Ron Paul still has not really answered the question about his old newsletters that contained a few (mildly) racist comments. This issue is not likely going to go away, and I think he will actually have to address it eventually.
Now, for the record, I do NOT think Ron Paul is racist. I don’t think anyone thinks he is a racist. I’d love for this issue to go away, but until he stops dodging the question he is going to keep getting hammered on it. He has to deal with this! I hope one of his inner circle just raises their hand and says, “I did it”. Would that resolve it for everyone?
My best guess is that Lew Rockwell did write the comments. Ron Paul does not want to out him because they are still friends. Lew doesn’t want to fess up because there is enough crazy shit on his website to harm Ron Paul if the links between the two of them are made popular.
I am a little bothered by the newsletters, but not much on the whole of things. Here is an apologist article by Tom Woods titled “The Ron Paul Newsletters” that I mostly agree with:
our political class is full of people — we may justly call them sociopaths — whose words may always be exquisitely correct, never once straying from proper p.c. decorum, but who think absolutely nothing of (say) bombing foreign populations on the most ludicrous and transparent grounds. Our society banishes those who make insensitive remarks, but considers our knee-jerk bombardiers to be people with a legitimate point of view, and certainly as having done nothing that might end a person’s career.
To call this a skewed moral calculus is about the least one might say about it.
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This is what Ron Paul supporters, who are standing by him, are responding to. Insensitive remarks, which not even his worst critic thinks he actually wrote, can scarcely be morally worse than policies like these, which enjoy the active support of practically the entire spectrum of the U.S. political class.
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This has essentially never been seen before, and will likely never be seen again — an honest man standing up to a morally corrupt establishment, saying things no one in either wing of that establishment would dream of saying. Yes, all the establishment’s men will assure us of their profound commitment to the brotherhood of man, and every p.c. platitude ever uttered will pour forth from their lips. Ron Paul supporters are trying to persuade their countrymen that we ought to insist on a teensy bit more than this.
My all time favorite podcaster, Dan Carlin, just published a Common Sense show dealing with this very subject: Show 215 – Disappointing the Listenership He goes in to some of the history of the two main parties (hawkish on socialism, isolationism) that I was not aware of. It is (as always) worth your attention to listen to.
The Internet is one of the very few places where we are free to interact and do as we please. I get real uncomfortable real quick every time I hear how government or business want to regulate and change it. (oh, it always seems to be ‘for our own good’, of course) Here is an excerpt of a response from a group of people who actually understand how the Internet works to one of the most recent attempts:
