The Story Behind Ron Paul's Racist Newsletters

Discussion in 'Elections & Campaigns' started by OldMercsRule, Dec 28, 2011.

  1. OldMercsRule

    OldMercsRule Member

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    "The documents, which include harsh, prejudiced attacks against the black community, are evidence of a libertarian movement trying to find an audience.

    So as Ron Paul is on track to win the Iowa caucuses, he is getting a new dose of press scrutiny.

    And the press is focusing on the newsletters that went out under his name in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They were called the Ron Paul's Political Report, Ron Paul's Freedom Report, the Ron Paul Survival Report and the Ron Paul Investment Letter.

    There is no doubt that the newsletters contained utterly racist statements.

    Some choice quotes:

    "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."

    "We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational."

    After the Los Angeles riots, one article in a newsletter claimed, "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks."

    One referred to Martin Luther King Jr. as "the world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours" and who "seduced underage girls and boys."

    Another referred to Barbara Jordan, a civil rights activist and congresswoman as "Barbara Morondon," the "archetypical half-educated victimologist."
    Other newsletters had strange conspiracy theories about homosexuals, the CIA, and AIDS.

    In 1996 when the Texas Monthly investigated the newsletters, Paul took responsibility for them and said that certain things were taken out of context. (It's hard to imagine a context that would make the above quotes defensible.)

    When the newsletter controversy came up again during the 2008 campaign, Paul explained that he didn't actually write the newsletters but because they carried his name he was morally responsible for their content. Further, he didn't know exactly who wrote the offensive things and they didn't represent his views.

    But it is still a serious issue. Jamie Kirchick reported in The New Republic that Paul made nearly one million dollars in just one year from publishing the newsletters. Could Paul really not understand the working of such a profitable operation? Reporters at the libertarian-leaning Reason magazine wrote that the author was likely longtime Paul-friend and combative polemicist Lew Rockwell.
    Even though many of the newsletters are written in a first person, conversational style, many observers don't believe that Ron Paul actually wrote them.

    There aren't any videos on YouTube with Paul speaking in incendiary terms about minorities. The newsletters don't "sound" like Ron Paul -- he doesn't do wordplay like "Morondon" or use prefixes like "semi-criminal" or "half-educated" in his speech or his recent writings. Further, most newsletter and direct-mail operations in politics employ ghostwriters.


    So why were Ron Paul or his ghostwriters engaged in racism and conspiracy theories? And why did Ron Paul allow this?

    The first answer is simply that marginal causes attract marginal people.

    The Gold Standard and non-interventionism have long been pushed to the fringe of our politics, and ambitious people tend to dive into the mainstream. That means that some of the 'talent' that marginalized ideas attract will be odd and unstable.

    There are two strategies for dealing with this problem. You purge your movement of cranks to preserve credibility and risk alienating a chunk of supporters. Or you let everyone in your movement fly their freak flag and live with the consequences. Ron Paul, being a libertarian, has always done the latter.

    The second answer to this question: These newsletters were published before a decade of war that has exhausted many Americans, before the financial crisis, and before the Tea Party.

    All three made Ron Paul's ideas seem more relevant to our politics. They made anti-government libertarianism seem (to some) like a sensible corrective.

    But in the 1990s and 1980s, anti-government sentiment was much less mainstream. It seemed contained to the racist right-wing, people who supported militia movements, who obsessed over political correctness, who were suspicious of free-trade deals like NAFTA.

    At that time a libertarian theorist, Murray Rothbard argued that libertarians ought to engage in "Outreach to the Rednecks" in order to insert their libertarian theories into the middle of the nation's political passions.

    Rothbard had tremendous influence on Lew Rockwell, and the whole slice of the libertarian movement that adored Ron Paul.

    But Rothbard and Rockwell never stuck with their alliances with angry white men on the far right. They have been willing to shift alliances from left to right and back again. Before this "outreach" to racists, Rothbard aligned himself with anti-Vietnam war protestors in the 1960s. In the 2000s, after the "outreach" had failed, Rockwell complained bitterly about "Red-State fascists" who supported George Bush and his war. So much for the "Rednecks." The anti-government theories stay the same, the political strategy shifts in odd and extreme directions.

