JANESVILLE, WI — Praying that his torment would end before sunrise, Speaker Paul Ryan’s eight-year-old son Sam winced early Tuesday morning as his father’s bedside reading of “Atlas Shrugged” entered its sixth consecutive hour. “You have been paying blackmail, not for your vices, but for your virtues,” the Speaker read, too engrossed in the work to notice his son’s visible flinching. “You have been willing to carry the load of an unearned punishment—hey, Sammy, get ready, this part is awesome—and it grew the heavier the greater the virtues you practiced.” Sources close to the issue report that the younger Ryan requested that absolutely any other work about trains be read, but that his father switched out “Thomas the Tank Engine and the School Trip” for Ayn Rand’s 1957 Objectivist opus after Sam had already been tucked in.
