Things got worse for GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul when his GOP presidential rival Newt Gingrich called Paul on the carpet for purported racially inflammatory utterances he made in the 1990s in his officially approved newsletters, "Ron Paul's Political Report" and "Ron Paul's Freedom Report," which brought in a considerable haul of cash. Paul's purported half-baked racial scribbles are by now well known. He bashed blacks as chronic welfare grifters, thugs, lousy parents, and said they are inherently racist toward whites. Paul issued a terse denial that he authored or even read any of the racial slanders at the time but there is no evidence that he wrote a correction, or issued a clarification.
Paul was back at it again in 2008. On his campaign website ronpaul2008.com, Paul spotlighted race as "Issue: Racism." "Government as an institution is particularly ill-suited to combat bigotry." In short, the 1954 landmark Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of education school desegregation decision, the 1964 and 1968 Civil Rights Acts, the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and legions of court decisions and state laws that bar discrimination are worthless. Worse, said Paul, they actually promoted bigotry by dividing Americans into race and class. None of this would have much mattered to Gingrich or much of the media if Paul hadn't become a front runner in the Iowa Caucus.
His kind of sort of, let's drop the subject retort to the press challenge to forcefully repudiate the past writings was the standard Paul dodge. The jury then and now is still out on whether those views truly represent his feelings or not. He loudly protests that he's not a racist now because he has to if he is to have any credibility as a serious presidential contender. But protests and dodges, don't change the reasons for Paul's seemingly out of the pale attacks. They likely did accurately reflect Paul's thoughts about racial matters, if not in the crude wording, as he protests wasn't his wording, but in political sentiment. That's the operative word, "sentiment" because this sentiment can easily morph into lethal and incendiary public policy advocacy.
Paul's boast that he would not have voted for the landmark 1964 civil rights bill that's been the law of the land for nearly six decades is a textbook case in point.
Paul's rap against the bill is just as absurd and tortured as the rap that Southern Democrats and Northern GOP conservatives who bottled the bill up for more than a year in Congress used to pretty up their opposition to it. It violated property rights. Paul, nearly six decades after their efforts failed in a interview reiterated, "...I'm for property rights and for state's rights, and therefore I'm a racist, that's just outlandish."
The equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment wiped away the bogus claim that property rights trumps racial discrimination a century before Paul and Jim Crow maintenance proponents used this ploy to torpedo the civil rights bill. But his anti-civil rights position linked directly to the old property rights canard fits neatly into the stock libertarian argument that the best thing that government can do is stay out of the affairs of private citizens and private business. That the root of America's woes -- bloated spending, soaring deficits, congressional gridlock, crippling energy dependence, massive tax disparities, the drug plague, and even America's wars are the result of top heavy government interference and intrusion in the lives of Americans. Paul also knows that spicing up the horribly distorted Jeffersonian principle of limited government with race has broad implications for scrapping regulations on environmental and civil liberties, and consumer protections, gutting regulations to prevent corporate abuses, and of course, slashing funding or eliminating government health services, education, welfare, and labor rules and laws. He has drilled home in his talks, lectures, and innumerable GOP presidential debates. Paul's seeming anti-establishment, anti-party, maverick position plays well to the legions of frustrated, disgusted, even enraged GOP rank and filers and purported libertarians that are desperate to have an alternative to the GOP establishment anointed presidential contenders.
Paul can be magnanimous and apologize for the racist rants while deftly deflecting blame to someone else and then quickly lecturing the press to get over it and talk about the "substantive" issues. But the dredge up of the newsletters gave him what he wanted. He is a near household name and a viable force in the GOP. A slash and burn assault on government, even when its race tinged, doesn't hurt Paul one bit. It gets media and public attention, draws denunciations from his defenders as hitting below the belt, and quiet cheers from the multitudes that happen to agree with Paul, his racial suspect views notwithstanding. In other words, Paul flunks the R (Racism) test for good reason.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
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So, everyone sometimes gives a little to get a lot.
Except the Ron Paul crowd who, like infants, have a voracious appetite for the good stuff on one end and no sense of responsibility on the other.
As for the precious property rights, he doesn't believe that government should force any company to hire a certain way. That is where it stems from. You limit a companies, or individuals freedom from hiring whom they want. And, it makes sense. No one should have to fill a quota of a certain kind of person. As Martin Luther King Jr., said no one should be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their heart. When a law influencing a persons right to hire whomever they choose limits that. It is, in effect discriminating against the very thing that MLK Jr. spoke of.