    As crazy as it sounds, Ron Paul's newsletter writers may not have been sincerely racist at all. They actually thought appearing to be racist was a good political strategy in the 1990s. After that strategy yielded almost nothing -- it was abandoned by Paul's admirers.

    You can attribute their "redneck strategy" to the most malignant kind of cynicism or to a political desperation that made them insane. Neither is particularly flattering. Phil Klein of the Washington Examiner is correct when he writes:

    Rick Perry and Mitt Romney have both attacked each other for what was written in their respective books. If either of those books had included a number of overtly racist statements, their candidacies would be over before they started.
    This is undoubtedly true. The media seems to simply accept that Ron Paul has some oddities in his past and in his inner circle. They take his grandfatherly demeanor at face-value. In part this is because they believe he is not a serious candidate.

    Winning the Iowa caucuses would change all that instantly. Undoubtedly the movement that Paul inspired has moved far beyond the race-baiting it engaged in two decades ago. Young people from college campuses aren't lining up to hear him speak because of what appeared in those newsletter about the 1992 L.A. riots. Rand Paul tried his hardest to place Paul-style libertarianism into the context of the Tea Party. And he will likely carry on the movement without this 1990s baggage.

    But the questions remain. If Ron Paul is so libertarian that he won't even police people who use his name, if his movement is filled with incompetents and opportunists, then what kind of a president would he make? Would he even check in to see if his ideas are being implemented? Who would he appoint to Cabinet positions?

    These are all legitimate questions. And the media is going to start asking them now. If there isn't already a "ceiling" on Ron Paul's support, widespread knowledge of the newsletters could build one quickly. "

    http://www.theatlantic.com/politics...y-behind-ron-pauls-racist-newsletters/250338/

    Hmmmmmm........ :mrgreen:
     
  2. RP12

    RP12 Well-Known Member

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    Heck i can say he made $17.42 for that year. Prove he didnt. Notice no one has back up Jamie Kirchick's claims? All the media does it run with it. No one has actually taken the time to confirm it... And who cares that he made money off them?
     
  3. Kman

    Kman New Member

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    Yeah seems pretty conveniant that he supposedly earned 1 million, nice and round number that is easy to understand for the morons that are susceptible to think that earning money is a crime in itself.
     
  4. Anders Hoveland

    Anders Hoveland Banned

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    The libertarian party has never been known to promote racial beliefs, although they have recently been recieving the support of many who do hold racial beliefs. Have you ever even read any libertarian literature? It is all about government trying to take away individual rights and freedoms. A study was done that showed most libertarians actually live in urban areas that tend to be more progressive, so it is speculated that most libertarians are simply reacting to what they see as the overregulation and constraint of freedom they see happening around them.
     
  5. Cigar

    Cigar Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I personally don’t care what Ron Paul thought about Black people 20 years ago when he was 56 years old. One would think he would be mature in his beliefs by then and being 76 now, hasn’t change much. He doesn’t need to explain anything to me.
     
  6. Roon

    Roon Well-Known Member

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    The claim that he made $1 million in one year of the newsletters is misleading for other reasons. There were 3 different newsletters and he does not distinguish which one made the money. Only 1 of his 3 newsletters had these remarks in them. He also does not give a timeframe in which the money was made presumeably because it would make the point entirely irrelevant.
     
  7. OldMercsRule

    OldMercsRule Member

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    Cry me a river!!!! :mrgreen: :fart:
     
  8. Teutorian

    Teutorian New Member

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    Only people like Janeane Garofalo care about this.
     
  9. AbsoluteVoluntarist

    AbsoluteVoluntarist New Member

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    He denies he earned a dime from the newsletters. It is possible the company that they were published under made that much in income but that it was reinvested in other projects.

    Even if he did make money, so what? The incendiary articles are a minuscule fraction of everything published in the newsletters, 99.9% of which is totally benign. You could probably find a similar rate of "offensive material" in the National Review and many other periodicals.
     
