Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Game Over: Scans of Over 50 Ron Paul Newsletters

For a certain segment of the Ron Paul fanbase, no evidence of his disseminating hateful, paranoid material will ever be enough. Citing James Kirchick's piece in The New Republic wasn't sufficient, because Kirchick could have just been "making everything up." Then, when I and others posted copies of "The Ron Paul Political Report Special Issue on Race Terrorism," that too wasn't convincing.

"Proof that he said/endorsed racist things? Hardly. Doing it repeatedly in one document isn't enough to prove that he did it. Now, if there were many documents..."

Well, now there are many documents. Over fifty. Right here.

As I said in my rundown on the Paul platform over at Vice, reasonable fans of Dr. Paul now must accept that there's no way Paul could have been ignorant of the content [of] 8-12 page newsletters published under his name for over ten years. Paul supporters face three losing propositions:

• He lacks the competency to control content published under his own name for over a decade, and is thus unfit to lead a country.
• He doesn't believe these things but considers them a useful political tool to motivate racist whites, which makes him fit to be a GOP candidate, but too obvious about it to win.
• He's actually a racist, which makes him unfit to be a human being.

Further, you can't dismiss this in the name of higher political or socioeconomic aspirations. Since Paul has no chance of winning — seriously, no chance at all — his only value is as a voice, a conduit for principles. And if your only hope is to change the discourse by amplifying ideas, you can do that via many voices and avenues. As I said in my Vice follow-up, acknowledging some of Paul's good ideas,

When you opt to support anti-imperialist and civil liberties ideals by supporting Paul the Candidate, you end up supporting everything else about him. That includes those newsletters and the unambiguous message to those who enjoy them: You can write these things and succeed; this works. The other good ideas to which he's signatory can't erase the fact that he put his name to those words printed above. The moral weight of those newsletters drags down even the most high-minded aspirations he has about civil liberties, and everything crashes down on all of us.

It's fine to have convictions about things he believes in. But when you voluntarily whitewash his record or choose to ignore it and champion him anyway, you are complicit in supporting the idea that racism and homophobia are morally inconsequential to the process of running for President of the United States. And, while many Paul supporters consider racism a social injury subordinate to extra-legal military conflict, there are just as many who disgustingly handwave at racism because it's an inconsequential burp on the way to more tax cuts, Free Markets, Free Money, Free Black Peop — stuff for me!

And still, for the faithful, this will not be enough.

Below, I've tried to give helpful general (bold) titles to each excerpt of the various Ron Paul newsletters available. These come courtesy of a zipfile of scans sent to me by reader Heresiarch, who, along with others, compiled it from various sources back in 2008. I have omitted the over 65 pages of scanned federal earmarks Ron Paul requested for his district, in a fit of States' Wants pique. I have also omitted the scans of Von Mises Institute brochures about a Secession Conference at which Paul spoke.

No attempt has been made to organize these via topic, since pages of each newsletter are apt to feature mini-articles on multiple topics, making organization futile. (My summaries don't indicate all that go on in the scans, so please click away.) Finally, below some of the scans, I've offered some comments in plain text. Those within quotation marks are direct quotes from the text appearing in the newsletter scans. Those without quotation marks are my own observations.

(Open each image in a new tab to embiggen.)

Ron Paul Newsletter—April, 1993: The New York Bombing

"Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little. The cities have become centers of violence, whether through the daily and routine terrorism of crime, political bomb terrorism, or the terrorism of mob behavior as in Los Angeles."

Ron Paul Newsletter—August, 1990: Those Lucky Minorities and the Straight-Seducing Gay Bush Junta

"And Stanford, Michigan, and many other universities have banned speech that offends privileged groups. Anti-white, anti-male, anti-heterosexual or anti-Christian remarks are perfectly OK, of course." You can imagine, then, what a relief it must be to minorities, homosexuals, women and non-Christians to find themselves the privileged people of America. The rest of this page and part of the second details a cabal of homosexuals in the Bush administration who like to lead "the young" astray.

