There is an article on Pajamas Media which, if largely true, would have certainly been enough to tip me over the edge into not supporting Ron Paul. Admittedly I have always been rather equivocal in my support of him, but if some the statements attributed to him are indeed what they seem when viewed in context, then I have even more difficulty lining up behind him.
However…
A lot of the ‘damning’ statement attributed to him are things I have no problem with in the slightest and to describe them as evidence of racism or conspiracy theories is unconvincing and in a few cases actually absurd.
So let us fisk the statements offered up as evidence of Ron Paul’s wickedness by Daniel Koffler, starting with the ones described as ‘Racists Pull Quotes’…
“[O]ur country is being destroyed by a group of actual and potential terrorists – and they can be identified by the color of their skin.”
Yes. A racist and idiotic remark.
I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in that city [Washington, D.C.] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.
Probably only true if he is talking about people in Congress… but why limit the remark by race? But yes, clearly a racist remark and highly unlikely to be true.
We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, but it is hardly irrational.
One glance at crime figures in the USA pretty much proves that to true depending on what part of the country you are talking about. Personally I would argue the large number of black criminals is due to culture rather than genetics… but that is a racist remark unless heavily qualified. But as the remark is pulled out of context, it is not a good indication of Ron Paul racism.
The riots, burning, looting, and murders are only a continuation of 30 years of racial politics.
Not only is that not a racist statement, I would regard it is a truism. The fact is the ‘racial politics’ game is played by people of all races, so saying it is a bad thing and leads to riots etc. is hardly itself racist.
The criminals who terrorize our cities – in riots and on every non-riot day – are not exclusively young black males, but they largely are. As children, they are trained to hate whites, to believe that white oppression is responsible for all black ills, to “fight the power,” and to steal and loot as much money from the white enemy as possible. Anything is justified against The Man. And The Woman.
Evaluating the validity of this remark simply comes down to ‘does the data support that or not’? If a disproportionate number of black males are responsible for crimes in the USA, and if the reason for that is ascribed to culture, rather than genetics (as is indeed the case in this ‘pull quote’), then how is it racist rather than simply an attempt to explain why black males are involved in so much crime in the USA?
My friend waved to the tiny [African-American] child, who scowled, stuck out her tongue, and said (somewhat tautologically): “I hate you, white honkey.” And the parents were indulgent. Is any white child taught to hate in this way?” [As a matter of fact, Paul has appeared on a radio program called “The Political Cesspool,” which has featured the neo-Nazi twin pop stars Prussian Blue. –ed.]
Yeah, busted. An absurd remark by Ron Paul unless the context changes things greatly. I have met plenty of white racists in the USA who were raised to be racists. The ‘Prussian Blue’ bit however is a non sequitur. Members of Saddam Hussain’s government visited the Pope.. Does that means every politician who also visited the Pope backed Ba’athism?
Korean-Americans, hated by blacks, never riot, and in fact are some of the most productive people in America (the reason for black hatred).
But is it true or not? A pity Ron Paul did not qualify the statement as ‘some’ blacks.
The cause of the riots is plain: barbarism. If the barbarians cannot loot sufficiently through legal channels (i.e., the riots being the welfare-state minus the middleman), they resort to illegal ones, to terrorism.
Since when is criticising either rioting looters or the welfare state ‘racist’? To claim that remark is racist is actually absurd.
We must not kowtow to the street hoodlums and their sanctimonious leaders
And that is racist how? Would saying the opposite be non-racist?
Regardless of what the media tell us, most white Americans are not going to believe that they are at fault for what blacks have done to cities across America. The professional blacks may have cowed the elites, but good sense survives at the grass roots.
Without seeing more context, hard to say. It is self evidently true that the culture destroying welfare machine could not survive unless tens of millions of white people also voted for it, so framing this debate in simple racial terms as this quote seems to be doing does strike me as racist. Need more context.
Indeed, it is shocking to consider the uniformity of opinion among blacks in this country.
Is it true? For example do black people in the USA overwhelmingly vote for one party rather than the other? Even if they do, I am not sure (a) why that is shocking (b) why saying they do is evidence of racism.
Blacks have ‘civil rights,’ preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black beauty contests, black TV shows, black TV anchors, black scholarships and colleges, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda.
I have heard conservatives black people make the same lament, so the notion saying that is ‘racist’ is preposterous.
Black males age 13 that have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary, and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such.
This is only racist if Ron Paul wants non-black males age 13 that have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs (etc.) to not be treated as adults.
And here we start to enter my unease zone, I must confess… the ones described as ‘Conspiracist Pull Quotes’…
We now know that we are under assault from thugs and revolutionaries who hate Euro-American civilization and everything it stands for: private property, material success for those who earn it, and Christian morality.
Which is obviously, demonstrably, manifestly… true.
In San Francisco and perhaps other cities, says expert Burt Blumert, the rioting was led by red-flag carrying members of the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Workers World Party, both Trotskyite-Maoist.
Fact check, anyone? I have no idea if it is true.
Many people tried to buy guns to protect themselves. But, whoops, California has a 14-day waiting period. And then, just to make sure honest Californians could not get ammunition for the firearms they already owned (poor ragefilled youth might be shot), Mayor Tom Bradley ordered all gun and ammo shops closed, a great help to criminals who had stocked up earlier, or who could simply break in and loot.
A remark which is evidence of sanity, not conspiracy.
Several days after the violence ended, we learned that there would have been blacks on the King jury—if the NAACP hadn’t engaged in jury tampering by telling potential black jurors that it was their racial duty to convict the cops. The blacks admitted this to defense lawyers, and were rightly excluded from jury. This is a serious crime, but the NAACP will not be prosecuted.
