By: AIF Staff
Washington, DC – Earlier this Spring, Paul Ryan was the featured guest on The Armstrong Wiliams Showwhere he discussed the challenges of moral relativism and polarization in a digitized world and the major domestic and international issues dominating American politics.
The wide-ranging interview, accessible here via The National Desk , featured Ryan talking extensively about the challenges posed by our $34 trillion national debt and the economic conditions heading into the 2024 election. Excerpts of Ryan’s responses, edited lightly for clarity, follow.
The growing problem of moral relativism
“I think the biggest problem is this sort of rise of moral relativism. This notion that there are no fixed truths… And one of the offsprings of moral relativism, which is now ubiquitous in society, is identity politics and this is what concerns me about what our political system these days is.
The political class sees identity politics as the fastest, most sure way to win elections, but it’s at the expense of the long-term cohesion of our country. Identity politics, by definition, means we must divide. We must lump people into categories and into groups so that my group is bigger than their group so I can win this next election. And so that, to me, is a real cultural problem we have in society.
We can fix a lot of this by fixing some of our bigger policy problems. We can reduce the anxiety that gives rise to identity politics if you don’t have a debt crisis, if you have a secure the border, if you make our communities safer by cracking down on crime, and by doing the things we need to do to fix these problems. But at the end of the day, if we as a free, self-determining society – one that is embracing diversity of views and thoughts — can’t agree on just objective facts, which we’re being challenged to do these days because of all this digital moral relativism, that’s going to make it really hard for a free society to exist and this is what the tyrants are betting on.
They’re betting that America and that democracy will relativize itself into self-immolation. Now, I think they’re wrong and I think we will get it back because that’s what we do: We regenerate as a country. We regenerate as a free people because of our free enterprise system and the innovation that comes with it. I think we will have better technology and better successes and stronger economic growth than the tyrants who are betting they can run their countries better than we can run ours collectively together…. I think we’ll get there, but it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
Who do you support in 2024?
“You know the answer to this question. I didn’t support [former President] Trump the last time. I wrote-in a Republican.
The problem for me is I’m in the camp with 70% of Americans who want neither of these people as our presidential choices. I don’t support Biden because of policy, and I don’t support Trump because of character.
I’m not a party leader anymore. When you’re a party leader, you also represent the members of your caucus. You help them in their political futures and careers, and you have to think differently and act differently as a party leader because you operate on a consensus. I’m out of government. This is not a new position for me. It’s one I’ve had since 2020.”
The new meaning of R.I.N.O.
“The definition of RINO is different than what it used to be. No one called me a RINO when RINO meant a moderate Republican because I’m a conservative Republican. Ten years ago, RINO meant if you are a liberal or a moderate Republican, you were a RINO, a Republican in Name Only.
Today, it means one thing and one thing only: Do you pledge fealty to Donald Trump or not? If you pledge fealty to Donald Trump, you’re a Republican in good standing. If you don’t, you’re a RINO and so, I’m proud to have that label if that’s what it means these days. It doesn’t bother me in the least.”
Standing with Ukraine matters
“I am a passionate believer that we need to pass this Ukraine supplemental. It’s a fraction of our defense budget, like 3%, and what are we getting?
We’re helping confront one of our greatest adversaries in Russia. We are not putting a single boot on the ground and this supplemental will help us rebuild our defense industrial base, which definitely needs to be rebuilt for our own sake and survival, while we defend democracy.
And don’t forget, there’s a China angle here as well. If Xi Jinping sees us cutting and running and losing our nerve to defend democracies and defend Ukraine, he’s going to take a run at Taiwan. If he thinks he can outlast us or that we will politically polarize ourselves to the point where we are not defending democracy or defending Ukraine, then he’s going to be more tempted to make moves that are against our interests.
More to the point, back to Putin, if we do not supply Ukraine with the weapons that they need to defend themselves and to defend their democracy, what is to stop Putin from going into some other countries?…
So, we should pass this. I know it’s controversial, but it really shouldn’t be because if we don’t support Ukraine and Ukraine implodes, Putin is going to take more territory. He is not going to stop at Donbas. He’s not going to stop at Crimea. He’s going to go into other countries and then we have a serious problem on our hands.
At the same time, if we support Ukraine, we show that democracy can stand the test of time and that democracies support themselves through thick and thin. Xi will think twice, we will protect NATO, we will rebuild our defense industrial base, and we will keep our troops at home – that’s what supporting Ukraine does today.”
Immigration reform and the reality of the filibuster:
“Every Republican wants to secure our border and I would argue there are some Democrats who want to secure our border, yet you can’t get these bills passed… I was a party to 3 attempts at immigration reform and every single one of them started with first securing the border. The challenge with this issue is it’s not a fiscal piece of legislation so you can’t use reconciliation, so it’s subject to a filibuster, which means it must get 60 votes.
Another way of saying it is it has to be bipartisan because it’s almost never that one party has the House, the Senate, the White House, and 60 votes in the Senate. It almost never happens. It happened once for the first year and a half of Obama’s presidency, and so that means you must make it bipartisan. Every one of these attempts at immigration reform, which starts with border security, falls down for various reasons because both parties can’t agree on the details of the legislation.
So, to secure our border, to do it legislatively, you have to pass a bill out of the House. The House Republicans did that with H.R. 2. It secures the border. The Senate has a filibuster, and it can’t pass a bill that does this.
If we do two issues in the next handful of years, we’re going to have a great century in America: Fix our immigration laws, which starts with securing our border, and get our debt under control by reforming our entitlement programs. We have yet to get the political consensus between both houses of Congress and the White House to get those things done and those are haunting us. Those issues are big problems that have got to get solved and that have haunted us for decades.”