packers jokes.