I find that hard to believe but fact check anyone?
Two years ago, in a series of predictions for the 1990s, I said that race riots would erupt in our large cities. I’m now predicting this will be the major problem of the 1990s. [Helter Skelter, anybody?—ed.]
Well I guess this depends on whether or not this was before or after the 1992 LA Riot. If before he was a sage, if after, he was a pessimist but hardly imagining a conspiracy.
Last month I reported on massive, illegal spying by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith against its perceived opponents, as revealed in California. The ADL keeps track of people and groups from left to right, and purchases illegally obtained information on Americans from its agents in police departments in order to prepare and maintain hundreds of thousands of dossiers.
Hmm. Does sound like we could be moving into moonbat territory here but I do not know enough about the ADL to have an opinion (I will not simply assume they are the same ilk of loony as the JDL seem to be).
The [Los Angeles] Times also brought to light the ADL’s work against ‘cults’, especially interesting given the BATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms]-ADL connection.
I am not entirely sure what that means or why it should matter. I guess it depends who the scare quoted ‘cults’ actually were.
It was such a seminar [i.e. a cult awareness training seminar], arranged by the ADL, that targeted the Branch Davidians in the first place.
Two things: firstly, the Branch Davidians really were loonies, so if the ADL called them loonies, they were correct. Secondly, regardless of them being loonies, they were murdered by the state and Janet Reno and the upper echelon of BATF should have gone to gaol for twenty years for their role in it.
The intensity with which Israel lobbies in the U.S. Congress is surpassed only by its media campaigns to drown all criticism of Israel. Prominent U.S. Editors and media owners don’t even pretend to objectivity on the issue. They all follow the advice of Norman Podhoretz, editor of the influential neo-conservative magazine Commentary….[Our emphasis –ed.]
Yes that is a bit moonbatty, no doubt about it given how easy it is to find articles and views critical of Israel.
This bias [Martin Peretz’s] informs every opinion expressed in The New Republic. For example, it opposed Contra aid until the Sandinista government showed sympathy for the PLO.
Which does in fact seem to be true, but then I have never much cared for The New Republic.
If this walking bomb had gone off, it would have demolished the House Chamber and most of the congressmen in it. Yet this attempted terrorist attack was buried by the media. Why? Because the perpetrator was an undoubtedly mad Israeli, furious over alleged slights to his country… [T]he Israeli lobby deep-sixed the story, and no one outside of Congress ever head about it.
I have no idea if this is true, but more importantly, the fact a lone deranged Israeli might have attempted to ‘Do A Guy Fawkes’ would indeed have caused an irrelevant anti-Semitic frenzy so I can see why some might want to skate over this matter (and it is irrelevant as it was presumably a lone nutter, not evidence of an Israeli Jewish terrorist network…which is why Muslim origins are indeed relevant when looking at terrorism, but Jewish one ain’t). The remark by Paul does seem paranoid and wrong headed.
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.
Never were truer words uttered.
[Hillary Clinton] is one of the most dangerous women in public life. Not only is she a fanatical abortion advocate, she wants parents to register with the government as a condition for having children to be able to sue and ‘divorce’ themselves from their parents. Maybe her daughter ought to sue her parents for attempting to raise her as a leftist. That sure qualifies as abuse to me.
Strikes me as a perfectly reasonable remark even if I do not entirely agree with it. How, Mr. Koffler, is this evidence of conspiracy theory?
Disgruntled taxpayer Dean Hicks fired bombs through mortars at night at buildings of the Internal Revenue Service in California. Hicks did damage federal property, but no individuals were injured… Hicks was sentenced to 20 years in prison, given a $45,000 fine, and ordered to pay $335,000 in restitution to the IRS. If he had been a serial murderer, he would not have gotten this sort of sentence.
Seems like another perfectly reasonable observation. 20 years for a property crime against the IRS? That is indeed the sort of sentence that murderers get.
There is good news after the L.A. riots. Statewide, gun sales are up 45% over the same period last year. People have been purchasing a record number. If the cops are not going to take care of the problem, the people will.
Another perfectly reasonable remark.
In summation, this attack does appear score some hits on Ron Paul but for the most part it is a poor hatchet job, offering up de-contextualised quotes that do not have the implications that Koffler ascribes to them. A D minus, Mr. Koffler. Must do better.
I tend to think that Ace’s take on the matter is sensible.
Much of the quotes indeed seem hyped up, but there is enough there to be worried about. Particularly Paul’s support of David Duke.
I remember reading something about this recently, the blacks in washington quote triggered my memory. Apparently this newsletter was being ghostwritten under Paul’s name. He disowned the quotes and it as generally acccepted that they weren’t his work; his only crime was to not keep an eye on what was being written in his name. Which was stupid, but the quotes are entirely at odds with his otherwise stated opinions; he’s a public figure, well known and respected (if not agreed with) in politics, and a man who generally speaks his mind, so it’s reasonable to accept his explanation. If he were a racist he’d have said so in some other channel by now.
IOW this is an old issue that has been dragged up to be presented as a “new revelation”.
Perry,
I’m a little bit disappointed that you didn’t scratch the surface of this one. Granted, you have not nailed your colours to a mast, but going straight to the horse’s mouth might have saved you some effort with that fisking.
I have not had the patience to go through each and every accusation, but from what I have read, each of these comments are taken from newsletters that he published (before he became something of an Internet figurehead) under his name. Many of the articles are unattributed, aside from being a Ron Paul publication.
On his site, Ron Paul has a statement- I suggest everybody reads it before passing judgement either way: (Link)
Koffler acknowledges Paul’s refutation of authoring the articles, but then goes on to libel him anyway, recycling the same crap that TNR published as if it was Paul who actually wrote them.