Dr. Ron Paul's Freedom Report—April, 1978:

This is instructive because, if someone else was writing Ron Paul's newsletters for him, they've been doing it for 33 years, with a remarkable tonal consistency. Even in 1978, the patterns of paranoia about American government capture by international secret interests are apparent. To wit, "I can believe that a non-conspiratorial President, if we had one...."

"The Trilateral Commission is no longer known only by those who are knowledgeable about international conspiracies, but is routinely mentioned in the daily news.... Jimmy Carter's membership in the Trilateral Commission is hardly a coincidence."

"I believe, in reality, the [Panama] Canal is now "owned" by facist-oriented [sic], international banking and business interests and is merely managed by the Marxist-oriented Torrijos dictatorship, with the bills being paid by the American taxpayers...."

Ron Paul Investment Letter—May 1988: Say No to the New World Order

The first of many existentially terrifying revelations about a coming global disaster that Ron Paul will gladly share with you, for the good of all true Americans, assuming they will pay. This theme appears again and again: in the greatest fight you can imagine for the lifeblood of liberty and American history, there is no time to waste in making sure that you send Ron Paul money. That's how much Ron Paul loves America—for $1, if you buy 25 copies and $6.95 for a single copy.

Ron Paul Newsletter—December 1990: MLK

After beginning with an objection to the "statism" of the Smithsonian Institution including a civil rights exhibit about homosexuals (without objections to the "statism" of having, say, historic American flags on display), the piece includes a bit about Martin Luther King's plagiarism problems with his doctorate. That poor scholarship on Dr. King's part is actually true, but the newsbite here is merely a peg on which to hang more (and repeated) King-hate. For instance, on the following page:

[King] was also a Comsymp, if not an actual party member, and the man who replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration. King, the FBI files show, was not only a world-class adulterer, he also seduced underage girls and boys.... And we are supposed to honor this 'Christian minister' and lying socialist satyr...?"

Ron Paul Newsletter—February, 1990: The Coming Race War and Shame of MLK Day

"Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for that pro-communist philanderer, Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day. Listen to a black radio talk show in any major city. The racial hatred makes a KKK rally look tame."

Ron Paul Newsletter—February, 1991: The X-Rated Martin Luther King

As if everything else about the communist pedophile Martin Luther King weren't bad enough, apparently he couldn't stop fething Ralph Abernathy.

Ron Paul Newsletter—January, 1988: AIDS and Great Crabcakes, Two Things Made in Maryland

"Dr. Douglass believes that AIDS is a deliberately engineered hybrid of these two animal viruses cultured in human tissue, and he blames World Health Organization experimentation at Ft. Detrick, Maryland.... Could the government have experimented with it in the civilian population, as it did in the 1950s with LSD, and had things get out of control? I don't know, but these sure are interesting questions." See? He's just asking questions.

Ron Paul Newsletter—January, 1990: SODOMY EQUALS DEATH

"A well-known libertarian editor just back from New York told me: 'The ACT-UP slogan, on stickers plastered all over Manhattan, is "Silence = Death." But shouldn't it be "Sodomy = Death"?'"

Ron Paul Newsletter—January, 1991: MLK, World-Class Philanderer

"St. Martin was a world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours ('non-violence' didn't apply in all spheres, I guess)."

This second page soft-sells the idea that MLK wished he could be like Castro but was prevented because a violent revolution wouldn't work in the U.S. So, rather than this being an indication of his own good judgment about the best course of seeking equality, it's proof that he was basically a murdering revolutionary thwarted by indifference. It also describes the civil rights movement as "bad from the beginning," because overturning Jim Crow and then refusing to accept that glorious market happiness would elevate blacks to equal status in the United States represents a social injustice.

Ron Paul Newsletter—June, 1990: The Pink House?

"What an outrage that, for the first time in our nation's history, the organized forces of perversion were feted in the White House." Here, "organized forces of perversion" means "gay people hoping to be spared dehumanizing violence."