  10. OldMercsRule

    OldMercsRule Member

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    The "offensive" (yer term) material was far more then .1% if ya have a set of functional eyes, n' minimal cognitive ability.

    I think he is lyin' about the money he made and the knowledge of the corntraversial material, as a 1996 c-span interview and a reporter fer a Texas newspaper claims or demonstrates otherwise.

    If he can't properly manage a two bit publishing operation, and is actually that sloppy and disconnected from the end product that goes out under his name, what makes ya think he can govern the most powerful Republic on this planet?

    Ron Paul as a very disloyal, back biting, skinny, old, squeaky voiced, dishonest little loon that would have ZERO support from all butt one of the 535 US Senators/Congressmen/Women and would be impeached within 90 days if he EVER got ellected.

    Nobody likes a person who slimes his own Republican party, Ronald Reagan, most American institutions, and American history. he is very much like Jeremiah "GD America" Wright.

    Hate and blame America only sells to the very far Left fringe, n' some dim wit Democrats like John "PUKE" Kerry, (maybe Obamaprompter as well), and the nuts n' berries in orbit in the far reaches of space. The loyalty of his followers is a rather amazing thing, as one wouldn't think so many people hate their own Great Country.

    That all said, whatever floats yer boat is fine with me.

    Carry on.
     
  11. marbro

    marbro New Member

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    Yet his support keeps growing. I love the attacks because they are not working and they show the true nature of folks making the attacks. Liars!~
     
  12. AbsoluteVoluntarist

    AbsoluteVoluntarist New Member

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    Really? Prove it. Tally all the articles you think contain offensive material and all the articles ever published in all four newsletters over twenty years. Then you'll find the ratio, though, of course, offensiveness is a subjective quality.

    Again, the burden of proof is on you to show he's lying.

    Even Ron Paul agrees he mismanaged his publication. That's not enough for me to not vote for him and, even if it was, I'd still never vote for any of his opponents; I'd try to find someone with Ron Paul's positions and better managerial skills. So would you, if this was really a make or break issue for you. Of course it isn't; you already don't support him for other reasons and you're just looking for excuses to convince other people to not vote for him.

    Ah, now we see the real reason for your mudslinging, the true depth of your bile towards the only candidate running that doesn't want to rule as a despot over you and me. Newsletters, my *ss!
     
  13. OldMercsRule

    OldMercsRule Member

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    Yer not my momma n' I don't need make werk projects you think you can assign fer me.

    Clearly Ron Paul made money off people who think the sky is falling and hate and blame their own Country and support others who do the same.

    RONPAULbots are a strange bunch who are set in their ways, and like lemmings will follow the loon anywhere, regardless of what he says or does.


    If yer foolish enough ta believe the loon would spread his positions over 20 years, (yer statement), fer free ya prolly believe in the tooth fairy. Can't help ya here, sorry.

    He has calculated the political risks and has taken that route, jus' like any slimy pol will do. Not a surprize, after all he is a pol.

    His current statement re: corntent knowledge is different then his 1996 statement, (so he is lyin' now or he was lyin' then), butt: you RONPAULbots tollerate that kinda stuff jus' like dim wit Democrats don't mind killing young women, (Teddy "Oldsmobile" Kennedy), perjury while in office,( BJ Clinton), illegal gay HO houses, (Barney Frank), n' on and on. I get it, yer guy can do no wrong. Politics 101.
    :fart:

    Of course not, RONPAULbots are stuck on their favorite loon....... I get it, I really do. Question: have you always voted fer fringe candidates that can't possibly win?

    I like Gary Johnson a whole lot better then Ron Paul, and he did a great job runnin' New Mexico, doesn't have a squeky voice, isn't and old fool, n' prolly shares many of yer loon's positions. He can't win either, butt: that doesn't seem to be a major issue fer you, or most RONPAULbots.

    BS you have no idea what I would do.

    I'm pragmatic and have never been as welded to a pol as you RONPAULbots are.

