Ron Paul, pros/cons?

Politics & Elections
241

As I think about it, there seem to be four possible scenarios regarding the newsletters:

Scenario 1: Paul actually wrote the newsletters (or had strong control over the content). Implication – he’s racist.

Scenario 2: Paul had no real input into the newsletters, but he approved of the content. Implication – he’s racist.

Scenario 3: Paul had no real input into the newsletters, but was aware of the content. He did not agree with the content, but allowed them to be published anyway. Implication – he may not be a racist, but he’s not above pandering to the racism of others for personal gain (or furthering his political aims).

Scenario 4: Paul had no idea what was going into the newsletters. Implication – he’s an incompetent manager.

None of these make him look good.

242

Scenario one is the obvious one that actually happened, I wish we could stop even entertaining the theoretics. He’s a racist libertarian. What a shocker.

243

Are you serious? Like this stuff doesn’t go on, on a daily basis?

And I love how Ron Paul haters have little else to drudge up about his 30 year political career besides a couple of newsletters and the fact he called Sasha Cohen a queer.

The indisputable fact is every candidate has made mistakes and they all have skeletons in their closet. If this is the best people can up with for a case against Dr. Paul then I’ll have no problems casting a vote in his name.

I’m glad you think you speak for the rest of the minorities in the U.S. Do some research and you’ll find quite a few supporting Ron Paul.

244

There’s plenty else. In other threads we’ve had some discussion of the hypocrisy of his stands on gay marriage and abortion, his ridiculous conspiracy theorist views, his fixation with the gold standard, and upthread there was plenty of discussion of his flawed views on foreign policy. But, other than that, yeah, there’s nothing to hold against him except the fact that his newsletters printed a bunch of racist and homophobic trash.

245

I’m sorry, but this statement is utterly ludicrous. Ron Paul most certainly does not believe in “individual rights and liberties for all.”

He has specifically declared that state governments have the right to regulate people’s private sexual behavior and throw gay people in jail for engaging in “gay sodomy”.

So then is your position that it would be wrong to call someone a racist who said “that nigger robbed me!” or “that nigger ripped me off!”?

Just “a couple of newsletters”?

He published them over the course of 15 years?

I’d recommend double-checking your facts before posting.

Ok, please show me the other Republican candidate who for 15 years published a racist newsletter that looked like something published by the KKK.

I’m sure he’ll find a handful who will. 4% of all blacks in Louisiana voted for David Duke. That didn’t make Duke not a racist.

246

Ummm, that’s the whole point?

247

Marley hit the big stuff but you know, even if it was just the newsletters that would be enough. And it’s a bit disingenuous to say it was a “couple newsletters.” It was an ongoing thing for more than a decade. There is a ton of racist, insane shit out there with Ron Paul’s name on it.

Look at this. Look at all this! If this came from just a couple newsletters those newsletters were some of the most densely packed crazy since timecube.

248

LOL…are you getting these quotes from the newsletters? Link? I find it hard to believe that a guy who votes strictly based on the Constitution has ever voted or publicly spoken about regulating private sexual behavior. If you’re going to link me to some 20 year old newsletter with a Ron Paul signature stamped on it, don’t bother.

I would not define someone as a racist based on that statement and that statement alone, no. I don’t go willy nilly labeling people racists. It’s a pretty harsh term that carries significant and damaging stigma with it. It shouldn’t be used lightly.

And during those 15 years, what % of those newsletters were homophobic/racist in nature? Have you read every single one of them or just the ones the media publishes?

Santorum’s little “black” slip in Iowa showed should qualify under your terms. However, I don’t recall saying another Republican candidate was guilty of “racist” newsletters. Please do not twist my words to fit your agenda. I said every other Republican candidate has some type of baggage. If you’d like to dispute that fact, have at it.

249

This is a ridiculous defense. I wouldn’t want someone who said any of these to be president. I don’t care if they’re 50 percent of the content or 0.5 percent. They’re the ramblings of crazy person who hates black people. The best outcome is that they’re not Ron Paul opinions at all- he just ignored what was being written in his name and made money off it, and that’s not exactly a great outcome.