"President Bush invited the heads of homosexual lobbying groups to the White House for the ceremony. As Congressman Bill Dannemeyer (R-CA) noted, 'It's a tragic message that is being sent,' that normality and deviance are equal. I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities. They could also not be as promiscuous. Is it any coincidence that the AIDS epidemic developed after they came 'out of the closet' and started hyper-promiscuous sodomy? I don't believe so, medically or morally."

Ron Paul Newsletter—May, 1990: When Blacks Kill Whites

"When blacks kill whites, however, it's not defined as news."

Ron Paul Newsletter—November, 1990: David Duke

"To many voters, this seemed just like plain good sense. Duke carried baggage from his past, but the voters were willing to overlook that." Fun words, fun ideas: "baggage" that some voters "overlooked."

Ron Paul Newsletter—October, 1990: AIDS, Gays, Blacks and Rapetown

A sales pitch for None Dare Call It Conspiracy, one of the finest modern history books you can find at your local Army surplus store, next to the "$3 Bills (Clinton)" and the IMPEACH BILLARY stickers, as well as something about Obama Muslim Hussein NOT RACIST.

"A mob of black protestors, led by the 'Rev.' Al Sharpton, occupied and closed the Statue of Liberty recently, demanding that New York be renamed Martin Luther King City 'to reclaim it for our people.' Hmmm. I hate to agree with the Rev. Al, but maybe a name change is in order. Welfaria? Zooville? Rapetown? Dirtburg? Lazyopolis? But Al, the Statue of Liberty? Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house."

This page includes a bunch of frankly nutty ideas about how everyone should deal with people with AIDS, followed by, "No kissing, since AIDS can be transmitted by saliva."

This page offers a mixed vote of support for jury nullification (almost always invoked in these pages as a right for a jury to exonerate anyone who refuses to pay federal taxes), while also implying that a jury and city were influenced by black demonstrators for Marion Barry. "There were constant anti-white demonstrations outside the courthouse."

Ron Paul Political Report—March, 1990: Homophobes for Andy Rooney

"CBS forced him into an apologotic [sic] interview with The Advocate, a homosexual magazine filled with classified ads for pervert prostitutes. The reporter--who certainly had an axe to grind, and that's not easy with a limp wrist...." It goes on to claim that the reporter for The Advocate made things up about Rooney, as part of the devious homosexual agenda.

"The liberals promised us relief from guilt, points out Murray N. Rothbard, of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and they did abolish sexual guilt (and gave use widespread sodomy, AIDS, promiscuity, illegitimacy, and abortion in the bargain). But they imposed a thousand new guilts over racism, sexism, speciesism, ageism, and homophobia (the dread belief that normal sexual conduct is superior to abnormal)."

There it is in a nut, kids. It was liberalism that foisted on human beings the idea that you should feel ashamed by unwarranted "superiority," malicious exclusion, self-satisfied exploitation, dehumanization, disregard and violence. The nemesis that liberalism visits on libertarianism — and, thus, libertarianism's proof of liberalism's great authoritarian imposition — is that the human race is not your basement rec room array of toys; you are not the sole arbiter of value, and you don't get to have all the coolest things because you are you and because others have failed in terms of that singularly pointless achievement.

Ron Paul Political Report—July 1992: Blacks, Riots, ACORN

"Perot cannot fix the welfare state any more than Gorbachev could fix Soviet socialism. To achieve even a semblance of success, Perot may resort to authoritarian means. Maintaining order may be the number one priority, especially as the race riots grow.... Just after a basketball game ended on June 14, blacks poured into the streets of Chicago in celebration. How to celebrate? How else? They broke the windows of stores to loot, even breaking through protective steel shutters with crowbars to steal everything in sight.... (Is this why Hollywood tells us White Men Can't Jump?)."

"Of all the stores that were looted, only one had its goods simply thrown on the sidewalk rather than stolen: a bookstore." Ahahaha, I get it. It's because black people don't read! "Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems."

