Did I Give Paul a Pass?
David Weigel | January 10, 2008, 8:53am
Virginia Postrel has
some critical words for
reason's coverage of Ron Paul:
I do fault my friends at Reason, who... scornful of the earnestness that takes politics seriously, apparently didn't do their homework before embracing Paul as the latest indicator of libertarian cachet. For starters, they might have asked my old boss Bob Poole about Ron Paul; I remember a board member complaining about Paul's newsletters back in the early '90s. Besides, people as cosmopolitan as Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch should be able to detect something awry in Paul's populist appeals... I suspect they did but decided it was more useful to spin things their way than to take Paul's record and ideas seriously.
I can only speak for myself here, and I knew about the newsletters, and wrote that I did, way back in May 2007. Older, more experienced libertarians were telling me that they would be a problem for Paul. I asked Paul back then about the letters and have asked him (and the campaign) since then about support from Don Black. I wasn't ignorant of these problems and I wasn't covering them up. As Paul's campaign grew this stuff just lost importance to me. Paul disassociates himself from the newsletters (although not from all the people who wrote them) and the people running his campaign have no connection to that older, nastier iteration of his career. The campaign was growing so much larger and more interesting than the conspiratorial Paul circle of the late 80s and mid-90s.
In any case, the Paul pile-on is starting to get ridiculous. You can blame Paul and the ghostwriters for some of this, for keeping what was in the newsletters so quiet, but simply because so many of them are now out I'm seeing "damning" quotes that pad the lists without making Paul look out of line. The excitable Dan Koffler compiles some that wouldn't sound out of place, frankly, in a conservative blog or in National Review. For example:
Indeed, it is shocking to consider the uniformity of opinion among blacks in this country.
This is something Herman Cain says once or twice every hour.
The Earth Summit is the creepiest meeting of politicos since the first gathering of Bolsheviks. Officially known as the UN Conference for Environment and Development, it will be held in Brazil in June; bad guys from all over the globe will attend.
Silly, but sounds like something John Bolton would say.
I agree with Virginia's
first response to the controversy: Libertarians have known for a while about Paul's more right-wing flashes. I was expecting a controversy like this to arise if Paul stayed in the race and made waves.
libertreee | January 10, 2008, 9:59am | #
Good for you, David! I am shocked at the shocked reactions of many of the H&R commentators! The Gays and Lesbians for Ron Paul don't give a good goddamn about them, either.
Like I have said, these comments are certainly un-PC, but are nothing more than what you heard from Rush or G Gordon Libby at the time. Pat Buchanon was AGAINST the first Gulf War. Rothbard and others felt the LP was not focused on foreign policy. They courted the right wing. Welfare was a big issue. Black on black crime was a big issue. Black preteens had committed horrible murders that were on the news.
The difference in culture between the Korean immigrants and the rioting blacks was a hot topic. A working class man was dragged from his truck and murdered in those riots. The line about the riots stopped when the welfare check arrived to me was actually quite funny in a sharp, sad way.
I am glad everyone has moved on beyond those days. We are over the MLK backlash. By the way, lest you think by my tone that I would go around saying these things, that is not true either. I despise racism. I am from NYC and LA and I don't want to proclaim MY cosmopolitan bona fides at all, no one is perfect in this regard. But, although I laughed at some of it and was put off by some of what I heard from conservatives and some libs in those days, I couldn't help but see the kernel of truth in what was said.
The NEOCONS are infiltrated into the right and left largely because they are seen as cosmopolitan. Those conservatives are different, they don't hate the jews, and so on. But, they kill, kill, kill, whomever they target for destruction. Virginia Postrel and her husband and some of the Cato crowd who proclaim their "tolerant cosmopolitan" nature have supported the wholesale unnecessary slaughter of hundreds of thousands and have helped let loose the dogs of war to what end we know not.
Dr Paul, whatever his shortcomings in the period in question, as well as the paleos at LRC have consistently been anti interventionist and anti war. Libertarians have admitted that they erred in supporting McCarthy for a while. I am sure, as Dr Paul has already, they will acknowledge their lapse into this rhetorical style was excessive and sometimes went beyond the pale. But, they were right, right, right on the horrors of war, and that is more important to me.
Sam Grove | January 10, 2008, 11:06am | #
Tempest in a Teapot. Teapot being the formal aspects of the libertarian movement.
This all helps me reaffirm my acquired view that there will be no political solution.
Libertarians (big L) are too damn political...compromising and contentious, to bring actual liberty into the world.
The dirt bomb thrown by TNR has had its desired effect.
So many reactionaries.
Explains why I lost interest in the LP. So many struggling so hard to prove that THEY have the solution. "Dammit, if only I were in charge."
Like a bunch of fucking Marxists, always self limiting by their factionalism.
Too smart to see how ineffectual they actually are.
I challenge anyone on adherence to libertarian philosophical purity, but I think Ron Paul, with all his baggage and kookiness, is much preferable to many of you.
A Giuliani supporter took a shot at the RP campaign and you all responded perfectly, predictably, as he hoped.
pause
Here's what you do. If you supported Ron Paul, remember why. If that still applies, then stick with it.
If you didn't support Ron Paul, state why, then go about your own business.
If you've decided that you can't handle the heat, shut up and get out of the kitchen. Your moaning and groaning are worth zero.
David | January 10, 2008, 11:46am | #
No one's yet mentioned the significance of this:
A linked article from Virginia Postel's blog says this about an earlier questioning of Ron Paul about the newsletters:
"In one issue of the Ron Paul Survival Report, which he had published since 1985, he called former U.S. representative Barbara Jordan a "fraud" and a "half-educated victimologist." In another issue, he cited reports that 85 percent of all black men in Washington, D.C., are arrested at some point: "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." And under the headline "Terrorist Update," he wrote: "If you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be."
In spite of calls from Gary Bledsoe, the president of the Texas State Conference of the NAACP, and other civil rights leaders for an apology for such obvious racial typecasting, Paul stood his ground. He said only that
his remarks about Barbara Jordan related to her stands on affirmative action and that
his written comments about blacks were in the context of "current events and statistical reports of the time." He denied any racist intent. What made the statements in the publication even more puzzling was that, in four terms as a U. S. congressman and one presidential race, Paul had never uttered anything remotely like this.
When I ask him why, he pauses for a moment, then says, "I could never say this in the campaign, but those words weren't really written by me. It wasn't my language at all. Other people help me with my newsletter as I travel around. I think the one on Barbara Jordan was the saddest thing, because Barbara and I served together and actually she was a delightful lady." Paul says that item ended up there because "we wanted to do something on affirmative action, and it ended up in the newsletter and became personalized. I never personalize anything." (my emphasis)
http://www.texasmonthly.com/2001-10-01/feature7-2.php
