RSDavis
01-17-2008, 04:09 PM
http://laceylibertarian.us/wp-images/rPaulRev.jpg
Ron Paul Roundup (01-17-08)
by RS Davis (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=348407665&Mytoken=28E669AE-BB30-4509-8E1450C768CAE7C312604182)
Hello Freedomphiles! Looks like the media engine is starting to rev again, so this oughta be a nice, big Roundup for you. Let's start with what is being dubbed as Newslettergate.
Reason's Jacob Sullum, author of the brilliant Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use, writes (http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=24479) a piece examining the claims in Human Events:
Not everything you may have heard about the newsletters is true. Contrary to what James Kirchick claims in The New Republic, the newsletters did not offer "kind words for the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke." And although various media outlets have described parts of the newsletters as "anti-Semitic," there's little evidence to back up that description in the passages Kirchick cites.
But the truth is bad enough. In addition to anti-gay comments that pine for the days of the closet, the newsletters include gratuitous swipes at Martin Luther King, discussions of crime that emphasize the perpetrators' skin color, and dark warnings of coming "race riots." None of it is explicitly racist, and some of it could be written off as deliberately provocative political commentary. Taken together, however, these passages clearly cater to the prejudices of angry white guys who hate gay people and fear blacks.
(...)
In a CNN interview, Paul alternated between acknowledging the legitimacy of this issue and dismissing it as old news dredged up "for political reasons." I'm sure most of his supporters were not familiar with the content of his newsletters. I've been working at the country's leading libertarian magazine on and off since 1989, and it was news to me.
If I thought Ron Paul might be president in 2009, I'd have to admit that his newsletter negligence raises questions about his judgment and about the people he'd choose to advise him. But since the value of the Paul campaign lies in promoting the libertarian ideals of limited government, individual freedom and tolerance, the real problem is that the newsletters contradict this message.
On CNN, Paul emphasized that "racist libertarian" is an oxymoron since libertarians judge people as individuals. He should follow through on that point by identifying the author(s) of the race-baiting material and repudiating not just the sentiments it represents but the poisonous, self-defeating strategy of building an anti-collectivist movement on group hatred.
Agreed, and well-said. I like Jacob's reaction because like me, he still feels Ron Paul is the best candidate, but he is dissappointed in him and would like to see him do more to set this straight. We, his supporters, need to demand a better explanation, but we don't need to throw him under the bus. He's still a hundred times better than the rest of the fascist wankers.
A lot of the problem with the New Republic piece is that it was over-reaching, stretching innuendo and combining run-of-the-mill conservatism with the more outrageous statements to create a tapestry of bile. As Sullum points out above, some of the stuff really wasn't that bad, others reprehensible.
Dennis Perrin of The Huffington Post analyzes (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-perrin/the-liberals-ron-paul-pr_b_81465.html) the situation farther:
To quote James Ridgeway, liberals can be and often are the meanest motherfuckers around. Criticize any of their scared beliefs, then watch out. They'll come at you with anything they've got, doesn't matter if it's truthful, accurate, or even sane. American liberals truly feel that they are humanity's Final Word. If you dispute that, you're a bigot, a hater, a piece of slime that deserves only the nastiest treatment. And baby, you'll get it.
At issue is Ron Paul's supposed racism and *****-phobia, reflected in newsletters that bore his name. Paul has distanced himself from the newsletters, saying that others penned the toxic rhetoric, without his direct knowledge or approval. Maybe Paul's telling the truth. Maybe he's not. Maybe he really does despise those of darker hue and same-sexers. Maybe he's like the worst racist you've ever seen. Maybe he eats black children for breakfast.
Whatever Paul actually believes about minorities and *****s is not the real concern here. What bothers liberals, TNR's James Kirchik among them, is that Paul is the only presidential candidate who is seriously running against the state. This includes anti-imperialism and calls to end the Drug War. Given that Hillary and Obama are nowhere near this mindset -- quite the opposite -- means that anyone who is must be a bad person. If those newsletters didn't exist, hit men like Kirchik and the libloggers who support him would find something else to smear Paul with. Because, at bottom, they oppose any dismantling of the war state (recall Kos' shitting all over Kucinich). They simply want their preferred candidates to run the machine instead.
(...)
Yikes. Scary stuff. Sane people know that there is no American surveillance state -- or there wasn't one during the hallowed Clinton era, when all that crazy militia activity was taking place. According to liberal history, police state measures (torture, too) only occur during Republican presidencies, the past seven years being the most recent example. For Paul's newsletter to say otherwise is simple lunacy.
