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Two diaries were put up without links or a little research of Ron Paul Newsletters history and basic facts. Diarist tjwalker quotes Erick Erikson from redstate.com [multiple diaries out there, 93% teapartiers don’t want Ron Paul ] and he got himself a bunch of believers here at the pond. I’m no supporter of Ron Paul and I would never vote for him even if it was my own district. Just trying to keep fairness and some balance in the discussion. Very frustrating. Elsewhere in a previous thread and in above diaries I did some pretty good debunking of the unfounded attack on Ron Paul in my comments. Apparently only AG has read them. Much appreciated.
Ron Paul Interview with Wolf Blitzer CNN January 2008
Read also Why the Beltway Libertarians Are Trying to Smear Ron Paul (2008)
More below the fold …
The Story Behind Ron Paul’s Racist Newsletters
(The Atlantic) – 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.
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.
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.
Lew Rockwell and Tom Woods discuss Rothbard and the Koch Brothers
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Booman are you believing this sh** put in the Dallas Media by the likes of Gingrich in a smear campaign?
Read my earlier comments about the Newsletters and Ron Paul- Slate On the Origin Of Ron Paul’s Newsletters
- Ron Paul and Racist Rant Caught on Tape
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."But…you write:
I would have said the same thing a number months ago, Oui. However, two principles and one set of events have caused me reexamine this position.
The two principles:
1-If the mass media attack…or willfully ignore…something in concert then that something seriously threatens the ongoing criminal enterprise that is an important part of what we laughingly call “The United States.” This is quite consistent, just as is overwhelming media approval a sign that whatever is being hyped is in some way helping that criminal enterprise in its nasty work.
2-The enemy of my enemy is my friend. This one can be a little dicey because in a three dimensional world one can have enemies who are also enemies of one’s other enemies, but Ron Paul’s stances on almost all issues…particularly his overall foreign policy and his opposition to the official version of the War On Drugs…plus his perfectly clear explanations of how he messed up in his early newsletters changed my mind. He is the real deal as far as I am concerned and I am never again going to support a candidate who is the lesser of two evils just because that is a so-called “practical” position. Look where that has gotten us so far. Three quarters of the way down the toilet and still flushing as we speak.
The set of events? Obama’s support for the assassinations of enemies rather than arrests and trials plus his ongoing policies regarding the transformation of the U.S. into a total surveillance state. He has gone the Patriot Act one better by not opposing the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act and I am through with him no matter how impractical that position might be. He may not be planning on using the provisions of that act in a criminal manner (although I would not put it past him judging by his involvement in…or perhaps I should say acquiescence to… the assassination of Osama bin Laden), but it opens the door to a true police state if it falls into the wrong hands.
Are Paul’s economic ideas the answer to our current ongoing economic crisis? I don’t know, because as far as I can see they have never been tested in the real world. What we are doing at present certainly isn’t working and as far as I can see the only truly effective socioeconomic approach…a limited socialism…only works well in relatively small, relatively wealthy and relatively homogeneous countries like those in Scandinavia and a few other countries in Europe. Communism certainly doesn’t work, and not only because of opposition from the capitalist countries. So why not at least try to institute some kind of free market capitalism? As Ron Paul said in the U.S. House of Representatives almost 10 years ago (July 9, 2002), well before our own financial bubble broke:
Yup.
So I am indeed a Ron Paul supporter, and I further believe that anyone with an open mind who spends a few days poking around to find out what he has really been saying will begin to see the same things that I am now seeing. Absent some sort of smoking gun which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is simply a demagogue in waiting and/or a vicious white supremacist…almost unimaginable considering the totality of what he has consistently said and done over the last 30+ years…I am going to continue to support his candidacy.
Think on it, Oui. The whole Democrat/Republican thing is now a total crock, just a good cop/bad cop routine run amok. It’s time for a change, and Ron Paul is the only nationally prominent politician who is offering any kind of substantive change. If we do not at least try to act soon it will be too late.
AG
P.S. A little more on the surveillance state thing. Remember the cultural meme put forward in thousands of movies, TV shows and books about totalitarian states where everyone was afraid to speak freely because of the possibility that informers would rat them out? Communist as well as fascist states were included in this meme, and we were the free speech “good guys.” Well, the whole informer thing has fallen by the wayside with the advent of the hi-tech culture. Now? “We don’ need no stinking informers!” We inform upon ourselves with every word that is recordable. We are televised as we walk down the street. Our emails, telephone calls, conversations and even our physical presence are now the property of the corporate state. Even total silence won’t work to stop this surveillance because if we were to somehow disappear from the corporate radar that too would be taken as a sign that something is wrong about us.
Bet on it.
Yup.
Bet on that, too.
William Burroughs’s definition of a paranoid?
“Some one who is in possession of all the facts.”
Yup.
Scary, ain’t it?
You betcha it is.
You betcha.
.
In many ways Ron Paul is a contrarian which can be admired. His fundamental insight for economic policy is free market according to the Austrian School and a very small government footprint. Downsizing the federal government will bring only blessings to the individual citizen. I contend, it’s not the size of government rather its flaws of distributed power between the branches which leads to stagnation, stalemate and a government not functioning. Add to this the multiple terms of incumbent representatives which leads to conservative views, no progress, corruption and incompetence. Ron Paul is different, will he get the job done in Washington?
