While I don’t approve of profiling at airports, there is a case to be made for it making some sense and I don’t think making that case automatically makes one a racist. There’s also a case to made that hiring people who speak English well is a good approach for people who work in customer service in some way or another.
Plus, he actually looks at things from the foreign/Islamic perspective and understands their resentment towards the U.S. much more so than do most people in this country. If president, his policies would be much more favorable to those people than our current policies.
Oh well you said, it’s complete BS, so it must be true. I have no clue in what way you are vastly more suited, but that wasn’t my point. You may not agree with his way of viewing things from a foreign/Islamic POV, and I didn’t say it was perfect by any means, but to deny that it is far more fair to them than most Americans are is naive at best regarding American views imo.
His policies are not racist. I posted an article earlier, if you want to read that and or respond to it, go for it.
I’ve listened to him speak quite a bit, read a fair amount of his more recent material, and I have not detected any racism.
You may have already done so, but a link to this quote would be appreciated.
As I said before, these newsletters are awful and I can understand that people won’t give him the benefit of the doubt and it will cause him to be even more un-electable than he already was.
Kevin Drum: Crackpots do not make good messengers:
Can we talk? Ron Paul is not a charming oddball with a few peculiar notions. He’s not merely “out of the mainstream.” Ron Paul is a full-bore crank. In fact he’s practically the dictionary definition of a crank: a person who has a single obsessive, all-encompassing idea for how the world should work and is utterly blinded to the value of any competing ideas or competing interests.
This obsessive idea has, at various times in his career, led him to: denounce the Civil Rights Act because it infringed the free-market right of a monolithic white establishment to immiserate blacks; dabble in gold buggery and advocate the elimination of the Federal Reserve, apparently because the global economy worked so well back in the era before central banks; suggest that the border fence is being built to keep Americans from leaving the country; claim that Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional and should be dismantled; mount repeated warnings that hyperinflation is right around the corner; insist that global warming is a gigantic hoax; hint that maybe the CIA helped to coordinate the 9/11 attacks; oppose government-sponsored flu shots; and allege that the UN wants to confiscate our guns.
This isn’t the biography of a person with one or two unusual hobbyhorses. It’s not something you can pretend doesn’t matter. This is Grade A crankery… Furthermore Drum argues that cranks make bad messengers for sensible people who want to ease up on the drug war or pull out of Afghanistan. It makes them look flaky via their association with a complete nutjob.
Repeating the analysis from an earlier post (#157):
"“Paul views every individual as completely autonomous, and he is incapable of imagining any force other than government power that could infringe upon their actual liberty. White people won’t hire you? Then go form a contract with somebody else. Government intervention can only make things worse…
The most fevered opponents of civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s – and, for that matter, the most fervent defenders of slavery a century before – also usually made their case in in process terms rather than racist ones. They stood for the rights of the individual, or the rights of the states, against the federal Goliath. I am sure Paul’s motives derive from ideological fervor rather than a conscious desire to oppress minorities. But the relationship between the abstract principles of his worldview and the ugly racism with which it has so frequently been expressed is hardly coincidental.”
His policies are a racist’s dream, which is why so many of them support him. His own statements (and those of the “surrogates” who spout racist crap in his writings (if you believe that fantasy)) drip with bigotry.
I never cease to be amazed at the tunnel vision of those who only see the things they like about his foreign policy (complete isolationism) and fringe economic beliefs. “He won’t have the power to do anything really bad” is one hell of a campaign slogan.
After coming in third in Iowa, at least we can start to anticipate Paul’s slow slide towards irrelevance. Unless he’s peeved enough to run as a third-party candidate.
Philosophically they are not racist at all. They are the opposite of racist since they treat everyone equally. Now can some of those principles be used by racist people to do racist things? Yes. His view on the war on terror and the war on drugs are the opposite of racist and our current policies that are certainly not favorable to inner city minorities and overseas people (primarily Muslims) can certainly be argued to racist, yet they’re largely accepted.
In terms of what you are amazed about in regards to tunnel vision, I already addressed that. If he somehow actually became president, most of what he believes in would not be implemented to anywhere close to the degree he would like. He would only have so much power to make many of these changes and he is not someone who would try to abuse the powers of the executive branch. Foreign policy and limiting spending would be the primary things what he would be able to accomplish. We wouldn’t be living in a true libertarian society with him, not even close.
So supporting the current drug laws in the US is indicative of racism but railing against Lawrence V. Texas and specifically arguing that states had the right to regulate private sexual activity(specifically jail people for engaging in homosexual intercourse) and that black people “don’t look American” and referring to gays as “queers” is not indicative of bigotry.
Respectfully people who insist Paul isn’t bigoted either A)don’t understand the meaning of the term, B)don’t know as much about Paul as they think they do, or C)are aggressively in denial of reality.
And I’m not insisting anything. You are the one insisting he is a racist. I am saying that based on what I have heard him say, read about him, and seen from his political record, I don’t think he is a racist.
But obviously the newsletters are bad and put doubt in my mind. If you provided the evidence of what you’re are talking about, that would also change my thinking.
I suspect you are too young to know how avowed racists justify their racism. Here is the statement by George Wallace in 1963 when he stood in the schoolhouse door to prevent two black students from registering at the University of Alabama.
Please familiarize yourself with the concept of tyranny of the majority. A libertarian could certainly support eliminating civil rights protections for that philosophical reason.