I'll tell you this: I've studied various strands of American right wing political philosophy and beliefs, and have had many conversations with rightists of different temperaments, and when it comes to seriously defending First and Fourth Amendment rights (what remain, anyway), I'll stand with libertarians like Ron Paul. I may not agree with most of his beliefs, nor that of the anti-statist right overall, but I know that Paul and others like him aren't looking to tap my phone or break down my door in the middle of the night.
Think the Branch Davidians were paranoid? Then vote Hillary or Obama. And sleep tight.
Some definitely interesting points in there, but the finger-pointing, "You're more racist than me!" game is tiresome. No matter what TNR wrote in the past, Ron Paul has some writings in his past, and I am a lot more concerned with his explanation than theirs. I could give two shits about TNR.
Pajamas Media wrote (http://pajamasmedia.com/2008/01/ron_paul_1.php) about it, too:
The online archive of what is now known as The Ron Paul Freedom Report—a much-watered-down edition of what Kirchick uncovered—bears this disclaimer on its still-active homepage: "Congressman Ron Paul is no longer affiliated with or associated in any way with The Liberty Committee of Falls Church, Virginia. If you receive a solicitation from The Liberty Committee and/or its chairman, Mr. David James, bearing Congressman Paul's name, please be advised that the solicitation was in no way approved or endorsed by Congressman Paul."
No mention of when it became unaffiliated or why David James is allowed to carry on publishing this document without Paul's imprimatur. How long would the Barack Obama Audacity of Hope Leaflet stay afloat under similar circumstances?
(...)
Let us say that Ron Paul does not harbor an antipathy against blacks and Jews. Is it beyond plausibility that, as a libertarian dogmatically opposed to entitlement spending and foreign interventionism, he would stoop to make common cause with someone opposed to them, too, yet who does harbor such antipathy? And which is worse for someone purporting to be the only straight shooter vying for the White House?
Paul has not been helped by earlier weasel defense of accepting campaign contributions from various neo-Nazis outfits, such as Stormfront. He claimed then also—as he does now with respect to the patrons of his newsletter—that it is not in his laissez-faire nature to regulate human behavior. Duke had his "taint," after all, and the others "Ronulans" must have theirs. From here it is not a far trip down the long slide into excusing demagogic cracks about gays, Jews, and the "sociological effects" of welfare as serving a deeper ideological kinship.
I hadn't heard about the disclaimer yet, so that was interesting. I think the article is fairly critical and I do have some issues with it. But I think the author has a point there that in the end, perhaps this wouldn't have looked as bad to mainstream America if Dr Paul had given back Don Black's money and disavowed any association with the David Dukes of the world.
In the essay, they quote this section of one of the newsletters:
"David Duke received 44% of the vote in the Senate primary race in Louisiana, 60% of the white vote, and 9% of the black vote!. This totaled 100,000 more votes than the current governor when he won.
[…]
Duke's platform called for tax cuts, no quotes, no affirmative action, no welfare, and no busing. "Tonight we concede the election," he said, "But we will never concede our fight for equal rights for all Americans."
To many voters, this seems like just plain good sense. Duke carried baggage from his past, but the voters were willing to overlook that. And if he had been afforded the forgiveness an ex-communist gets, he might have won.
Liberals like Richard Cohen of the Washington Post say he got so many votes because Louisianians were racists and ignorant. Baloney.
David Broder, also of the Post, and equally liberal, writing on an entirely different subject, had it right: "No one wants to talk about [race] publicly, but if you ask any campaign consultant or pollster privately, you can confirm the sad reality that a great many working-class and middle-class white Americans are far less hostile to the rich and their tax breaks than they are to the poor and minorities with their welfare and affirmative-action programs."
Liberals are notoriously blind to the sociological effects of their own programs. David Duke was hurt by his past. How many more Dukes are there waiting in the wings without such a taint?"
This is what everyone talks about when they say that Ron Paul "praised racist David Duke." I don't see it that way. When I read that passage, all I see is someone explaining why non-racists and even black people might vote for someone who was formerly a bigshot in the KKK. For further investigation, ask the supporters of Robert Byrd.