"What does it say about a party when its candidate can't criticize those who advocate killing white people without upsetting its core voters? What does it say about blacks that they would find it upsetting to hear this criticized? My guess is that Jesse Jackson and friends talk like this in private."

"Another good example is a study just released by ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) called 'Take the Money and Run: The Siphoning of Deposits from Minority Neighborhoods.' It alleges that banks take deposits from blacks and then don't grant them loans. They say that for every dollar on deposit, only 4 cents goes [sic] back to blacks. Ever vigilant against economic differences that express themselves in racial terms, the American elite are busy instituting race quotas in lending. ACORN called for a summit meeting with bankers to 'work out the differences'--meaning that banks fork over the cash.... They all agreed to fork over more money--so long as the regulators don't notice that they are not paid back."

This last page emphasizes the sinister nature of equal lending by describing Jack Kemp's support for the idea of having a black person see if he can get a loan, then report back. It's just like the Thought Police, but with numbers and other objective measures employed against thoughts. Tremble, tremble, tremble, Middle America.

Ron Paul Political Report—November 1992: Bobby Fischer, Jew Victim

"It turns out that the brilliant Fischer, who has all the makings of an American hero, is very politically incorrect on Jewish questions, for which he will never be forgiven, even though he is a Jew. Thus we are not supposed to herald him as the world's greatest chess player."

Note two things here. One, even at the time, nobody disputed that Fischer was one of the greatest in chess history; nor does anyone dispute that today. Two, even at the time, Fischer disavowed his own Jewish ancestry, openly admired Hitler, blamed the Jews for ruining his reputation and chess ranking in the world and considered the State of Israel to be a spider manipulating the press and intelligentsia of the English-speaking world. To consider Fischer anything other than a raving loon and, further, to consider him persecuted only opens very reasonable lines of inquiry as to why anybody would sympathize with him at all, unless his lunacy was coeval with one's own.

Ron Paul Political Report—November, 1989: Bohemian Grove

"The annual Grove encampment began with the pagan 'Cremation of Care' ceremony, with Druid priests dressed in tight, multicolored robes. Even stranger, says Weiss, 'vaguely homosexual undertones suffused this spectacle, as they do much of the ritualized life in the Grove.' Indeed, there's sex at the Grove: female prostitutes outside the camp (and inside, in past years, we're told) and--says Weiss--a young man on his own gets 'frequent invitations from gay Bohemians.'" Once again, the real horror of international conspiracy and political capture is vivified not by policy decisions but because dudes might kiss each other or have sex after marriage or engage in some mindless, meaningless ritual that is non-Christian.

"In his speech to fellow Bohemians, Reagan advocated the old Trilateralist agenda item of four-year terms for Congressmen... and more government regulation of the media, to keep articles like Weiss' out of print.... When a Time reporter and photographer tried to do the same sort of story in 1982, it was spiked by Time's Trilateral publisher." In classic conspiracist narrative, any dislike of the media is explicit dislike of conspiracists' contribution to media, and their failures to appear in mass media indicate a systemic muzzling, rather than a — to take a free-market example — bottom-line-minded publisher passing on something that nobody with a brain, checkbook or an absence of heavy-metal poisoning will read or care about.

This last page could have been a good point about the USS Liberty and American newspapers' paralytic fear of offending the State of Israel with accurate reportage of Israeli military overreaction, but the end of the page sabotages that with even more DREAD HOMO CONSPIRACY. As is the case with everything else Ron Paul, a decent idea is ineluctably subsumed by totally crazy nonsense.

For instance: "Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) said that if he were drummed out of the House, he would take many others with him, including five Republicans he says are closet homosexuals. This threat apparently led the House ethics committee to try to call off further inquiries into the sex lives of Congressmen, and in early October, the Washington Post said that there would be no more talk of sex in Congress. By the end of the month, however, the Washington Times was reporting that 'senior Democratic officials' say the Congressional gym has become a hotbed of homosexual activity, presumably by Republicans."