Paul has always struck me as somewhat naive and simplistic in his recorded appearances and I have not had reason to doubt him previously, so I have no reason to doubt his explanation in this instance.
Foolish to publish anyway? Yeh, probably.
He is an unfortunate hostage to the malicious intent of American conservatism.
So he’s not responsible for his own publication? Couldn’t keep a small staff of columnists under control, could he? Just a well-meaning buffoon, then?
And we want him to have great political power why?
I don’t think it’s fair to state the RP has tried to absolve himself of all responsibility to watch over what was being said in his name.
Regarding rioting, look into relatively recent minor attempts by ANSWER or similar groups to start incidents. For instance: michellemalkin.com/immigration/2005/05/26/02:18.pm
Regarding the author, listen to the first part of the interview here:
youtube.com/watch?v=Whqtv9D9g-Y
If someone presents BohemianGrove and the TC as just happy smiley social clubs, can you trust their interpretation of what is and isn’t a “conspiracy theory”?
I gave up listening to the youtube clip when he described the Von Mises Institute as a “neo-confederate organisation”. Sheesh.
I prefer the statements of the Bishop of Rochester (UK), Pakistanese (the only one) and lucid. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=ZEGQRDOACW2JHQFIQMGSFGGAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2008/01/06/nislam106.xml
Perry, I usually agree with you and on most of this article, but not on the SKIN identification (beginning of your post). Non-white people in the UK or in France, can’t side with the “white” (infact western) order anymore because they won’t find protection if they slightly take our side. For instance, even if they never testify against a non-white person, they would be in great trouble if they only stopped laughing at us with their non-white colleagues.
One of the obsession of many non-white men is to have an intercourse with white women and to comment on the general depravity of white women. If they tacitly stay away of these daily conversation, or worse, if they become as fussy defending a white female “honor” as their similar looking men (I can’t find a better expression, they’re dependent on a body that they didn’t choose), they will be in great trouble in their neighborhood and at work. The third-world solidarity can’t take second degree or understatement :
you’re either absolutely with them or against them.
I was taught to find excuses for them that they even never asked for. But a few years ago, I also had to admit that non-white people willing to take the western side (that is, “assimilate”), like this bishop of Rochester (my link), are very few. And they’d better be autonomous and brave.
Of course, you’ve met these very nice educated etc. (Benazir B was elected president of the blabla students of Oxford, and now we know what a parasite she was, to say the least). They can’t tell you the truth because SHAME, and SEPARATION, between men and women, between social groups and races, and general corruption are the base of their education, and most of all, they can’t express it. Listening to them, I feel that they can’t think straight. And this is why their books and their movies so boring and repelling to me.
(The problem of the educated non-white US population is different, but I don’t know them).
In Europe, white people are not liked nor respected by the non-white, but only sometimes politely used for their – stolen of course – knowledge and naive women. If one day you have the opportunity to share an office with them, you will know what I mean. But I think that you could already learn enough by listening to their conversations ; or you have, and you don’t want to jump to nasty conclusions.
Enjoy your positive feelings and those of the upper middle class. To me, it’s a dying community, because they have no idea of the feelings of billions of others.
Or how about this one about WTC 1?
Of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a newsletter said, “Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little.”
Alice,
My (white) brother is entranced by the idea of shagging a black woman. A mate of mine taught English in Spain and for the first time in his life he was considered attractive because he was ginger. My wife has long blonde hair and her erstwhile, female Japanese flatmate asked to stroke it. It is curiosity and a desire to experience “the other” which is as large a driver of this as “hate”.
From my experience… You’re talking rot. By lumping all ethnic minorities into the “non-white” pot you are doing a dramatic disservice to these folks. Many of the ones I’ve met have been from former states of the British Empire and (due to their country’s conservatism) disturbingly more English than me.
Sorry, Alice, your dog won’t hunt. I have been corrected as to cricket by Indians and told off over breaches of ettiquette by way to many Africans or Caribbeans (including an outrageously camp Nigerian in traditional dress) to buy your line.
Share an office? Of course I have! And the last office I shared had two Pakistanis who did nothing (well nothing not related to the test match). They got away with it because the office manager was a moron and didn’t dare criticise “someone of colour”. I would have done exactly what these two lads were doing if I’d had the option because the job (for Defra) was awful and pointless.
Now, if you’d said, “a large number of young muslim males are totally disconnected from Western society, believe very odd things and sometime act upon them with devastating force.” I’d have to agree. But this is not really about race is it? The 7/7 bombers were of Pakistani origin but Richard Reid (who would have killed many more if his shoes had gone off) was Anglo-Caribbean. Race is not the issue here, Islam is. And yes, quite a few of the followers of that faith have a dreadful view of women. They come from Pakistan and Arabia, Somalia and Malaysia and some of them are native born Brits and Yanks and Ozzies too. It’s what they believe that is the problem, not the colour of their skin.
This is really sad; Paul had the chance to really sow some valuable seeds pushing the pro-market, limited government, pro-free trade, anti-interventionist message, and instead we get a flake; at the very least, his involvement with this newsletter shows appalling judgement by a man who has to appeal to a broad range of people to be a credible occupant of the Oval Office.
I shouldn’t be so downhearted Johnathan. It’s not like he has a chance of winning. He can stilll get the libertarian message out; since he’s not going to be president anyway a lapse of judgement in the past doesn’t really matter. But he doesn’t seem to me to be a “flake”, and we shouldn’t be too ready to condemn him as one. He’s nowhere near as flaky as the official US Libertarian Party candidate for instance.