And Ron Paul still has support in the black community, more than any other Republican candidate. Here is Nelson Linder, president of the Texas NAACP and longtime friend of the doctor, on why Ron Paul is not a racist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvFLSwDvBUA
Reason's Julian Sanchez and David Weigel have done an outstanding job researching just who might've written those newsletters, and as I have been saying, they are looking (http://reason.com/news/show/124426.html) at none other than Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard, who are begginning to look less like rabid racists and more like cynical machiavellian political strategists:
The newsletters' obsession with blacks and gays was of a piece with a conscious political strategy adopted at that same time by Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard. After breaking with the Libertarian Party following the 1988 presidential election, Rockwell and Rothbard formed a schismatic "paleolibertarian" movement, which rejected what they saw as the social libertinism and leftist tendencies of mainstream libertarians. In 1990, they launched the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, where they crafted a plan they hoped would midwife a broad new "paleo" coalition.
Rockwell explained the thrust of the idea in a 1990 Liberty essay entitled "The Case for Paleo-Libertarianism." To Rockwell, the LP was a "party of the stoned," a halfway house for libertines that had to be "de-loused." To grow, the movement had to embrace older conservative values. "State-enforced segregation," Rockwell wrote, "was wrong, but so is State-enforced integration. State-enforced segregation was not wrong because separateness is wrong, however. Wishing to associate with members of one's own race, nationality, religion, class, sex, or even political party is a natural and normal human impulse."
The most detailed description of the strategy came in an essay Rothbard wrote for the January 1992 Rothbard-Rockwell Report, titled "Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement." Lamenting that mainstream intellectuals and opinion leaders were too invested in the status quo to be brought around to a libertarian view, Rothbard pointed to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an "Outreach to the Rednecks," which would fashion a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition by targeting the disaffected working and middle classes. (Duke, a former Klansman, was discussed in strikingly similar terms in a 1990 Ron Paul Political Report.) These groups could be mobilized to oppose an expansive state, Rothbard posited, by exposing an "unholy alliance of 'corporate liberal' Big Business and media elites, who, through big government, have privileged and caused to rise up a parasitic Underclass, who, among them all, are looting and oppressing the bulk of the middle and working classes in America."
Well, I see that as a silver lining. While the extreme cynicism of such a strategy is kind of shoking, it's at least better than the idea that these guys were all along rabid racists. Here's some more info from the article that bolsters that:
The publishing operation was lucrative. A tax document from June 1993—wrapping up the year in which the Political Report had published the "welfare checks" comment on the L.A. riots—reported an annual income of $940,000 for Ron Paul & Associates, listing four employees in Texas (Paul's family and Rockwell) and seven more employees around the country. If Paul didn't know who was writing his newsletters, he knew they were a crucial source of income and a successful tool for building his fundraising base for a political comeback.
The tenor of Paul's newsletters changed over the years. The ones published between Paul's return to private life after three full terms in congress (1985) and his Libertarian presidential bid (1988) notably lack inflammatory racial or anti-gay comments. The letters published between Paul's first run for president and his return to Congress in 1996 are another story—replete with claims that Martin Luther King "seduced underage girls and boys," that black protesters should gather "at a food stamp bureau or a crack house" rather than the Statue of Liberty, and that AIDS sufferers "enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick."
Wow. I wonder, is it any better to profit off of pandering to racists and homophobes than it is to be a racist or a homophobe in the first place? The lesson to be learned from all this is summed up quite nicely in the conclusion:
They are less angry these days. Visitors to LewRockwell.com or Mises.org since 2001 are less likely to feel the need for a shower. One can almost detect what sounds like mellowing in Rockwell's reflections on the high and heady paleo days, unburdened by ominous warnings of the looming race war. Nowadays the fiery rhetoric is directed at the "pimply-faced" Kirchick, "Benito" Giuliani, and the "so-called 'libertarians'" at reason and Cato.
But perhaps the best refutation of the old approach is not the absence of race-baiting rhetoric from its progenitors, but the success of the 2008 Ron Paul phenomenon. The man who was once the Great Paleolibertarian Hope has built a broad base of enthusiastic supporters without resorting to venomous rhetoric or coded racism. He has stuck stubbornly to the issues of sound money, "humble foreign policy," and shrinking the state. He wraps up his speeches with a three-part paean to individualism: "I don't want to run your life," "I don't want to run the economy," and "I don't want to run the world." He talks about the disproportionate effect of the drug war on African-Americans, and appeared at a September 2007 Republican debate on black issues that was boycotted by the then-frontrunners. All this and more have brought him $30 million-plus from more than 100,000 donors; thousands of campaign volunteers; and the largest rallies he's ever spoken to, including a crowd of almost 5,000 in Philadelphia.
Yet those new supporters, many of whom are first encountering libertarian ideas through the Ron Paul Revolution, deserve a far more frank explanation than the campaign has as yet provided of how their candidate's name ended up atop so many ugly words. Ron Paul may not be a racist, but he became complicit in a strategy of pandering to racists—and taking "moral responsibility" for that now means more than just uttering the phrase. It means openly grappling with his own past—acknowledging who said what, and why. Otherwise he risks damaging not only his own reputation, but that of the philosophy to which he has committed his life.
There's a lot more of value in the article. I recommend everyone click the link (http://reason.com/news/show/124426.html) and read it. Justin Gardner of Donkelephant thinks (http://donklephant.com/2008/01/16/is-the-ron-paul-movement-over/) that the candidacy of Ron Paul is over, but the revolution just begun:
As far as Paul being a racist or hinting at a return to Jim Crow, I really don't buy it. I think he was just remarkably dumb in the 90s and let somebody co-opt his name to sell hate. And he should take all the slings and arrows that come with that lack of action. But when Jason says he has willful association with Stormfront, well, that's nonsense. There's nothing willful about it. I'm sure the dregs of society have donated money to all of the candidates. Are we going to go through all the records of all the contributions and ask the candidates to answer for everybody? "Mr. Romney, a serial pedophile donated to your campaign. Will you give the money back or do you support pedophilia?" I mean, come on Jason…
Again, I do think Ron Paul is over, and that's mostly due to his judgement. You can't credibly push a guy for President who has allowed stuff like the newsletter scandal to happen. You just can't. But the movement has only just begun, and I think in the years to come it will find more credible voices to push the freedom message.
I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel, but this campaign has always been a longshot. We realistically need to start thinking of gearing up for an independent bid for the White House. Dr Paul's support is an inch deep and a mile wide, which makes him much more dangerous in a general election than a partisan primary.
Also, we need to start looking toward what happens with the movement after the elections are over, whether Ron Paul is president or not. You guys could try to start a whole separate movement, or you could join us over here on the libertarian side of things and join forces to take over and not run the world.
[i]Continued...
http://www.brendangates.com/forumlogo.jpg
Ron Paul Roundup (01-17-08)
by RS Davis (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=348407665&Mytoken=28E669AE-BB30-4509-8E1450C768CAE7C312604182)
Hello Freedomphiles! Looks like the media engine is starting to rev again, so this oughta be a nice, big Roundup for you. Let's start with what is being dubbed as Newslettergate.
Reason's Jacob Sullum, author of the brilliant Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use, writes (http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=24479) a piece examining the claims in Human Events:
Not everything you may have heard about the newsletters is true. Contrary to what James Kirchick claims in The New Republic, the newsletters did not offer "kind words for the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke." And although various media outlets have described parts of the newsletters as "anti-Semitic," there's little evidence to back up that description in the passages Kirchick cites.
But the truth is bad enough. In addition to anti-gay comments that pine for the days of the closet, the newsletters include gratuitous swipes at Martin Luther King, discussions of crime that emphasize the perpetrators' skin color, and dark warnings of coming "race riots." None of it is explicitly racist, and some of it could be written off as deliberately provocative political commentary. Taken together, however, these passages clearly cater to the prejudices of angry white guys who hate gay people and fear blacks.
(...)
In a CNN interview, Paul alternated between acknowledging the legitimacy of this issue and dismissing it as old news dredged up "for political reasons." I'm sure most of his supporters were not familiar with the content of his newsletters. I've been working at the country's leading libertarian magazine on and off since 1989, and it was news to me.
If I thought Ron Paul might be president in 2009, I'd have to admit that his newsletter negligence raises questions about his judgment and about the people he'd choose to advise him. But since the value of the Paul campaign lies in promoting the libertarian ideals of limited government, individual freedom and tolerance, the real problem is that the newsletters contradict this message.
On CNN, Paul emphasized that "racist libertarian" is an oxymoron since libertarians judge people as individuals. He should follow through on that point by identifying the author(s) of the race-baiting material and repudiating not just the sentiments it represents but the poisonous, self-defeating strategy of building an anti-collectivist movement on group hatred.