Ron Paul Political Report—November, 1992: Buy My Book! Buy My Book! Buy My Book on Abortion! Abortion and Property Rights Are Essentially the Same. They're a Matter of Privacy, Unlike Abortion, Which is Not Privacy but Property. We Cannot Legislate Property at the Federal Level, However... (Votes for Every Federal Abortion Ban Available) Property and the Person Theoretically If Von Mises and Things, Cogito, Then...

"Make no mistake: if our culture is not willing to recognize the value of life, it can never be persuaded to recognize the derivative obligations to respect private property, limited government, sound money, etc. That's why the opinions of the medical elite are a threat to our entire civilization. (Want a copy of my latest book on abortion? It's available for $10 from our office.)"

Ron Paul Political Report—October, 1992: Carjacking: A Hip-Hop Thing to Do

"If you live in a major city, you've probably already heard about the newest threat to your life and limb, and your family: carjacking. It is the hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos. The youth simply walk up to a car they like, pull a gun, tell the family to get out, steal their jewelry and wallets, and take the car to wreck. Such actions have ballooned in the recent months. In the old days, average people could avoid such youth by staying out of bad neighborhoods. Empowered by media, police, and political complicity, however, the youth now roam everywhere looking for cars to steal and people to rob. What can you do? More and more Americans are carrying a gun in the car. An ex-cop I know advises that if you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example)."

Now try reading that quote again, but replace the word "youth" with "[see forum posting rules]." Let's not pretend it's meant to be anything else.

Ron Paul Survival Report—January 1993: A Youth Culture of Ghetto Values

"Nearly every other group but whites are allowed a certain degree of cultural autonomy. Blacks have black schools, clubs, and neighborhoods. The same is true of Hispanics. It is human nature that like attracts likes. But whites are not allowed to express this same human impulse. Except in a de facto sense, there can be no white schools, white clubs, or white neighbor hoods [sic]. The political system demands white integration, while allowing black segregation. The youth culture is already driven by ghetto music and ghetto values.... And the sexual ethics of our youth are also degenerating to the level of the ghetto."

Ron Paul Survival Report—January, 1994: Gay People Enjoy Getting AIDS

"They enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick. Put it all together, and you've got another wave of AIDS infections, that you, dear taxpayer, will be asked to pay for."

Ron Paul Survival Report—January, 1995: Ten Militia Commandments

"You can't kill a Hydra by cutting off it's head." "Keep the group size down." "Keep quiet and you're harder to find."

"Don't keep all your eggs in one basket. If you have more than one rifle, store it in a hideaway spot." "Hide your best eggs from prying eyes. Destroy any documents or discs that become unnecessary." "Bojangles Robinson ain't the only one who can tap. Avoid the phone as much as possible." "Remember you're not alone."

Ron Paul Survival Report—July, 1994: America Has Less Crime Than Europe When You Take out All the Black People

The analysis from "Criminologist Jared Taylor" comes from a man who believes in white supremacy and eugenics laws and is featured as an interviewee on websites like this.

Ron Paul Survival Report—March, 1993: Clinton's Illegitimate Children

"During the presidential campaign, black activist Robert 'Say' McIntosh of Arkansas distributed a list of Clinton's illegitimate children, black and white: 'woods colts' in the backwoods slang.... Why? 'Bill Clinton told me he would get my son out of prison,' McIntosh said in an interview, according to a front page story in the Washington Times."

You, too, should be stunned to see a Ron Paul newsletter alleging that Bill Clinton feths black people, according to a black person connected to a black person in jail, printed in the ridiculously far-right Moonie Times. The only thing this story lacks is the idea that Clinton himself is secretly black. Not that insinuating that would have any resonance with people who like Ron Paul solely for freedom's sake and who cannot be racist because "racism is a form of collectivism." No, of course not.

This first page hysterically predicts the worst tax rises in history, ignoring actual history. That's par for the course. The second page keeps elaborating on fantasies that wouldn't even be nightmarish to any American in 1955. But, just for good measure, it includes, "You Can't Fire a Freak," in which being a transsexual is not only deviant but also the first sign of runaway lawsuits!