The New Republic is a bastion of statism, a cheerleader of the statist movement. Of course they’ll do everything they can to harm him. On the audio clip linked above the shit-stirrer who set this smear up told at least two lies in the small part I heard- firstly that the Von Mises Institute is a “pro-confederacy” front group, but more importantly claiming this article is some kind of exclusive, that this information “wasn’t out there” and our intrepid reporter diligently combed through forgotten files to find it. The reality is it was already in the public sphere. He’s presenting something old and known as something new, in a deliberate attempt to spoil Paul’s campaign. Whoja wanna trust, a man who let a newsletter get published containing views he hadn’t vetted, or a reporter from a, heh, communist front publication, who lies for political ends?
Ian, I agree with a lot of what you say about TNR. But this stuff, even if TNR is exaggerating – it is a cheerleader for Big Govt after all – is alarming.
This touches on one issue I have had in the past with some, only a few, isolationist libertarians (like the sort that hang around Justin Raimondo, Lew Rockwell, Hans Herman-Hoppe). If you scratch really hard, there seems to be a steady fixation with the evils of supporting Israel, the Jewish lobby, etc. Plus there is this nutty misunderstanding of the non-initiation of force principle – a bedrock of liberalism – that is taken to the extreme of opposing any pre-emptive use of force against a foreign threat, however serious. These guys don’t want to use military force in self-defence until an army is marching up Whitehall.
Like I said though, this is all a pity.
“One of the obsession of many non-white men is to have an intercourse with white women and to comment on the general depravity of white women.”
“In Europe, white people are not liked nor respected by the non-white, but only sometimes politely used for their – stolen of course – knowledge and naive women.”
Passionate rhetoric – shame about the fiction.
Huh?
It’s worth noting that most of the objectionable lines here come from a
single article that appeared in the Ron Paul Report in the wake of the 1992 LA Riots, and that they improve with context.
Case in point:
Of course, it’s stupid to assume that everyone arrested is actually guilty, If you want to use police statistics to support your assertion that a class of people in a particular city is “semi-criminal or entirely criminal” then you should really be focused on conviction rates. Nevertheless, the numbers are staggering, and since Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton routinely use the same figures as evidence of an anti-black culture in the police force without Daniel Koffler accusing them of racial bias I think it’s fair to ask why Koffler thinks it’s racist of Ron Paul to cite the same high arrest numbers as evidence of an anti-white culture in the urban black community. And this is not to mention that the whole case requires you to overlook lines like ” I know many who fall into this group personally and they deserve credit–not as representatives of a racial group, but as decent people.”
More to the point, if Koffler wants to call Ron Paul a racist in 2008, he needs to establish a pattern of recent unambiguously racist statements. Digging all the way back to 1992 with only one article to show for it (an article, it must be added, that makes a number of very good points alongside the loony bits and was written in the wake of a pretty scary string of race riots) is a bit shabby even as these accusations go.
By the way (with regard to a comment of mine currently held in smite control on suspicion of racism) – word on the internet is that Ron Paul didn’t even write the article in question (it appeared in his political newsletter) and fired the staffer who did when he read it. If true, this would blast Koffler’s case sky high. Of course, I can’t find any confirmation, so can’t say whether it’s true. (The link provided James earlier to Ron Paul’s website certainly claims that Paul isn’t the actual author.)
Ian B…have you read the intro to Ron Paul’s latest book? Or am I supposed to think that Ron Paul didn’t vet that either?
Yes I accept that may be true but it still indicates some poor judgement. However I think Koffler’s case is pretty poor and I suspect his motives given the fact so many (the majority in fact) of the ‘pull quotes’ simply do not have the meaning he imputes to them.
“Huh?”
I believe that it was a Ron Paul defender trying to make the views expressed in his (or his employees) pamphlet look measured and genial.
“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” – OW
No, I haven’t. Care to enlighten us?
For instance: Lew Rockwell makes it clear, and suggests that Ron Paul agrees, that it was a mistake for the US to enter WWII. Now I can understand this position before WWII and before the US getting involved, but I cannot understand this position in the light of revelations about the Holocaust and other acts of genocide perpetrated all over Europe by the Nazis.
It’s the same logic that keeps us out of Darfur, kept us from intervening when Turkey tried to exterminate the Armenians, or keeps many saying that Vietnam’s invasion of “Democratic Kampuchea” in the 80s was an unjust violation of sovereignty. It is a logical extension of the position that says that other people’s problems are theirs to solve; agree with it or not, it’s not such a marginal position. It only seems like one because of the importance our role (both in the US and the UK) in WWII has had in shaping postwar politics (with admittedly different consequences in each country).
…and both use the same rationale to defend that position: we brought Pearl Harbor on ourselves by blockading Japan’s oil, and ditto 9/11 because of our involvement in Middle-Eastern affairs.
So, according to these isolationist libertarians, we should just have sat idly by while Japan invaded China and annexed most of Oceania into the Co-Prosperity Sphere, and ditto when Iraq annexed its 19th province (a.k.a. Kuwait).
I don’t have to label these people as stupid, naive or short-sighted: they do it all by themselves.
Or when Mr Hussein invaded the Islamic Republic of Iran?
Back before the First Gulf war, the WSJ quoted an Arab official saying something along the lines that he shouldn’t have to send his sons to fight for Kuwait because they had ‘American slaves’ to do it for them.
Many anti-war folk get it a bit wrong. It isn’t Israel that uses America for a chump. It is the Saudis and company.
I have more problems with some of who make the Ron Paul coalition TODAY -same racists, Stormfront etc… than with this letters.