250

:confused: Yes, corporations do screw their customers, etc., etc., on a daily basis. What was your point? I thought you liked Paul, whom this shows to be an idiot or worse.

251

Look, I don’t think he wrote the letters. That’s my opinion.

Either way, if you look at his public voting record, I am led to believe that he is not a racist and that’s what really matters.

Why would the leader of the Texas NAACP defend him if he was a racist? Why would he treat black patients when he was practicing medicine? Why does he want to end the war on drugs and release millions of minorities who have been thrown in jail for petty drug crimes, if he was racist?

252

Didn’t say it was a great outcome. My whole point is that everyone currently running has had their problems and/or done shit that they shouldn’t have, whether it be in their personal, professional, or political lives. But, we’re focusing on some newsletters from 20 to 30 years ago, not spoken words, not voting record, but, 20 to 30 year old newsletters. Really? If this is all the MSM can dig up on the man then he’s lived a pretty clean life IMO.

I misread his original quote. I thought he was implying this would happen only under a Paul Presidency, and is not currently going on.

Either way, I’d rather have a free market than more government involvement.

253

I am inclined to take Ron Paul at his word when he says that he didn’t write them.

However, if someone wrote racist things and signed my name to them, I would: (a) be furious; (b) identify who did it; (c) put a stop to it immediately; (d) apologize; and (e) tell everyone exactly what I did to resolve the issue.

Paul may have been furious, I’ll take him at his word. He has not identified who wrote the articles. He did not put a stop to it immediately, as this went on for many years. Paul has apologized. But he seems to not be able to take accountability or explain what, specific, he did when he became aware of the articles. Whatever his views on race are, that is pretty disgusting incompetence.

Aside from those issues, Paul can’t seem to get himself away from the issue of race. Why does he not just associate, but embrace all these whacko organizations with bizarre views on the legitimacy of the Confederacy and whatnot? Why wouldn’t Ron Paul just agree that he should return campaign donations from racist websites?

When Robert Byrd reformed himself from the mistake of being a KKK member, he ended up supporting civil rights legislation later in his career and even helping to fund the MLK memorial just built in DC. He didn’t try to come up with ridiculous legal arguments about why the Civil Rights Act is unconstitutional, or why it is fine to take campaign contributions from avowed racists. Ron Paul seems to delight in doing the exact opposite of what Byrd did, and even if Paul didn’t have as an egregious blot on his record as Byrd did, he seems woefully ignorant that he should exercise better judgment on issues of race.

254

I’m inclined to agree. The thing that gives me pause is that he was asked about one of the racist comments in his newsletter way back in the '90s and he didn’t deny writing it. The interviewer asked him if the ‘black people are so fast that you can’t catch them after they mug you’ comment could cause problems for him during a campaign, and Paul’s reply is that it really is difficult to chase down someone who has robbed you. He doesn’t deny writing it and he doesn’t acknowledge its disgusting implications, he just focuses on one obvious point that doesn’t have anything to do with race to begin with. It’s not until later that he started saying he didn’t write the newsletters and his people started saying Lew Rockwell wrote them. Paul himself won’t name the author, and the implications of that are also pretty troubling: it indicates he doesn’t want to piss off the racist crank. That wouldn’t make Paul a racist himself, but it would make him extremely cynical.

Does that mean all misdeeds are equal, and therefore they’re all meaningless?

I just addressed a bunch of other issues and await your response. It’s also nonsense that this is all the doing of the “MSM.” Paul published this crap.

255

Well, then I hate to be that mean old adult who tells little children that there’s no such thing as Santa Claus, but yes, your hero believes that state governments have the right to regulate private sexual behavior.

And no, it’s not from one of the newsletters that he suddenly denies writing but from one of his columns which he has never denied writing and it’s from right after the Lawrence V. Texas decision where he attacks the Court for striking down Texas’ anti-sodomy laws.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul120.html

256

If you don’t think that white people who refer to blacks as niggers aren’t racist then you have absolutely no understanding of what constitutes racism.

