Well, that presents another problem, Lib. If these articles were just ordinary day-to-day stuff for his newsletter, he very well might not have known, might not have read, maybe nobody brought it to his attention by waving the article in front of his nose and screaming “WTF! No, seriously, dude! WTF!”
But if this is pretty standard stuff, well…you see where I’m going here?
I’d opine that we should examine what he actually has said to determine whether he’s a bigot. Here, for example, is what he has written on racism. You can read what he’s actually written on everything from Iraq to gay marriage here.
But I don’t think it was “standard stuff” in the newsletter. I don’t know that he would have stopped someone from writing some of them even if he knew about it. I am a minority, but I believe people have the right to be bigots and the right to express themselves. Even in my own experience, especially as a child, I have always prefered knowing who hates me to enduring the whispers that I can’t hear. I can have opinion A and despise opinion B, which you hold, while not denying you the right to express it. And I can, as he did, repudiate your opinion, and say that it is vile. At this point, that’s all he can do.
Incidentally, this isn’t the first time he’s run for president. It’s just the first time that he’s been even a remote threat, and thus the need for the neo-cons to crush him. If you don’t like him, that’s fine by me. But I just wish you would dislike him for some reason other than a New Republic “expose” of old news that, as he says, he dealt with ten years ago. He hasn’t brought a single dollar in attached-bill money to his district (on principle), and yet they elect him for term after term. His constituency is mixed race, and so it stands to reason that if there were anything to this nonsense, he would have suffered for it in 1997 when it was first raised by losing the election.
It’s the why and the wherefore of that ignorance that speaks to his idiocy. You say he didn’t have the time to read every word of what was going out under his name. I find that contention eyebrow-raising in and of itself. But of course he wouldn’t have to read every word – just one of the many inflammatory statements that were made seemingly on the front page. You’re claiming he never saw a one – or, in other words, that he never read any of it.
And here’s a piece of tinfoil-hattery that went out with his name and signature on it.
Really, the guy is indefensible.
In a newsletter with your own name on it, where it is implied that you wrote it and strongly implied that you endorse the content?
Actually, I didn’t say that. I said that given the scope involved, even if he had read half the articles (name another publisher who does that), he could still easily miss the few that New Republic has brought back from the grave.
What’s wrong with it? My great-grandmother’s great-grandmother actually WAS driven out of her home at the point of a bayonet by armed federal thugs. Just because you live in an Ivory Tower doesn’t mean people aren’t railroaded every day. That’s why most young black men are in jail. And if you think tangling with the IRS will be a pleasant experience, I challenge you to try. Dealing with the IRS is the only circumstance in this country in which you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent.
What am I, chopped liver? 
But nothing implied that he wrote any of it. Nothing. And he has vehemently repudiated the content. Not just now, but ten years ago.
Other than the fact that every newsletter had his name on it. They were called “The Ron Paul Report” and “The Ron Paul Survival Report” and so on.
I agree that bigots have the right to express themselves. But as a classical liberal, even you wouldn’t allow a bigot to express himself in a newsletter that had your name in the title, am I right? That would go beyond Constitutional rights and charity and headlong into foolishness. If you allow somebody to write “The Liberal Report,” even without bylines, you are endorsing the content. I’ll take Paul’s word that he isn’t a racist, I’m just surprised by your comment that, if you were in his place, you might not have stopped these comments from going in even if you knew about them.
Um, did you read it? This is a guy who’s claiming that American currency with anti-counterfeiting measures is “totalitarian,” “a portable inquisition” which will “steal our freedom and our prosperity.” The guy’s an utter fruitcake. Every line of the document just screams of it.
Oprah’s “O” magazine has her name and photo on it every issue, but she has said that she doesn’t read every article in it. Same same with any publisher. Chicago Reader’s name is on this page, but I’ll bet you its publisher hasn’t read a word on it.
I wouldn’t allow it if I knew about it. But remember it’s the guy he fired who’s re-raising all the stink. Maybe that’s the guy who was responsible for it.
