I have to say, all of this hollering about Ron Paul’s big payday is very disturbing to me. I’m equally disturbed by all of those “Who Is Ron Paul” signs I’m seeing around town. Because if you have to ask, then you clearly don’t know.
Ron Paul is crazy, possibly even batshit insane. I realize it’s comforting to find an anti-war Republican who isn’t also a Bible-thumping fundie but guess what folks, this ain’t a perfect world. There’s no free lunch. So if you don’t know about Ron Paul’s racist past or his endorsement by David Duke and the Neo-Nazis at Stormfront, then please hit the Google before you find yourself at a Ron Paul fundraiser-slash-cross burning.
Let’s start with the good news. The least crazy thing I don’t like about Ron Paul is that he’s anti-choice. I don’t agree with that position but I don’t think it’s necessarily crazy. However, on that score alone I would never support him.
But there’s so much more. Ron Paul doesn’t like black people. Enough so that when he ran for Congress in 1996, some of his earlier statements came back to haunt him:
""Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action," Paul wrote.
Paul continued that politically sensible blacks are outnumbered ""as decent people." Citing reports that 85 percent of all black men in the District of Columbia are arrested, Paul wrote:
""Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. 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," Paul said.
Paul also wrote that although ""we are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers."
When the Houston Chronicle called Paul on this stuff in 1996, he claimed “he opposes racism and that his written commentaries about blacks came in the context of "current events and statistical reports of the time."
Years later when this shit came back to haunt him yet again, he denied writing it entirely. But since it appeared in the Ron Paul Political Report, that excuse is too flimsy to be credible. Whether he wrote it himself or not, it needs to be held accountable for the idea that appeared in his own political newsletter.
But let’s give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Let’s say he’s really not all that racist, we’ve all said insensitive things, right? He still has the endorsement of Stormfront, a white nationalist organization classified as a hate group. Stormfront says Paul is not a White Nationalist, but they endorse him because his policies are. That’s encouraging.
Areas of agreement, according to the Stormfront website, include:
• Ron Paul is the strongest opponent of "Hate Crime" Laws.
• Ron Paul is the strongest opponent of welfare programs that among other things, would redistribute the income of hard-working White families into the hands of lazy non-Whites.
• Ron Paul is the least likely to support government crackdowns on Pro-White organizations, and the most likely to veto any legislation to that effect.
Be sure to check out some of the comments over there, by the way. They’re a hoot, in that sick, oh-my-God sort of way. Like this one, from “Aryan Gentleman”:
[Ron Paul] does, however, publicly state that the war of northern aggression was unjust, which certainly distinguishes him from any other presidential candidate even further.
Whoo-yeah, bet those Ron Paul Klan meetings meet-ups are a lot of fun. Maybe former Klansman/Ron Paul supporter David Duke will show up.
Ron Paul has about as much chance of winning the nomination as my dog Boomer, who is also white, male, and certifiably batshit insane. But I do think of the two of them, Boomer would make a better candidate.
At the end of the day, iIt’s pretty sad to me that folks are so disgruntled with this Administration and so opposed to the war in Iraq that they will turn to an extremist like Ron Paul. I just don't know what the hell you people are thinking.
[UPDATE]:
Glenn Greenwald has an interesting piece up today about Ron Paul which I recommend. On the issue of abortion:
At the same time, Paul is as much of an anti-abortion extremist as it gets, having proposed federal legislation to define conception as the beginning of life, and denying federal courts jurisdiction to adjudicate abortion cases.
Hey, candidate Paul, get your crackpot laws off my body, OK? Thank you.