I’m not sure what Stormfront’s support allows us to conclude about Ron Paul. Pat Robertson has endorsed Rudi Giuliani, for example, and last I checked Giuliani has said nothing to “distance” himself from this endorsement. Am I to conclude from this that Giuliani is a gay-hating pro-lifer just because these are Robertson’s pet causes? Of course not.
Ron Paul is opposed to affirmative action and opposed to foreign aid for Israel (and pretty much everyone else as well), so his platform happens to coincide with Stormfront’s on two of their key issues. It makes sense that they support him – but they do so for their own reasons, not because Paul is in any way “one of them.” Ron Paul and Stormfront don’t support these policies for anything like the same reasons or with anything like the same goals in mind.
Giuliani is an establishment candidate. He’s allowed to have lunatic supporters. It doesn’t matter that Pat Robertson believes in the Illuminati and that Freemasons rule the world. Rudy is allowed to have such supporters.
That fringe in Guiliani is less than the big fringe in Ron Paul. Anyway what 2nd figures in Ron Paul movement and close to him that say something rational?
Right now and this might be the media bias plus the Atlantic Ocean i have only the outrageous out: Ron Paul that says some stuff i agree some i dont agree and some nutiness and then i have a group of supporters that the big majority go from Nazis to Roswell and Secret Files with maybe some spots of David Lynch…
It’s common sense that this should be so. Giuliani is a mainstream candidate, the kind of status quo guy that fringe groups, by their very essence (and regardless of their politics), tend not to support. Also, Giuliani has a much larger number of supporters than Ron Paul, so what fringe supporters he does have will not be as visible in any case. That’s just the nature of the game. Support from fringe groups is a handicap that all true reformers have to deal with.
The undue focus on fringe group support in Ron Paul’s case is, I suspect, largely a media reflex. He’s a tough nut for them to crack because he doesn’t easily fit into their canned “liberal” and “conservative” political categories. He wasn’t on the politics 101 quiz they took during job training, so to speak. If he were sweeping the country, this might be an exciting challenge for them. If he were poling at Tancredo’s level, they could safely ignore him. Frustratingly for most media outlets, however, his level of support is large enough to give them incentive to cover him, but not so large as to give them incentive to really try to understand him. So they post some vids of weirdos at one of his rallies and call it “investigative reporting” and hope he’ll go away. I, for one, am not impressed. Until they can convince me that Ron Paul either secretly sympathizes with these groups or would be likely to fall under their influence once elected, I just take it as par for the course that whenever I support a political outsider like Paul my vote will go the same way as those of a lot of loonies. I would change it if I could, but I can’t, and the alternative of voting for one of the mainstream Republicans is too ghastly to contemplate this time around.
If we want a smaller state, at some point we have to dig our heels in and demand it. Ron Paul may not be my ideal choice, but he’s really the only one I have at the moment. If I let all kinds of ultimately inconsequential details like whatever Stormfront is thiking this week get in the way, there’s simply never going to be anyone I can vote for.
If there is some reason to believe Ron Paul thinks like Stormfront, then that would be a reason to stop supporting him. But if it’s just a predictable case of a fringe group latching on to a political outsider without his permission, as seems to be the case here, then the intelligent thing to do is to ignore it and base my support on what that candidate actually stands for. Refusing to vote for someone just because Stormfront (or any other group of loonies) happens to like them gives the kook element way too much control over my voting decision.
Perry,
You’re wrong.
Koffler’s motives are irrelevant. Even if your fisking is correct (and, on some points it isn’t) – the points you concede are enough to brand Paul a nutter. Enough, over and over.
Even if these quotes are “old”, and even if it was not him that wrote them – there are plenty of nutty things, too much to to ignore or explain away.
I got convinced he is unhinged when I read a speech of his, about a year ago or so, where he keeps repeating how the Iraq invasion is “unconstitutional”.
In doing so he is simply reiterating a position that was mainstream in the early 1970s (a debate stirred by efforts to end involvement in Vietnam). The position is that as Article I, section 8 of the US Constitution expressly gives Congress the power to declare war, ONLY Congress has this power.
You may not agree with this interpretation. Certainly Congress itself doesn’t (they passed the War Powers Act of 1973 to clear up that point, in fact). But I don’t think this qualifies as “unhinged” by any reasonable standard.
Always makes me laugh. Paul is not unhinghed for thinking Congress should have, if it was really pro-war, done what it did in 1941, 1917, 1898 and so on. That is, make a foirml declartion of war.
He is certainly a lot less unhinged than Dubya, who justifies his war on the basis that God told him to do it.
Yes, a lot of RP’s statement’s, taken individually, can be defended. The trouble is that taken en masse, there is nothing with which a backwoods racist ZOG-fearing Idaho militia member would disagree. It shows who his real base is.
Give it up, Perry. In a few months he will be ‘Ron who?’ and his Deliverance demographic supporters will have slunk back into their caves, but do you really want to spend those months on the back foot trying to explain away every latest revelation? Disbelief in evolution one day, Stormfront supporters the next, do you really think this is his last embarrassment?
Mmm, I’m not a regular commenter here, but this is the first time one of my comments has been held for moderation. Pure speculation on my part, but are you being deluged with comments from nutcase Paulbots?
(I am not referring to any of the other published commenters so far, all of whom seem reasonable even when I disagree with them)
As my last comment got through, it’s more likely my not-yet-published comment had a few attention-getting codewords in it. Speculation withdrawn. Sorry.
Joshua,
You note that most of the quotes come from a single article published in the wake of the 1992 riots in LA (which were, for those who remember, pretty scary). What exactly was the chronology of publication and Ron Paul’s firing of the writer? What exactly was published before the article or articles that resulted in that firing? I sense there is more of a story here than Kirchick’s hit piece would have us believe.