That’s because you don’t understand Austrian economics. I get that it sounds crazy to you, but economists like von Mises, Hayek (Nobel laureate for economics), Rothbard, Friedman, Greenspan (former Chairman of the Federal Reserve), and others would agree with him.
Hmmm, true. But every magazine is stated to be the work of many authors. There’s nothing in “O” that suggests Oprah writes every article. I agree that her approval of the content is implied, so there is that similarity, but I don’t know if it really compares to the publication we’re talking about - which appears to be Paul’s letters to his constituents.
Different medium. A message board is a forum for ‘outsiders’ to express their opinions. A newsletter is more akin to an editorial column.
Ok. That’s the point I was trying to understand.
That could be the case.
No, they wouldn’t. The color of the money has the power to introduce totalitarianism? Please.
I think there’s a mix-up of some kind. His letters to his constituents are called Texas Straight Talk, and cover a wide range of issues which he writes about himself. There have been a couple of very low circulation newsletters called Ron Paul this or that, and all are now defunct (I think). He did not write for those (or even read them much, he says).
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Sal, I just think you and I aren’t going to agree here, and I don’t want to fight you over it. You’re entitled to your opinion. It’s not like Paul has a chance anyway. Certainly given his policies and even if he were leading, someone would eventually shoot him if necessary probably before letting him get the nomination. You can’t make a lot of money or gain a lot of power by reducing government’s size and scope.
Ha! I agree.
If Paul was careless enough that one or two of his newsletters went out containing offensive garbage penned by someone else, and if he caught it and apologized promptly, that’d be one thing. But this stuff got spewed out over a period of many years, and either it was just fine with Ron (apparently few if any of the articles had a specific byline, making them eminently deniable if need be) or he was incredibly, carelessly ignorant of the whole thing.
Also, wasn’t some of this stuff available only by subscription? If he was completely disconnected from all this, who got the money?
In the end, it’s Ron Paul’s own words and beliefs, proudly acknowledged, that make his connection to this plausible. This, after all, is the guy who hates the Voting Rights Act and opposed the “forced integration” of the Civil Rights Act of 1964:
"Q: You would vote against the Civil Rights Act, if it was today?
A: If it were written the same way, where the federal government’s taken over property–it has nothing to do with race relations. It has nothing to do with racism, it has to do with the Constitution and private property rights.“”
Wonder how many black people who allegedly support Paul know this, or are aware that David Duke and various “white power” activists are among Paul’s most enthusiastic supporters (not to mention people like Hutton Gibson, Mel Gibson’s nutty Holocaust-denying father).
And how many supporters know that Paul has the fervent (approaching hysterical)) support of every health quack and anti-vaccinationist who see him as the hero who’ll destroy the FDA and make their dreams come true?
It’s amazing how the Paul supporters and apologists can just sweep all this under the rug.
A guy in one of my classes last semester was a HUGE Ron Paul supporter. During a meeting for a group project, the rest of the group and I were treated to a half hour speech on how Ron Paul was awesome. Before I had considered Ron Paul one of those candidates that has no chance at all of winning the nomination. After, I didn’t dismiss him quite so easily.
Then, over winter break, radio ads started running, during which Ron Paul advocated sending “stealth warriors” to capture terrorists “dead or alive” (Yes, let’s violate international law some more! Also, in the words of my America at War teacher “Someone’s been watching too many Rambo movies”). He also says he’d revoke all student visas from “terrorist nations”, so basically the entire middle east. Again, great plan.
Ron Paul is a nutter.
Liberal, after reading your rants about Andrew Jackson, it’s kind of surprising you to so eagerly recite the apologies and backpedalling excuses of another racist asshole who wants to be president. Just sayin’.
On an unrelated note, I was surprised to learn that Tucker Carlson is 25 years old.
This was weird:
Doesn’t abandoning a view mean you once held it? I’ve never abandoned Zoroastrianism, for example. I’ll be charitable and assume he misspoke.
From Sal’s link:
Uh-huh.