Shocking Ron Paul Letters Unearthed

The New Republic:

If you are a critic of the Bush administration, chances are that, at some point over the past six months, Ron Paul has said something that appealed to you. Paul describes himself as a libertarian, but, since his presidential campaign took off earlier this year, the Republican congressman has attracted donations and plaudits from across the ideological spectrum. Antiwar conservatives, disaffected centrists, even young liberal activists have all flocked to Paul, hailing him as a throwback to an earlier age, when politicians were less mealy-mouthed and American government was more modest in its ambitions, both at home and abroad. In The New York Times Magazine, conservative writer Christopher Caldwell gushed that Paul is a "formidable stander on constitutional principle," while The Nation praised "his full-throated rejection of the imperial project in Iraq." Former TNR editor Andrew Sullivan endorsed Paul for the GOP nomination, and ABC's Jack Tapper described the candidate as "the one true straight-talker in this race." Even The Wall Street Journal, the newspaper of the elite bankers whom Paul detests, recently advised other Republican presidential contenders not to "dismiss the passion he's tapped."

Read the whole story: The New Republic

Comments

[montestruc]

Texas NAACP President States has known Ron Paul 20 years and that he is no racist.

http://www.nolanchart.com/article1134.html

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2008/011308_not_racist.htm

[Talcott]

I wonder if the the lefties who Claim to care

about racisim will denounce John McCain's Bhurka

statements­...?

[Talcott]

The "More proof that Ron's statement denouncing those new's letter's is true. Thewriter" of the racist newslettes writes "I bought my first copy of the men's fashion magazine GQ..."
http://www.tnr.com/downloads/March1990.pdf

But in a conversation written in an article by the New York Times from this summer, Paul has no idea what that magazine is.

"“GQ wants to profile you on Thursday,” Benton continues. “I think it’s worth doing.”

“GTU?” the candidate replies.

“GQ. It’s a men’s magazine.”

“Don’t know much about that,” Paul says. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/ma.../22Paul-t.html

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=86151

[tecpatl]

I googled Ron Paul Newsletters last night and found a few pages but this evening there are dozens of new hits, including his interview with Wolf Blitzer on the Situation Room tonight. Who wrote the articles? "I have no idea" Who worked there? "People came and went." Watch it for yourself. He does admit to reading "some of them". Will he ever answer which newsletters he read? Maybe he's combing through them as we speak in order to find just one that does not have anti-semitic, racist or homophobic comments. That could be tough. Die-hard Ron Paul supporters will never leave his side because they secretly agree with what has been written under his name. Some of the people that have recently been attracted to his ideas have already abandoned him. In any case, his star is falling and that brings me great joy.

[RonLawl]

Hey, anyone see Ron Paul's CNN interview?

Ron Paul is arguing that since he's willing to exploit the memory of Martin Luther King without the permission of Dr. King's family, that somehow makes him the anti-racist. I'm not sure he quite understands how this works.

http://ronpaulsurvivalreport.blogspot.com/2008/01/ron-paul-officially-bastardizes-martin.html

[KarenZipdrive]

Ron Paul is as crazy as a rat in a coffee can. America has no shortage of right-wing lunatics who would support someone like Dr. Paul.
We've had enough of that shit after 8 years of that imbecile Bush, another Texan.

I live in Texas. Our GOP politicians here are slimeballs equal only to Louisiana politicians.

Just ignore them, they'll eventually go away.

[TuffPosh]

Even if you dislike Ron Paul and would never support him in a million years, it's still possible to question the backstory of the TNR piece and the various interesting things the author of the TNR piece says:

http://lonewacko.com/blog/archives/007378.html

[LaFeminazi]

Its good to see the real Ron Paul that

I loath and despise being laid bare.

The extreme right always had the loopiest constipation theorists throughout history.

Now you know why the white supremacist hate mongers love him so, and our squealing 'the jews did it trolls' love him to bits.

[huffnpuffn]

Vote for us! We'll get you out of Iraq.
-Democrats in 2006 (and 2008)

I believe in a humble US foreign policy. No nation building.
-George W. Bush, 2000 campaign

Ron Paul is a racist.
-The Anti-Ron PaulTROLL here at Huff Post, and "journalists" from the cynical, power-hungry DC establishment

Don't believe the hype.

http://lonewacko.com/blog/archives/007378.html
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-bCRc2ub8hU

[bwither]

A Paul supporter mentioned earlier that we look at The Ron Paul Library to learn what Ron Paul honestly believes. Here are some interesting things I found on the site:

1) There are no copies of any of his newsletters in any form.