Agreed, and well-said. I like Jacob's reaction because like me, he still feels Ron Paul is the best candidate, but he is dissappointed in him and would like to see him do more to set this straight. We, his supporters, need to demand a better explanation, but we don't need to throw him under the bus. He's still a hundred times better than the rest of the fascist wankers.
A lot of the problem with the New Republic piece is that it was over-reaching, stretching innuendo and combining run-of-the-mill conservatism with the more outrageous statements to create a tapestry of bile. As Sullum points out above, some of the stuff really wasn't that bad, others reprehensible.
Dennis Perrin of The Huffington Post analyzes (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dennis-perrin/the-liberals-ron-paul-pr_b_81465.html) the situation farther:
To quote James Ridgeway, liberals can be and often are the meanest motherfuckers around. Criticize any of their scared beliefs, then watch out. They'll come at you with anything they've got, doesn't matter if it's truthful, accurate, or even sane. American liberals truly feel that they are humanity's Final Word. If you dispute that, you're a bigot, a hater, a piece of slime that deserves only the nastiest treatment. And baby, you'll get it.
At issue is Ron Paul's supposed racism and *****-phobia, reflected in newsletters that bore his name. Paul has distanced himself from the newsletters, saying that others penned the toxic rhetoric, without his direct knowledge or approval. Maybe Paul's telling the truth. Maybe he's not. Maybe he really does despise those of darker hue and same-sexers. Maybe he's like the worst racist you've ever seen. Maybe he eats black children for breakfast.
Whatever Paul actually believes about minorities and *****s is not the real concern here. What bothers liberals, TNR's James Kirchik among them, is that Paul is the only presidential candidate who is seriously running against the state. This includes anti-imperialism and calls to end the Drug War. Given that Hillary and Obama are nowhere near this mindset -- quite the opposite -- means that anyone who is must be a bad person. If those newsletters didn't exist, hit men like Kirchik and the libloggers who support him would find something else to smear Paul with. Because, at bottom, they oppose any dismantling of the war state (recall Kos' shitting all over Kucinich). They simply want their preferred candidates to run the machine instead.
(...)
Yikes. Scary stuff. Sane people know that there is no American surveillance state -- or there wasn't one during the hallowed Clinton era, when all that crazy militia activity was taking place. According to liberal history, police state measures (torture, too) only occur during Republican presidencies, the past seven years being the most recent example. For Paul's newsletter to say otherwise is simple lunacy.
I'll tell you this: I've studied various strands of American right wing political philosophy and beliefs, and have had many conversations with rightists of different temperaments, and when it comes to seriously defending First and Fourth Amendment rights (what remain, anyway), I'll stand with libertarians like Ron Paul. I may not agree with most of his beliefs, nor that of the anti-statist right overall, but I know that Paul and others like him aren't looking to tap my phone or break down my door in the middle of the night.
Think the Branch Davidians were paranoid? Then vote Hillary or Obama. And sleep tight.
Some definitely interesting points in there, but the finger-pointing, "You're more racist than me!" game is tiresome. No matter what TNR wrote in the past, Ron Paul has some writings in his past, and I am a lot more concerned with his explanation than theirs. I could give two shits about TNR.
Pajamas Media wrote (http://pajamasmedia.com/2008/01/ron_paul_1.php) about it, too:
The online archive of what is now known as The Ron Paul Freedom Report—a much-watered-down edition of what Kirchick uncovered—bears this disclaimer on its still-active homepage: "Congressman Ron Paul is no longer affiliated with or associated in any way with The Liberty Committee of Falls Church, Virginia. If you receive a solicitation from The Liberty Committee and/or its chairman, Mr. David James, bearing Congressman Paul's name, please be advised that the solicitation was in no way approved or endorsed by Congressman Paul."
No mention of when it became unaffiliated or why David James is allowed to carry on publishing this document without Paul's imprimatur. How long would the Barack Obama Audacity of Hope Leaflet stay afloat under similar circumstances?
(...)
Let us say that Ron Paul does not harbor an antipathy against blacks and Jews. Is it beyond plausibility that, as a libertarian dogmatically opposed to entitlement spending and foreign interventionism, he would stoop to make common cause with someone opposed to them, too, yet who does harbor such antipathy? And which is worse for someone purporting to be the only straight shooter vying for the White House?
Paul has not been helped by earlier weasel defense of accepting campaign contributions from various neo-Nazis outfits, such as Stormfront. He claimed then also—as he does now with respect to the patrons of his newsletter—that it is not in his laissez-faire nature to regulate human behavior. Duke had his "taint," after all, and the others "Ronulans" must have theirs. From here it is not a far trip down the long slide into excusing demagogic cracks about gays, Jews, and the "sociological effects" of welfare as serving a deeper ideological kinship.
I hadn't heard about the disclaimer yet, so that was interesting. I think the article is fairly critical and I do have some issues with it. But I think the author has a point there that in the end, perhaps this wouldn't have looked as bad to mainstream America if Dr Paul had given back Don Black's money and disavowed any association with the David Dukes of the world.
In the essay, they quote this section of one of the newsletters:
"David Duke received 44% of the vote in the Senate primary race in Louisiana, 60% of the white vote, and 9% of the black vote!. This totaled 100,000 more votes than the current governor when he won.
[…]
Duke's platform called for tax cuts, no quotes, no affirmative action, no welfare, and no busing. "Tonight we concede the election," he said, "But we will never concede our fight for equal rights for all Americans."
To many voters, this seems like just plain good sense. Duke carried baggage from his past, but the voters were willing to overlook that. And if he had been afforded the forgiveness an ex-communist gets, he might have won.
Liberals like Richard Cohen of the Washington Post say he got so many votes because Louisianians were racists and ignorant. Baloney.
David Broder, also of the Post, and equally liberal, writing on an entirely different subject, had it right: "No one wants to talk about [race] publicly, but if you ask any campaign consultant or pollster privately, you can confirm the sad reality that a great many working-class and middle-class white Americans are far less hostile to the rich and their tax breaks than they are to the poor and minorities with their welfare and affirmative-action programs."
Liberals are notoriously blind to the sociological effects of their own programs. David Duke was hurt by his past. How many more Dukes are there waiting in the wings without such a taint?"
This is what everyone talks about when they say that Ron Paul "praised racist David Duke." I don't see it that way. When I read that passage, all I see is someone explaining why non-racists and even black people might vote for someone who was formerly a bigshot in the KKK. For further investigation, ask the supporters of Robert Byrd.
And Ron Paul still has support in the black community, more than any other Republican candidate. Here is Nelson Linder, president of the Texas NAACP and longtime friend of the doctor, on why Ron Paul is not a racist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvFLSwDvBUA
Reason's Julian Sanchez and David Weigel have done an outstanding job researching just who might've written those newsletters, and as I have been saying, they are looking (http://reason.com/news/show/124426.html) at none other than Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard, who are begginning to look less like rabid racists and more like cynical machiavellian political strategists:
The newsletters' obsession with blacks and gays was of a piece with a conscious political strategy adopted at that same time by Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard. After breaking with the Libertarian Party following the 1988 presidential election, Rockwell and Rothbard formed a schismatic "paleolibertarian" movement, which rejected what they saw as the social libertinism and leftist tendencies of mainstream libertarians. In 1990, they launched the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, where they crafted a plan they hoped would midwife a broad new "paleo" coalition.
Rockwell explained the thrust of the idea in a 1990 Liberty essay entitled "The Case for Paleo-Libertarianism." To Rockwell, the LP was a "party of the stoned," a halfway house for libertines that had to be "de-loused." To grow, the movement had to embrace older conservative values. "State-enforced segregation," Rockwell wrote, "was wrong, but so is State-enforced integration. State-enforced segregation was not wrong because separateness is wrong, however. Wishing to associate with members of one's own race, nationality, religion, class, sex, or even political party is a natural and normal human impulse."
The most detailed description of the strategy came in an essay Rothbard wrote for the January 1992 Rothbard-Rockwell Report, titled "Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement." Lamenting that mainstream intellectuals and opinion leaders were too invested in the status quo to be brought around to a libertarian view, Rothbard pointed to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an "Outreach to the Rednecks," which would fashion a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition by targeting the disaffected working and middle classes. (Duke, a former Klansman, was discussed in strikingly similar terms in a 1990 Ron Paul Political Report.) These groups could be mobilized to oppose an expansive state, Rothbard posited, by exposing an "unholy alliance of 'corporate liberal' Big Business and media elites, who, through big government, have privileged and caused to rise up a parasitic Underclass, who, among them all, are looting and oppressing the bulk of the middle and working classes in America."