Ron Paul Survival Report—November, 1994: Militia Movements, A Magnificent Sign!

"This radical new movement is a magnificent sign of the times, one of many indications that the central state faces massive resistance from average people and is losing its grip on political power.... It's the domination of the country by Washington that is driving the militia and other heroic movements around the country."

"If you belong to one of these groups, be careful not to let down your guard too easily if at all.... Big government is forever, says the Beltway elite. But don't believe it. If people form their own communities of internal protection, the central state becomes an even more obvious parasite. It is an encouraging sign that the end of government as we know it may be near."

Ron Paul Survival Report—September, 1994: Those Who Don't Commit Sodomy, Who Don't Get a Blood Transfusion and Who Don't Swap Needles Are Virtually Assured of Not Getting AIDS Unless They Are Deliberately Infected by a Malicious Gay

The above title is the money quote from this piece. Coming in second: "On sharing needles: this is one of the customs among dopers. They use the same needle out of addict solidarity. Sterile syringes would be just as available on the black market as illegal drugs if the demand were there. Addicts want to share needles. Too bad they have to die so expensively at taxpayers' expense."

Ron Paul Political Report—December, 1989: Needlin, Jesse Jackson, Homos, Reverse Racism and Washington FOR BLACKS ONLY

Paul writes, "My old colleague, Congressman Bill Dannemeyer (R-CA), speaks out despite the organized power of the gay lobby.... Here are some excerpts from one of his recent speeches:

"AIDS was 'originally known as GRIDS--gay related immune deficiency syndrome.' For political reasons, it was changed to AIDS. "A whole political movement has been created and sustained on a single notion: homosexual sodomy."

"The average homosexual has 1,000 or more partners in a lifetime, and the average homosexual has only one sexual enounter per partner and never sees the person again after that encounter."

It goes on, and it's ridiculous, and no assertion made in it passes a laugh test or any clinical rigorousness, which you'd think would matter to someone billing himself as "Dr." Paul.

"To be white in Washington, however, is to experience a culture that is anti-white and proud of it.... Professors teach that whites are committing genocide against blacks and invented crack and AIDS as part of the plan."

Agreed. That's just nutty. Everyone knows that AIDS was invented by the WHO, at an Army base in Maryland, as part of a massive federal government control plan. Look at all these blacks: they even try to steal conspiracies against whites.

"Today only a race-obsessed society will do, with State power enforcing official discrimination in favor of blacks. Of course, there are racist whites. But outside of a miniscule band of KKK members, there are few whose racism is the defining fact of their lives. Too many D.C. blacks, on the other hand, are charter members in what we might call the BBB. Washington--with its racist government, racist radio, racist ministers, racist universities, and racist attitudes--is the black New Jerusalem, so no white is supposed to question it. Or so says William Raspberry. Excuse me for not buying it."

A Personal Letter from Ron Paul About How You Can Give Him More Money

We return to the nut of all this, Ron Paul, who allegedly made millions off these newsletters, bilking the undereducated, paranoid and racist for more "unreal" paper dollars, has one last appeal:

Dear Supporter,

As a special thank you, if you subscribe before the Presidential Convention on September 5, you may have my newsletter for an unprecedented 50% off ($49.50)!

- Ron

And we arrive at the beginning.

The is the nugget and the nugatory fact of the Ron Paul experience: everything inspirational and aspirational about the Ron Paul candidacy is as nakedly fungible as every word above. When he was not in office, for $49.95, you could buy his book about how to be scared shitless about government and invest in the same gold mines he already had shares in. Now that he's in government and angling for a higher position, you are even more compelled to stave off categorical economic collapse by investing even more than $49.95 in his campaign. And if his campaign goes nowhere, try googling something other than "RON PAUL" and whether candidates can pocket donations.