On the other hand, maybe he's just carrying dirty water for you-know-who... ??
I have serious concerns about Ron Paul's libertarian views -- especially when it comes to civil rights.
For example, I disagree -- to my core! -- with his position on the Brown decision.
Not a single GOP candidate (for decades, in the so called "Party of Lincoln") adequately appreciates how a strong central government played an instrumental role in helping us (Americans) to begin to live up to our creed (as expressed by Jefferson, and re-expressed by Martin Luther King).
However, this shortcoming is not unique to Ron Paul.
Furthermore, in light of President Obama's disappointing willingness to codify an executive authority which would allow him to indefinitely detain US citizens (completely contrary to his own fierce urgency narrative!), it becomes particularly difficult to dismiss Ron Paul based upon talking-point-echoes and establishment innuendo.
We simply do not have the luxury, in this election, to dismiss even a single non-ideal, untrustworthy candidate. Fortunately, we have no such shortage in media personalities.
His contention with the bill had to do with the government forcing people to hire people of certain ethnicity. Which was impinging on business owners freedoms to choose whom they wanted.
Ron Paul is all about a person's individual liberty, and getting government interference out of our lives. I agree with you whole heartedly as well about not dismissing Ron Paul. While these newsletters are disappointing, we cannot dismiss all of his views out right, because of a mistake. He has even admitted, that it was negligent on his part to letting these inflammatory comments through.
And, it must be said that the newsletters that are in question make up less than 1% of the entirety of the newsletters that he sent out. The Newsletters themselves were mostly focused on economics, and the gold standard.
Paul is a republican from south east Texas.
That pretty much seals it for me.
"If you live in a major city, you've probably already heard about the
newest threat to your life and limb, and your family: carjacking. It is
the hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting
whites like pianos. The youth simply walk up to a car they like, pull a
gun, tell the family to get out, steal their jewelry and wallets, and
take the car to wreck. Such actions have ballooned in the recent months.
In the old days, average people could avoid such youth by staying out
of bad neighborhoods. Empowered by media, police, and political
complicity, however, the youth now roam everywhere looking for cars to
steal and people to rob. What can you do? More and more Americans are
carrying a gun in the car. An ex-cop I know advises that if you have to
use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing
of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course,
be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds,
for example)."
He is behaving as a typical, pandering politician.
His followers seem to be going to bat for him, which is pretty disturbing in itself.
Paul was never a threat for the nomination. The fact that he is high in the polls in Iowa, with a hoard of young college students doing his bidding, is upsetting.
SO true.
And like there was no racial discrimination before the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts? Come on.
See, we rascals who were brought up in the "before" know how beautiful it would be -- again. See, we believe in blind social justice, and actually every other kind of justice as well. Blind, as in, turn your back an' it aint hap'nin. Heh heh. Hope y'all had a great Christmas....get everything you wanted?
Your comment shows the level of information you obtained from this article. In your mind- 'they are newly discovered newsletters, Ron Paul knew about them since they were published, and he's 'only now' denying he wrote them.' All of those beliefs are false.
Ron Paul spoke about this issue YEARS ago. It came up last time he ran for president and ten years ago when he ran for congress. Any time the newsletters have come up- it blew over shortly after. The reason being- there is no question he did not write them and was unaware of their content. Ron Paul also has spent decades working for equality. He just isn't a racist.
We need to be spending our energy bringing our troops home, getting rid of the Patriot Act, restoring our liberties, and progressing our nation beyond party politics. Why is it important for Ron to take a lie detector test about something so insignificant when the world is burning?
I know racism is a tough issue, but this is just a manipulation of the facts. Go research the subject.
This is "The Great Disappointment" -- to surrender such a core American value (a civil liberty rooted well before 1215's Magna Carta) without a fight... without communicating (as even Ronald Reagan would have!) to our children, and to our children's children, what it was we found more precious than our fundamental, founding freedoms...
In exchange, you gained security from a handful of religious zealots (half-a-world, and several centuries away)... who were armed with boxcutters.
If you can't find something good to say, consider this:
Ron Paul understands Patrick Henry ("give me liberty, or give me death").
He hasn't yet bargained your freedom for a false security.
Give Ron Paul the GOP Nomination, and help drag President Obama from the lesser angels.