Peter,
According to Wendy McElroy, the insiders in the shadowy global libertarian elite know who the author is and he’s a prominent Paul aide, but they aren’t saying who he is. I’nt it excoitin? 🙂
Almost certainly there is. Unfortunately, I’m as much in the dark about it as you are. The bit about the fired staffer is something circulating on the internet. I have no idea if it’s even true, let alone when it happened or what the circumstances were. I hope for the sake of the Paul campaign he can give a more effective response to this soon than we’ve seen in the past two days.
It is a bit strange to me that Paul is repeatedly described as an ‘outsider’, while he has been a congressman, on and off, for more than three decades. This makes him less an outsider than Fred Thompson is.
Ah, but Paul isn’t a Council On Foreign Relations insider… 🙂
I’d like to say this is why I did not support Ron Paul for president. This right here will damage the libertarian movement in the United States for years to come.
Reading that article on the LA riots, I can’t help but feel vindicated that the TNR piece (TNR! Fer Chrissakes!) was nothing but a shameless hit piece. It’s mostly railing against the welfare state and its affects on a whole segmant of the population. It IS racially charged, but it IS about the LA riots which were all about race to begin with.
And as for the real writer, it is unfortunate that Dr. Paul is getting all the heat for this. Some people find it hard to believe that he would have such a hard time keeping track of what was said under his own name. I don’t! I’m the son of an OB/GYN and let me tell you they don’t exactly have a lot of time on their hands. Being a doctor, funding a newsletter, doing Lord knows what else…yeah, I can see it. It does show a poor lack of judgement on Dr. Paul’s part since he clearly didn’t work with the right people to properly oversee his newsletter, but in all honesty that’s about it as far as I see it.
Oh, and here(Link)‘s a really good write up from Texas Monthly in 2001 that even briefly (end of page two, top of page three) includes the controversy (it really is an old one).
On the bright side, Dr. Paul will recover from this. He never had a chance at getting very far in the nomination process, that was a given (one really good showing would have been nice). But this controversy didn’t seem to really bother his district before, I don’t see why it should now. At the very least we’ll still have him representing in the House. However, in the United States, we’ll probably see the word libertarian lumped in with ideas like state’s rights and federalism as secret code words for returns to jim crow and slavery or whatever all they like to say they mean.
Could it be simply because he is not much of an expert on foreign relations?…:-P
Maybe you have to have foreign relations. Like an aunt in France or something.
And Congress did exactly that.
So Paul doesn’t like the wording of the resulution… and makes this the main point of his congress speech. Ridiculous. Nutty.
Perry, I think you should retract your mild and qualified endorsement of Ron Paul.
Far from it. Congress passed a resolution which gave the President qualified authority to use US Armed Forces against “the government of Iraq.” You can read the resolution in its entirety here. There is no formal declaration of war.
The distinction between an authorization for the use of force under the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and a formal declaration of war is not a subtle or “merely semantic” one even if you believe in the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution. Since Ron Paul does not believe in its constitutionality (and he is far from alone in that opinion) and since he has made a career of trying to return the US government to constitutional principles, the distinction is obviously of paramount importance to him.
I really don’t see how consistently applying a perfectly rational interpretation of the Constitution that a strong contingent of legal scholars and historians who base their professional lives on such studies share can be called “nutty.”
A press release explaining the rationale for Ron Paul’s position is here. It says a lot of things that you may not agree with, but nothing that can fairly be described as “unhinged.”
Peter-
Continuing with regard to yesterday’s question – Virginia Postrel (who has never been a Paul supporter) speculates that the author was Lew Rockwell. Of course this is just one theory, not confirmed. But it it seems likely enough and it would certainly explain Paul’s reluctance to “out” the “staffer.”
Ron Paul keeps getting those cracking endorsements…this time from David Duke.
So what?
Look, Congress passed a resolution. Congress is satisfied with it’s resolution. Most critics of the war criticize the war, not Congress.
Congress tried to pass another resolution to bring the troops home, but failed, which means: it upholds the continuation of the war.
Claiming that the war is wrong because it lacks Congressional approval is nuts. (There are other, more plausible, arguments against the war).
The Constitution says Congress has the power to declare war, it doesn’t say what words Congress must use in it’s resolutions.
I’ve read Paul’s press release, it was what convinced me he is nuts in the first place.
Now, that he gets more scrutiny a lot of additional incidents are revealed. It all sums up. You can’t ignore it.
Ron Paul’s position (and it is an issue I truly do not give a damn about, I might add) is not that Congress did not approve it but that the whole process was unconstitutional. If Congress did not follow the constitutional forms as well, that does not make is any less unconstitutional. You don’t have to agree, but to claim that makes him ‘nuts’ is preposterous and does not really add to your argument, to put it politely.
That Article I Section 8 of the Constitution quoted above also says that “Congress shall Have Power” to:
-” To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof”
-“To establish Post Offices ”
-“To regulate Commerce…”
Ron Paul is a very selective supporter of the Constitution. He supports to great extremes some clauses of that Section 8, and fiercely opposes others.
Isn’t that nuts ?
The US Constitution is a useful and respectable document, but never was the Bible of Libertarianism.
The US Constitution is a useful and respectable document, but invoking it in the dispute over the war in Iraq is absurd.
How so? The power to make war is without a doubt the most extreme aspect of any nation state and how that power is controlled seems a more that minor point of discussion.
I don’t know of anywhere that Ron Paul has said that the Post Office or the US dollar is unconstitutional. Kindly provide the sources from which you derive this impression.