2) There are only 2 articles in the entire site that were published before 1997, which pretty much covers the entire span of time that he took a hiatus from congress. Apparently he stopped having an opinion when he left office, but could still publish an opinion newsletter

3) The 2 articles that DID get published pre-1997 were both from the early 1980's. They were an essay supporting the Gold Standard (benign enough although debatable), and an essay comparing pro-choice libertarians to Nazis (not-so-benign).

[huffnpuffn]

“The problem that we have with dealing with this subject is we see people as groups, as they belong to certain groups and that they derive their rights as belonging to groups. We don’t get our rights because we’re gays or women or minorities. We get our rights from our creator as individuals. So every individual should be treated the same way.”

-Ron Paul as interviewed James Kirchick who also wrote the hit piece in question

"This was a far more enlightened view towards gays than anything the other Republican candidates have expressed, and Paul’s emphasis on individualism is something that gay rights groups -- with their bias towards collectivism -- would do well to adopt."

-James Kirchick's conclusion in the same article

http://www.affbrainwash.com/archives/022336.php

I guess it's all well and good back in July 2007 to say nice things about Ron Paul even though you are a Giuliani supporter. But come election time when your man is tanking and Ron Paul is picking up steam, better bring out the hatchets.

Kirchick is one cynical, calculating mofo. No wonder he calls DC home.

[Gumby123]

Ron Paul is just plain batshit crazy.

[Misanthrope0]

http://prisonplanet.com/articles/january2008/090108_b_Ingraham.htm

[Nommo]

Here's a hint for all of you. Hillary is a racist, her husband is a racist. Mitt Romney and Huck are racists as well. You think not, your are a liar or a fool. If Ron Paul wrote and believes these things, that does not make him very much different than the average bear except for an exceptional and refreshing honesty.

The very existence of such group as he is supposed to have communication with seems to have escaped all posting here as a very much larger issue. After 2008, Ron Paul may very much go away and settle into private life or back to medicine. We will still have all those wonderful citizen's councils. We still have a well funded and organized white supremacist movement bent on extreme hate and violence.

And then there is the average bear. Y'all got us coming and going. So now---for the white guys who want to tell Black people that they should fight racism, don't worry yourselves about that. Just about any Black person can tell you, whatever their stripe, that it is an everyday battle on matters large and small. And we don't need any help identifying racists, either. Inherent in the act of staying sane is the immediate recognition and response to such.
And those responses come similarly to personalities--from the bemused, to the amused and to the despair and anger. Its all over the place and even at times, entertaining. ]

Keep up the good work.

[Listen2me]

I have been a defender and advocate for Dr. Paul, but I'm never afraid to examine evidence with an open mind. Therefore, I had to take up Misanthrope2's suggestion to look at the actual newsletters.

It was appalling. Internal evidence suggests that some of the racist diatribes were written by Dr. Paul. They were written in the first person: speaking of "my coin expert," and "when I ran for President in 1988," and so forth.

The article from the "Survival" newsletter gushed over the Petoskey militia and other armed lunatics. . . .although if you study the Weaver case in Idaho and the Waco massacre, you may conclude as I did that the government was way too eager to resolve those situations with bloodshed (as in similar 1970's confrontations with radical groups.)

These newsletters are truly awful, and can only discredit the fine positions Dr. Paul has taken on individual liberty, habeas corpus, anti-National ID, anti-patriot act, anti-wiretapping, anti-war and anti-fascist.

There is no way around the conclusion that either Ron Paul holds, or has held, the kind of racially insulting attitudes expressed in his newsletters---OR ELSE he was inexcusably indifferent or careless in allowing such tripe to be published over his name for many years. Either way, Dr. Paul looks really, really bad.

This is like a Jekyll-and-Hyde case. Very baffling. And what a waste of a phenomenal internet mobilization of freedom-loving Americans.

Proto-fascist Republicans will be celebrating Dr. Paul's downfall.

Maybe the thing to do is accept Dr. Paul's apology and disavowal of this miserable business, and encourage him to keep on with his 2008 campaign.

I could believe that he is a liar concealing his true beliefs and intentions, or I could also believe that he might be a man who realizes his past errors and would atone for them if that were possible. For now, I reserve the right to make that second choice.

I am also bothered by his apparent swallowing of neo-confederate mythology---but that is a secondary sin, compared to the newsletters.