Still, on any map of moral behavior, this is a man who merits no one's esteem. To return to a comment above, he either believes these paranoiac, divisive, racial and sexually malicious things and wrote them himself, or he recognized the cynical political value in trading in them, or he was so stupid that not a word above was written by him, yet it carried his name anyway.

There is no win here. There is no good here. Any bargain you strike where the above doesn't matter is a bargain you strike by saying, "I accept the above. I accept it and consider it immaterial to my wants going forward." There are precious few and very slender platforms on which that kind of thin-sliced appreciation can stand without wobbling and falling into a ditch. For almost everybody, that bargain trades away your own goodness. That bargain shelves your credibility as a human being. It means you lose.

For Ron Paul fans looking to respond to the above, please read this response to common Ron Paul defenses. Youtubes of/about Ron Paul saying he cannot be/is not racist have been posted a dozen times already. They will be ignored with the same zesty spirit with which you've ignored the above and all pertinent links.

Ron Paul wrote:Libertarians are incapable of being a racist because racism is a collectivist idea. You see people in group. A civil libertarian like myself see everybody as an important individual. It's not the color of their skin that is important. As Martin Luther King said. What is important is the character of the people. What's really interesting, though, and this might be behind it because as a Republican candidate I'm getting the most support from black voters and now that has to be undermined.

And I do this because I attack two wars that blacks are suffering from. One, the war overseas. And in all wars minorities suffer the most. So they join me in this position I have against the war in Iraq. And what about the war on drugs? What other candidates will stand up and say I will pardon all blacks, all whites, everybody who were convicted for non-violent drug acts and drug crimes.

And this is where the real discrimination is. Let me finish this. Because I've got to get my message back because you put the other message out. I got to get my message back. Now, if you want to look for discrimination, it's the judicial system. Fourteen percent of the inner city blacks commit drug crime. Sixty seven percent of blacks are in prison. That's discrimination. That's the judicial code that I'm attacking. That's not racism.

What I defend the principle of libertarianism where we never see people who belong to a group, and every individual is defended and protected because they're important as an individual, not because of the color of their skin, but because of their character. So I am the antiracist because I am the only candidate, Republican or Democrat who were protect the minority against these vicious drug laws.

Ron Paul's Race Relations
posted by From the Studio | Friday, December 23, 2011

Have you noticed how well-formed Ron Paul supporters' defense arguments are?

The usual approach - It's the media's fault.
The novel approach - It's impossible for a libertarian to be racist.
The candidate's line - He didn't write that stuff and he disavowed it.
The distraction/changed subject - These wars are racist.

Of course, Ron Paul has no responsibility for these newsletters at all. Despite the fact that his name was on them and they were marketed to his followers. The deniers can cry foul all they want, but a quick review of Ron (and Rand) Paul's views in the Civil Rights Act, desegregation, and EEO really tells you all you need to know about the Paul family. Paul's claimed unconstitutionality of nearly everything is simply a smokescreen to cover for personal bias against minorities, non-Christians, the poor, and more.

Monster Rain wrote:Oh, another troll thread from that one guy.

/yawn

"Hurr, Ron Paul is cray-cray." Am I doing it right?

schadenfreude wrote:There are multiple problems for Paul here because he's not going to be very good at purging the ranks of his followers of racists, and he is not going to be very good a leading a political witch hunt of the racists that actually wrote that stuff in his name.

halonachos wrote:We get it Brass, you're the Frazzled of the left.

biccat wrote:
Mainly because he's got a balanced left-right approach to governance. That is, he likes the far-left ideas and the far-right ideas, meaning absolutely no one will vote for him.

He's like the anti-Reagan. Or Clinton.

schadenfreude wrote:
...and is now worshiped in the Republican party like he was a golden calf.

Ron Paul Newsletter
@RP_Newsletter
Tweeting actual quotes from the Ron Paul Newsletters. Non-newsletter tweets are signed -RPN

Ron Paul's Race Relations
Have you noticed how well-formed Ron Paul supporters' defense arguments are?