As for whether it would be “nuts,” I note that you have changed your argument. Originally you said that calling the War in Iraq unconstitutional was “nuts,” now you have shifted your position to say that it isn’t so much that he thinks the War in Iraq is unconstitutional that’s “nuts,” but rather the fact that he isn’t a sufficiently big fan of the Post Office (a point for which, I repeat, you supply no evidence).
One gets the impression that you like the word “nuts,” don’t like Ron Paul, and are grasping at straws to connect these two hobbies of yours.
You’re shifting the argument.
What the constitution says, and what everybody accepts (including me) is that presidents need a congressional authorization before going to war. That’s why Bush went to Congress and got a resolution, approved by 72 Senators. No argument so far.
The ridiculous thing is the claim that this resolution is unconstitutional, or that Bush went to war without Congressional authorization.
I still say so.
Beside this nuttiness, there are many other Paul claims and positions that reinforce this notion of inconsistency and unreasonable positions.
Maybe I should clarify: by “nut” I didn’t mean that Paul is raving mad. I only meant that many of his positions are extremely inconsistent and illogical, to the point of ridicule.
And his stressing the race factor is deeply un-libertarian. In the last debate (yesterday) he said 67% of prison inmates in South Carolina were black. The statistic is true, but so what ? Are people criminals because of the color of their skin ? Libertarians treat people as individuals and not as (involuntary) members of races. Why does he continue to mention the “race” thing ? Give credence to the loony quotations from the 1992 newsletters.
No, I am addressing your contention, which is about the issue of going to war. Please link to the Resolution where they make a declaration of war. I assume it is easy to find.
That is what Ron Paul is talking about. Personally I do not care all that much and I only support him because I want the meme of rolling back the state to be spread. I also do not agree with his approach to foreign policy, that is just not as important to me at this point in time as the domestic issue of rolling back the state.
No, he is pretty logical and consistent (for a politician, that is, which perhaps isn’t saying much). In fact I think that is actually what you do not like about him because you do not like where his logic and consistency leads him.
He has but to scroll up the page, in fact, as I linked it in one of my earlier comments.. Here it is again, to save him the Google search.
Fine, but on what basis? Defending an interpretation of the Constitution that is consistent with its wording and relevant to the issue at hand can hardly be described as “nuts.” The Constitution is the basic law of the land. It cannot be controversial among reasonable people that the land should be governed in accordance with its basic law. In asking that constitutional procedures be followed when the nation goes to war, Ron Paul is simply upholding the oath he swore on assuming office. He is doing his job, not being “nuts.”
The single position you have cited as evidence does not even come close to meeting this description. Kindly point to what you think is “inconsistent” and “illogical” about his interpretation of constitutional law as it applies to Congressional authority to declare war. If you get around to it, please include in this the evidence I requested from you earlier to back up your impression (which I believe to be erroneous, but I’m willing to change my mind if presented with facts) that Paul adheres to Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution in matters of war declarations but not in matters concerning the national Post Office and coining of money.
This is disingenuous, to say the least. Facts cannot be racist, nor is Ron Paul a racist for repeating statistics that were compiled by the government and are in the public domain for all to discuss. His point in mentioning such statistics, as you well know, is to argue that the application of certain laws may be racially motivated, and to condemn this practice. A frequent talking point of his on this issue is the uneven application of penalties for different kinds of illegal drugs under the wholly ineffective drug policy currently pursued by our government. In particular, it concerns him (and me, frankly) that the penalty for crack cocaine, a drug favored by blacks, is harsh out of proportion to its relative danger as compared with other forms of cocaine (which are favored by whites and asians). Ron Paul is arguing for equal treatment of people under the law. This is the antithesis of racism.
The Congress resolution says:
” SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) AUTHORIZATION. The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to
(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq. ”
Te section 8 of the Constitution says:
“The Congress shall have power … To declare war”.
So what’s Paul’s claim? How is that resolution not a “declaration of war” ? Or not sufficient authorization?
Looks to me a very foolish point on semantics – i.e. that the exact words “declaration of war” are missing from the Congress resolution.
To base on that the additional claim that the war is “illegal and immoral” seems to me extremely nutty. That’s my opinion.
Add to that all the other quotes and utterances, and incidents that need to be laboriously explained away (‘he did not write it, he did not mean it that way”, “he’s not responsible for his supporters”…) and it all adds up to a well clear nutty pattern.
The question is one of whether Congress – which is clearly given authority by the Constitution to declare war – may delegate that authority to someone else, as it does in this resolution. The Constitution does not specifically say it may not, but then neither does the Constitution specifically say that it may. But I do not think you will find anyone to agree with you that the distinction between transferable authority and non-transferable authority is “a very foolish point on semantics.”
So which is it? May Congress delegate its warmaking authority to the president? Perhaps you think it may – but there is a very good case to be made that it may not. After all, one of the main principles of American government enshrined in the Constitution is that of Separation of Powers. The Supreme Court has, in fact, has ruled on this basis that Congress may not delegate some of its other authorities (in this case linked the authority to draft and pass statute). If we are consistent, the same principle would seem to apply to its authority to declare war.
I myself am with Perry in that I don’t consider this issue all that consequential. I merely think you shouldn’t call things “nutty” that plainly are not. Ron Paul is on good legal grounds calling the War Powers Resolution of 1973 and all “authorizations for the use of force” approved under it “unconstitutional.” He can make a consistent and logical case based in clear legal traditions for his argument here, which is not “nutty” even by your definition. (If I understand you correctly, you consider things “nutty” which are “extremely inconsistent and illogical, to the point of ridicule.” This plainly isn’t that.)