    Electability against Obamaprompter and potential to govern in this difficult time, are my main issues for 2012. Ron Paul is neither electable nor could he govern.

    This may shock you butt: people don't like to be trashed, and Ron Pauls trashes everyone as well as his Country, n' that would make things difficult were he to actually win.

    If Ron Paul actually won the Republican nomination, (which is nearly impossible), I would actually vote fer yer loon, (unless I assessed the chances of a third party to beat Obamaprompter to be better), as I know he would be impeached within 90 days if he actually beat Obamaprompter, and his VP would then run things, or if he or she was a loon and also got impeached, the Speaker would handle matters.

    Gridlock is preferable to the Chicago thug in my book, as he will likely end this Republic with run away borrowing and regulations, if he wins another four years.

    BTW: you can't read my mind, so give it up.


    His blame and hate America positions are not good from my perspective, (you RONPAULbots really seem to luv that stuff), one of the many things I have against Obamaprompter as well.

    Did ya vote fer Obamaprompter in 2008, or did ya have another candidate ya voted fer?

    I'm not big on a POTUS who was mentored by Commie Frank Marshall Davis, n' Billy "boom" Ayers. I always like a patriot who luvs America to be POTUS, obviously a low priority fer you RONPAULbots.

    I bet you really liked that treasonous John "PUKE" Kerry in 2004, eh, or do ya always throw yer vote away on third party loons?


    If ya mean the fact that I'm not big on hate n' blame America, (I've never made that a secret), n' that is the REAL reason I don't like yer loon fer POTUS, yer spot on. I really don't like his foreign policy which would make America profoundly weak.

    I liked him fine as a fine TX Congressman, (as one of 535 who preaches fiscal responsibility), is a good thing, POTUS: NO WAY.

    He letters jus' show the world he is a looney tune of the first order. Most normal Americans will not like them at all.

    Me overpriced $.02.
     
  14. OldMercsRule

    OldMercsRule Member

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    I don't lie.
     
  15. lolcatz

    lolcatz New Member

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    Deflected. You sound like dujac.
     
  16. Teutorian

    Teutorian New Member

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    Clearly he just wants to keep his troll threads topped above the other Ron Paul threads with more substantive conversation.
     
  17. OldMercsRule

    OldMercsRule Member

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    How do ya know what I sound like?

    I typed the reply on me keyboard, while whistlin' Dixie.
    :mrgreen:
     
  18. lolcatz

    lolcatz New Member

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    Correction, Your horrible deflection/debate techniques reminds me of dujac.

    You 2 are so alike.
     
  19. OldMercsRule

    OldMercsRule Member

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    You think yer RONPAULbot spam n' deflection n' denials n' false chatter is more "substantive" then the actual letters the loon sent out, that actually informs potential voters who haven't made up thier minds? :roll:

    You RONPAULbots are gonna follow yer looney tune whacked out mad Doctor wherever he goes jus' like the lemmings ya are. :thumbsdown:

    Some folks are interested in actually learnin' Dr. Demento's past, (n' prolly current) postitions. :eyepopping:

    Yer kinda full of yersef aren't ya?
    :nana:
     
  20. AbsoluteVoluntarist

    AbsoluteVoluntarist New Member

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    And the fact remains the objectionable material in a minuscule fraction of the whole and he denies making money off them. If you don't want to prove your accusations, that's your problem.

    You're spreading your positions around here for free. Or are you...?



    Not really. He never said he wrote them in 1996; he did not explain the history behind in more detail because his staff said it would confuse people. If he's such a liar, why does he take so many positions that don't help him politically when he could just lie about it?

    My main issue is not being ruled by an aspiring despot like Obama or Newt or Romney. Your main issue is "trashing my Country," whatever that means. I just don't want some despot trashing my liberty, which I guess is low priority for you. Just be honest about why you don't like Ron Paul. And stop typing phonetically; it's really annoying.
     
  21. Teutorian

    Teutorian New Member

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    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Rv0Z5SNrF4&feature=player_embedded"]The Compassion of Dr. Ron Paul - YouTube[/ame]

    /thread
     

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