The usual approach - It's the media's fault.
The novel approach - It's impossible for a libertarian to be racist.
The candidate's line - He didn't write that stuff and he disavowed it.
The distraction/changed subject - These wars are racist.

Of course, Ron Paul has no responsibility for these newsletters at all. Despite the fact that his name was on them and they were marketed to his followers. The deniers can cry foul all they want, but a quick review of Ron (and Rand) Paul's views in the Civil Rights Act, desegregation, and EEO really tells you all you need to know about the Paul family. Paul's claimed unconstitutionality of nearly everything is simply a smokescreen to cover for personal bias against minorities, non-Christians, the poor, and more.

Instant Republican nostalgia, just add DeLorean
By Jamil Smith
-
Mon Jan 2, 2012 2:49 PM EST

"He had this crazy idea about breeding pine trees."

Tracking how Ron Paul has explained away his racist newsletters requires its own timeline. He's been doing this for a while now, since around the time "Back to the Future" was released. Now that he's doing it again, and two days prior to the Iowa caucus, it seems like a curious time to dis the 1964 Civil Rights Act (again).

About four minutes into his interview yesterday with CNN, Congressman Paul reiterated that he's all for the Jim Crow-killing aspects of the Civil Rights Act. But nearly fifty years later, he is still unhappy with how we got rid of it:

What you don't want to do is undermine the concept of liberty in that process. And what they did in that bill was they destroyed the principle of private property and private choices.

So if you do this, all civil liberties are protected by property rights, where it's your TV stations -- that's a piece of property -- or whether it's the newspaper, whether it's the church building, or whether it's the bedroom. This is something that people don't quite understand, that civil liberties aren't divorced from property.

So if you try to improve relationships by forcing and telling people what they can't do, and you ignore and undermine the principles of liberty, then the government can come into our bedrooms. And that's exactly what has happened.

Paul's criticism may be libertarian in its basis, but it fits right in with how the other Republican presidential candidates sold themselves in the takeover election of 2010, and now again in 2012. They wouldn't do it if the message didn't have appeal. Republican politicians hearken back to before that meddling Obama got involved, back to the good ol' Reagan years. Ron Paul is lamenting how things changed back in the '60s. The overall message to voters is that America was better back then. Hop into their political DeLorean, and they'll take you back there.

But as you'll recall from "Back to the Future," things back in the day were better for some people. As a kid, you know what I remembered most? Mayor Goldie Wilson was "colored" and sweeping a soda jerk's floor in 1955. Just saying.

On Friday's show, TRMS guest host Melissa Harris-Perry excoriated this brand of nostalgic campaigning by Republicans, and made an important distinction:

History and nostalgia are not the same thing. In fact, respecting history actually means being willing to do away with nostalgia...only nostalgia makes you believe that we're worse off now than a century ago. This I know. Despite the continuing inequalities in our country, there was no moment in the American story when it would have been better to be a Black woman than it is right now. The march is unsteady, but the progress is real.

The full segment is after the jump.

Melissa Harris-Perry responds to calls to "take America back" to "the good old days" with a reminder of some of the harsh realities and painful history America has progressed beyond.
Video at http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/02/9893238-instant-republican-nostalgia-just-add-delorean.

biccat wrote:
Everyone likes it when the poor destitute drug addict goes free, nobody likes it when the white guys get off for murder of a black guy.

dogma wrote:I consider the same to be true of the jury itself, and place greater faith in a single, educated man, than a nearly random collection of jurors.

Remember, I'm nothing if not an elitist.

dogma wrote:Now you know that isn't true. You can just dig through this forum a bit to find examples of people upset about destitute drug addicts not getting their comeuppance.

Frazzled wrote:Why? Juries are a right. Judges are not noted as a right under the Constitution. One can easily argue that most faults with a jury are easily correcteable by reducing the ability of the legal teams to influence the makeup of those juries.

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.
...
The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made

biccat wrote:
The judge, after all, has access to information that the jury does not which may bias his decision making one way or the other.