I am, incidentally, still waiting for you to back up your claim (from your 11:20AM comment) that Ron Paul is inconsistent in his application of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. As I say, I think you are mistaken about that, but I am willing to admit I am wrong when confronted with facts. So – the facts, please. Do you, in fact, have any evidence that Ron Paul is selective in his interpretation of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution such that he sticks by it in cases of declaring war but not in cases of establishing a national post or regulating currency?
Wrong.
Congress practically issued a declaration of war, it only left it to the President to decide the time and manner of applying military force, which makes sense, since Congress doesn’t run the war, the President, as supreme commander does. It didn’t delegate the authority, it issued a clearly worded authorization.
Claiming that Congress didn’t issue the “correct” declaration is silly nitpicking; I don’t know of any respectable opinion to the contrary (I admit I’m no expert in the field). And, as I said, there are more valid and plausible grounds to oppose the war than this fabricated, feeble pretext.
As to the other points – I’m too lazy to go and dig quotations from the Ron Paul site, but my impression is that he is in favor of the gold standard, and of closing down the Federal Reserve, and that would be contrary to the Constitutional provision giving Congress the power ” To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof”.
Anyway, this constitutional clause certainly is un-libertarian, and, if I understand Paul correctly, I support him on this issue rather than the constitution.
It is neither fabricated nor feeble (see below), and it is far from the only argument Ron Paul gives against the war as anyone with even passing familiarity with his platform knows.
The “clearly-worded authorization” is a delegation of authority since it leaves the president the option of not going to war. This was plain enough for you to read in this section:
Congress alone is given authority by the Constitution to Declare War. It says “You know what? We decline to say one way or the other whether the US is at war with Iraq. We’ll leave that up to the president. He can do it or not as he pleases.” Sounds like a “delegation of authority” to me.
Since the Federal Reserve is not Congress and since Congress doesn’t directly set its policy, it’s difficult to see how closing it down lessens Congressional authority over monetary policy. Paul is no longer a strict gold standard advocate, but even if he were, I fail to see how a return to a full gold standard is incompatible with the Constitution? The Constitution authorizes Congress to regulate the value of currency. A gold standard is one method for doing so.
I appreciate that you have policy differences with Paul, but none of the examples you have cited in any way lend themselves to your characterization of him as “extremely inconsistent and illogical, to the point of ridicule,” least of all the one you started with. Better luck next time.
Your adoption of twisted logic doesn’t straighten it up.
When Congress said “The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces” it actually said: “we are at war with Iraq”. The constitution doesn’t mandate that the exact words “declaration of war” must be uttered.
yes, even after a declaration of war, the president can deploy the armed forces as he sees fit, and even refrain from combat operation. He can do so at any time, as he is the Supreme Commander who directs the war. He needs no congress authorization to STOP military operations (only to start them). That’s normal and logical.
In 1939, after France and England declared war on Germany they undertook no military operations for many months.
As I said various times (this is the last, I hope): this is a very illogical and implausible point to hang the opposition to the war on. And nobody, from among the multitude of rabid war opponents seriously pushed this idea, because it really has no merit at all. This foolishness is the unique to Ron Paul.
The difference is that a legal state of hostilities nevertheless existed between them.
Few legal scholars subscribe to that view. Congress itself certainly doesn’t. Presented with an alternative bill that would have formally declared war, it declined in favor of the current ambiguous resolution. When presented with the alternative legislation, in fact, Henry Hyde, the Chariman of the Committee reviewing it, rejected it with the following words:
Twist that statement as much as you want, you will never get them to say that there is no distinction between a declaration of war and an authorization to use force. Indeed, it’s quite clear that such a distinction is the entire basis for Rep. Hyde’s objection: he believes that a formal declaration would be “too strong.”
That an “authorization to use force” is insufficiently strong is, in fact, the whole problem with the resolution as passed. In his rationale for the position, Paul says, among other things,
The position is that formal declarations of war obligate the nation to achieve its goals decisively in a way that giving discretion over to the president does not. Given the history he cites, it is hard to fault his reasoning.
Indeed, it is the lack of a formal declaration of war that has allowed a lot of Democrats to pass the buck, claiming, as Hillary Clinton now does, that they supported the authorization of force but disagreed with the president’s actual decision to use it. That’s obviously not a dodge she could indulge in if she’d voted for a bill with the words “declaration of war” in its text.
I respect that you do not buy Paul’s constitutional argument, but I don’t think you can reasonably claim that the difference between a formal declaration of war and an authorization for the use of force is trivial or “merely semantic.” Certainly you cannot reasonably call anyone “nuts” merely for disagreeing with you on that point, especially not when they have explained their case as rationally as Paul has. In doing so, you are substituting namecalling for argument on an issue on which you are clearly underinformed, nothing more.
Another instance of a nutty argument. “The inconclusive results of each war” are in no way related to the wording of congressional resolutions. It’s pure nonsense.
Jacob:
This is like saying that you did not give food to the dog, you fed it.
And there are better points on which to oppose Ron Paul than this one. Note, I oppose him as much as you do, and for more or less the same reasons.
No doubt abnout that.
I just was telling about my personal way of getting there. I did appreciate Paul as a libertarian without knowing very much about him. Then a year or two ago I read a speech of his where he said about the war in Iraq “illegal and immoral” and also “no threat at all”, and I got convinced he is nuts. Now, as he became a candidate, and got more scrutiny I learned more about him, and saw that the “nut” part was no mistake of mine.
But this ridiculous “unconstitutional” claim of his, by itself, is sufficient proof, for me at least.
That’s exactly my point: claiming that the Congress resolution is not a constitutional declaration of war is silly semantics – and this is what Paul did.
Jacob, Joshua showed very effectively why it is not, in fact, silly semantics, and hence my suggestion above.