Well, I see that as a silver lining. While the extreme cynicism of such a strategy is kind of shoking, it's at least better than the idea that these guys were all along rabid racists. Here's some more info from the article that bolsters that:
The publishing operation was lucrative. A tax document from June 1993—wrapping up the year in which the Political Report had published the "welfare checks" comment on the L.A. riots—reported an annual income of $940,000 for Ron Paul & Associates, listing four employees in Texas (Paul's family and Rockwell) and seven more employees around the country. If Paul didn't know who was writing his newsletters, he knew they were a crucial source of income and a successful tool for building his fundraising base for a political comeback.
The tenor of Paul's newsletters changed over the years. The ones published between Paul's return to private life after three full terms in congress (1985) and his Libertarian presidential bid (1988) notably lack inflammatory racial or anti-gay comments. The letters published between Paul's first run for president and his return to Congress in 1996 are another story—replete with claims that Martin Luther King "seduced underage girls and boys," that black protesters should gather "at a food stamp bureau or a crack house" rather than the Statue of Liberty, and that AIDS sufferers "enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick."
Wow. I wonder, is it any better to profit off of pandering to racists and homophobes than it is to be a racist or a homophobe in the first place? The lesson to be learned from all this is summed up quite nicely in the conclusion:
They are less angry these days. Visitors to LewRockwell.com or Mises.org since 2001 are less likely to feel the need for a shower. One can almost detect what sounds like mellowing in Rockwell's reflections on the high and heady paleo days, unburdened by ominous warnings of the looming race war. Nowadays the fiery rhetoric is directed at the "pimply-faced" Kirchick, "Benito" Giuliani, and the "so-called 'libertarians'" at reason and Cato.
But perhaps the best refutation of the old approach is not the absence of race-baiting rhetoric from its progenitors, but the success of the 2008 Ron Paul phenomenon. The man who was once the Great Paleolibertarian Hope has built a broad base of enthusiastic supporters without resorting to venomous rhetoric or coded racism. He has stuck stubbornly to the issues of sound money, "humble foreign policy," and shrinking the state. He wraps up his speeches with a three-part paean to individualism: "I don't want to run your life," "I don't want to run the economy," and "I don't want to run the world." He talks about the disproportionate effect of the drug war on African-Americans, and appeared at a September 2007 Republican debate on black issues that was boycotted by the then-frontrunners. All this and more have brought him $30 million-plus from more than 100,000 donors; thousands of campaign volunteers; and the largest rallies he's ever spoken to, including a crowd of almost 5,000 in Philadelphia.
Yet those new supporters, many of whom are first encountering libertarian ideas through the Ron Paul Revolution, deserve a far more frank explanation than the campaign has as yet provided of how their candidate's name ended up atop so many ugly words. Ron Paul may not be a racist, but he became complicit in a strategy of pandering to racists—and taking "moral responsibility" for that now means more than just uttering the phrase. It means openly grappling with his own past—acknowledging who said what, and why. Otherwise he risks damaging not only his own reputation, but that of the philosophy to which he has committed his life.
There's a lot more of value in the article. I recommend everyone click the link (http://reason.com/news/show/124426.html) and read it. Justin Gardner of Donkelephant thinks (http://donklephant.com/2008/01/16/is-the-ron-paul-movement-over/) that the candidacy of Ron Paul is over, but the revolution just begun:
As far as Paul being a racist or hinting at a return to Jim Crow, I really don't buy it. I think he was just remarkably dumb in the 90s and let somebody co-opt his name to sell hate. And he should take all the slings and arrows that come with that lack of action. But when Jason says he has willful association with Stormfront, well, that's nonsense. There's nothing willful about it. I'm sure the dregs of society have donated money to all of the candidates. Are we going to go through all the records of all the contributions and ask the candidates to answer for everybody? "Mr. Romney, a serial pedophile donated to your campaign. Will you give the money back or do you support pedophilia?" I mean, come on Jason…
Again, I do think Ron Paul is over, and that's mostly due to his judgement. You can't credibly push a guy for President who has allowed stuff like the newsletter scandal to happen. You just can't. But the movement has only just begun, and I think in the years to come it will find more credible voices to push the freedom message.
I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel, but this campaign has always been a longshot. We realistically need to start thinking of gearing up for an independent bid for the White House. Dr Paul's support is an inch deep and a mile wide, which makes him much more dangerous in a general election than a partisan primary.
Also, we need to start looking toward what happens with the movement after the elections are over, whether Ron Paul is president or not. You guys could try to start a whole separate movement, or you could join us over here on the libertarian side of things and join forces to take over and not run the world.
[i]Continued...
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