257

See, this is dishonest. Did you read the article? Here’s a direct quote from Paul: Ridiculous as sodomy laws may be, there clearly is no right to privacy nor sodomy found anywhere in the Constitution. (My emphasis.)

He clearly denounces sodomy laws. You cannot possibly deny this. His political philosophy is to limit Federal power. He doesn’t like the Federal courts striking down any law unless it’s based in the US Constitution. As before, I think this is an example of him taking his views of liberty too far but this is not an example of Paul being homophobic. This is why I dismiss so much anti-Paul rhetoric that isn’t well documented.

258

We wouldn’t want to label a white person using nigger a racist, Ibn Warraq, because after all racist is such a harsh word.

259

The full quote:

“Consider the Lawrence case decided by the Supreme Court in June. The Court determined that Texas had no right to establish its own standards for private sexual conduct, because gay sodomy is somehow protected under the 14th amendment “right to privacy.” Ridiculous as sodomy laws may be, there clearly is no right to privacy nor sodomy found anywhere in the Constitution. There are, however, states’ rights — rights plainly affirmed in the Ninth and Tenth amendments. Under those amendments, the State of Texas has the right to decide for itself how to regulate social matters like sex, using its own local standards. But rather than applying the real Constitution and declining jurisdiction over a properly state matter, the Court decided to apply the imaginary Constitution and impose its vision on the people of Texas.”

Here my problem with this: I don’t want Texas to have the right to decide how to regulate social matters like sex. I don’t want anyone regulating what the hell I do in my bedroom, period.

I understand that RP wants to shift power from the Fed to the States, but in doing so, I feel like it isn’t actually advancing civil rights. It’s just shifting burdens of oppression from one source to many. I don’t want a State being able to decide how to oppress me. I’d much prefer to just have a nation-wide Federal law that says I can do whatever the hell I want in the bedroom regardless of the state I’m in.

260

Ron Paul on immunization:

*“I don’t think anything should be forced on us by the government, [and] immunization is one thing that we’re pressured and forced into,” he said. “The other thing they’re doing right now is the government’s doing this mental health testing of everybody in school and they’re putting a lot of pressure, in a way forcing kids to be put on psychotropic drugs, which I think are very, very dangerous. So anything medical that is forced on us I think is bad.”

What if a dangerous disease was spreading like wildfire? Would Paul cave and require immunization in such a dire situation?

“No, I wouldn’t do it, because the person who doesn’t take the shot is the one at risk…” he said. “A responsible parent is going to say, ‘Yeah, I want my child to have that,’ [but] when the government makes a mistake, they make it for everybody. You know, that’s what worries me. They don’t always come up with the perfect answer sometimes… and people have had some very, very serious reactions from these immunizations.”

…He added: “If we accept this notion that the federal government is going to dictate what we can put into our bodies, then it leads to the next step: that the government is going to regulate everything that is supposedly good for us. That’s where they are. They have an FDA that won’t allow somebody who’s dying to use an experimental drug which might speed up the process of finding out which drugs are good and which drugs are bad and the federal government comes in and dictates that they want complete control over vitamins and nutritional products and I just think the whole principal of government telling us what we can take in or not take in is just a dangerous position to take… it’s related to the drug industry because they’d like to control all of this.”*

A not far-fetched scenario: A dangerous new infectious disease starts spreading in the U.S. (a naturally mutated bird flu, another bug we’ve never been exposed to, an infectious agent created by a terrorist organization etc.). Would President Ron Paul take immediate executive action to get the ball rolling on vaccine production and require mass immunization to halt disease spread?

Remember, Ron Paul is fervently against the government being able to “pressure and force us” into getting shots, he’s concerned about the “very, very serious reactions” to vaccines (which are not “perfect”), the person “who doesn’t take the shot is the one at risk” (Ron, though a doctor, apparently doesn’t believe in the concept of herd immunity), and promulgates pharma conspiracy theory to support his views.

Best bet is that President Paul waffles over getting the new vaccine into use, saying the market will take care of things.

Hell with the newsletters, that’s who you want as President?