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Yes, this makes sense.
But:
1-We are near collapse both as a state and as a society. Change like that would be neither sure nor would it be rapid. The entrenched forces that are now resisting any and all change would fight that sort of movement as well, and since it would have to come from the actions of Congress their bought and sold Congressional agents would stall any and all attempts at such change until it was too late. The country would collapse into either economically induced chaos or the military rule that would inevitably spring from such chaos. Either way, I don’t want to be here to find out.
and
2-Even if that was a viable route…which nationally visible politicians are are championing such a thing? None that I can see, so it is a moot point for at least several years…several years that are in my opinion going to seal the fate of this country one way or another.
You also write:
I will admit that the following idea is buttressed by entirely anecdotal evidence…the evidence of my own experiences and observations as I have travelled the length and breadth of the world over the past 40 years as a musician. Not as a tourist or a scholar, but as someone who spent a great deal of time in the functioning societal substructures of just about every type of country in the world. From totalitarian states behind the Iron Curtain and in North Africa/the Middle East through functioning drug-financed kleptocracies, corporate states on the level of Japan and Singapore, armed battle states in SE Asia during the Vietnam war, fairly well-functioning truly “Communist/Socialist” states like Cuba (I mean…without the U.S. embargo Cuba would be thriving by now. Bet on it.) and the various levels of more or less successful socialism that have arisen since WWII in most of Western Europe…I have been there.
Here is what I have seen.
Jeffrey Sachs quite correctly observes that “…among developed countries, those with high rates of taxation and high social welfare spending perform better on most measures of economic performance as compared to countries with low rates of taxation and low social outlays.” The problem with this idea? An acceptable definition of the term “developed countries.” I am sure that he is referring to the last 60 years or so of “economic performance” and using the relative successes of say the Scandinavian countries, Northwestern Europe, Canada and Japan compared with the problems of the United States. the countries of Southwestern Europe, Eastern Europe and the Indian subcontinent. (We must leave China out of this comparison because it is a wholly different situation. Also Africa and until recently South America, neither of which continents can be called “developed” with any semblance of reality.)
Here’s the deal, Oui. If we could create a country-by-country algorithm of some sort that included rates of taxation, social outlays, economic performance, the relative prevalence of what can only be termed poverty and near-poverty, the equally relative homogeneity (both culturally and in terms of race/religion) of the population and the size of that population we would see the real story. Smaller, more homogeneous countries without an appreciably large poverty-level population have been able to successfully institute and maintain various levels of “socialism” which then led to a better level of living for their population and thus a more successful culture overall. This in turn results in “economic success.” Countries like the U.S., which is still today suffering from a huge poverty and near poverty-level population…totally the result of racial problems that stemmed from its original founders’ white supremacist beliefs…simply cannot afford to get over the “socialism” hump under current conditions. Too many poor people and not enough money coming from the middle classes and the rich to get there. This could be solved by more taxation of the rich of course, but they are not going to let that happen. That’s how they got rich in the first place.
So there we jolly well are, aren’t we. Continue along the present economic imperialist/hypnomedia-enforced PermaGov state path on which we are now slowly dying or elect a President that will try to single-handedly dismantle those parts of the Permanent Government that are within his reach and power to do so, and in doing so create a true revolution in this country. A socioeconomic revolution.
Would Ron Paul be successful in that attempt? I don’t know. The power of the Permanent Government/Corporate State is immense and far-reaching. All kinds of nasty things could go down. But without the attempt, all kinds of other nasty things are certain to go down.
Choose yer poison, folks. Y’pays yer money and y’takes yer chances. I’ve been a fairly radical gambler all of my life and I’m still here. I know which way my gamble is going. Your results may differ.
Later…
AG
I think I’m reaching the point of Ron Paul fatigue at this point – especially given my mind was made up years ago. That said, I appreciate your willingness to provide a fair and balanced treatment (too bad that phrase has such baggage thanks to FauxNews) here. Your efforts are far from unnoticed and far from unappreciated. Muchas gracias.
You write:
Translation:
Great.
Sleep well and RIP.
AG
Or to translate you: “Anyone who does not think exactly like me or conform to my expectations is clearly not thinking for himself/herself and is a slave to the hypnomedia.”
I find that highly ironic coming from someone who fancies himself to be a bit of an independent sort.
One would have thought that it might be possible for other independent sorts to look at the same politician and arrive at different conclusions. Apparently I am mistaken.
So it goes.
I will say this: Ron Paul as a candidate of any sort was always going to be a hard sell for anyone with anticapitalist leanings, like myself.
That said, whatever else one might say about Ron Paul, he is not his own worst enemy. It’s his supporters who can do him the most damage. I say that as someone who has known personally (as in face-to-face personally) several of his devotees over the last several years: disproportionately prone to Birtherism, racist and misogynist statements that can be bloody difficult to sit through. Maybe it’s a “south of the Mason-Dixon line” thing, since that’s where my travels take me. Maybe not. They sure are a vocal lot, I’ll give them that though. Still, if I knew of the candidate only via my encounters with his supporters, I would honestly simply write him off as unacceptable. Thankfully I know a little bit more than that – enough to at least acknowledge that he’s the least bad of the Republican offerings.
Is least bad good enough? That’s typically a no in my book. In other words, I’ll look elsewhere. If that makes me a somnambulist and a conformist by your standards, so be it.