The Ron Paul moment– bad and good

Ron Paul is at last having his moment. The Washington Post says “Rep. Ron Paul has become a serious force with the potential to upend the nomination fight and remain a factor throughout next year’s general-election campaign.” The Post cites Paul’s appeal to young voters across party lines, though it ignores his antiwar views.

In recent days The New York Times has picked up reports in the Weekly Standard about racism published in Ron Paul’s political newsletter in the 1990s, and Paul’s somewhat lame apologies for the comments:

A 1992 passage from the Ron Paul Political Report about the Los Angeles riots read, “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks.” A passage in another newsletter asserted that people with AIDS should not be allowed to eat in restaurants because “AIDS can be transmitted by saliva”; in 1990 one of his publications criticized Ronald Reagan for having gone along with the creation of the federal holiday honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which it called “Hate Whitey Day.”…

He defended the statements to The Dallas Morning News at the time, saying they were taken out of context. He also told the newspaper he did not know that his newsletter — with 7,000 to 8,000 subscribers — was listed by a neo-Nazi group called Heritage Front, apparently as recommended reading, under the Internet heading “Racialists and Freedom Fighters.”

But in an interview in 2001 with Texas Monthly, Mr. Paul said he regretted that he had not admitted that he had not written the newsletters. “They were never my words, but I had some moral responsibility for them,” Mr. Paul said. He said that he had “actually really wanted to try to explain that it doesn’t come from me directly”…

Readers know that I’ve promoted Paul a lot on this site. And I will continue to do so because of his incredibly pointed and intelligent foreign policy positions; I believe he is the best means of politicizing American militarism in the Middle East so that our people can actually form the right opinion of the neocons and of the rationalization of military occupation. He’s an antiwar candidate. (And Andrew Sullivan calls this a smear campaign by neocons.) But that doesn’t mean I’d vote for Paul. I might– but he’s got to do a much better job of apologizing for that racism and putting it behind him.

Meantime, capitalizing on his triumph in that debate in Iowa last weekend, here is a genius video Paul just did opposing our occupation of foreign countries. Not just about Afghanistan, but military bases elsewhere. The video asks us to imagine a Chinese base in Texas.

“Imagine if the occupiers’ attitude was that if they killed enough Americans, the resistance would stop but instead for every American killed, ten more would take up arms against them, resulting in perpetual bloodshed…”

Imagine if we elected someone who pledged to end the occupation.

“Imagine if that leader changed his mind once he took office. The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is offensive to the people who live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas “

Shutting down military bases is not isolationism, Ron Paul says at the end; it is opening our arms to trade and friendship.

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If Ron Paul emerges as a formidable contender, The Lobby will do everything in its power to either put him on a proverbial leash or destroy his career as a politician.

fantastic video!

Its funny, my man Phil is an anti-zionist – and I think part of that definition is being inherently skeptical about leader led movements, and the propaganda that comes with them.

Someone is going to have to explain the difference between regular zionists and the zi-ron-ists.

Ron Paul, lover of freedom and liberty, defender of the faith, or whatever else he is being lauded as now: ”We don’t think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That’s true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such.”
– Ron Paul

”Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal. These aren’t my figures, that is the assumption you can gather from” the report.”
– Ron Paul

When folks here make mention of the origins of Paul’s political beliefs, we’re told to shut up, told all our problems stem from the Federal Reserve and that racism only exists because our society doesn’t foster “personal liberty” or some such. Let’s call a spade a spade – Paul is just another in a long line of white “conservatives” from down south who will do ANYTHING they can to obfuscate from their real agenda: re-constituting the Confederacy… Please, Paul disciples, bash away….

Ron Paul isn’t racist. This newsletter, which was not written by Paul, was also briefly brought up nearly four years ago during his previous campaign. It was brought up, ‘debunked’ and not brought up again until this campaign where it’s been tossed around from time to time. Now apparently because Paul is likely going to win Iowa, they’re trying to smear him with the only real dirt they have. I’m not a fan of Alex Jones, but according to infowars, this is being pushed by a ‘Gingrich-Linked Propagandist:’

http://www.infowars.com/gingrich-linked-propagandist-recycles-debunked-racist-ron-paul-smear/

I do agree that he has to do a better job apologizing and putting it behind him, walking away from interviews is only going to be spun against him by opponents.

Another Alex Jones link (sorry) from an NAACP president who has known Paul for 20 years:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2008/011308_not_racist.htm

Paul’s campaign team should find some racist or sexist dirt on any of his opponents. I think I read that Michele Bachmann is involved with a camp that’s supposed to make gay people straight. Anders Breivik may have even attended it (it is said he is a Bachmann supporter and was in Lake Elmo, MN last year which is where the camp is located.. proves nothing but you never know, that’s a random place to visit for the Norwegian psycho). If Ron Paul had David Duke’s past, I wouldn’t support him. The good thing is he doesn’t and he isn’t a racist. The bad thing is this is the kind of smear that people buy into.

It’s remarkable how much less racial tension there is in the US now than a generation ago. Al Sharpton might well support Ron Paul, at least among Republicans, and I’m sure they would get along. But both were (equally I would submit) engaged in race-baiting twenty or so years ago. The edge was taken off race by the Clinton administration, a full employment economy, a peaking and leveling off of out of wedlock births, welfare reform, and perhaps most of all, a drop in crime–crime being as bad as white racism for poisoning relations between the races. It’s stunning that what seemed a major issue–(from wherever you stood, and I was a neocon then) twenty years ago, is minor today. Paul should apologize (and so should Sharpton, and others). I might vote for either one, today.