Reason's Anemic Response To The Ron Paul Newsletters

This post is representative. It's all spin, apologetics, feigned credulity, tu quoque, and ipse dixit.

I think Paul's prone to nutty conspiracy theories, but I don't think he's a racist, at least not today. Perhaps there was a time when he held views that I and many people reading this site would find repugnant. But I certainly don't think that's the case now.

Oh?

As I wrote previously, there's a big difference between a real libertarian who joins the movement due to a belief in the power of freedom and someone using libertarianism as a flag of convenience to add respectability to retrograde and repugnant views. Ron Paul's positions don't indicate that he's terribly interested in freedom so much as he's interested in keeping the Jews from stealing his gold.

His goldbuggery? He's trying to keep "international bankers" (wink, wink) from "manipulating" currencies to enrich themselves at the expense of normal, patriotic people. Normal, patriotic people who spin no dreidls and do not control the media. Savvy?

His foreign policy? He just wants to keep "the Jewish lobby" -- "the most powerful lobby in America," he says -- from getting the US to fight more wars on behalf of Israel.

Oh, and he wants to stop fighting in the Middle East and stop supporting foreign countries. Let me just postulate, based on Ron Paul's long record on such issues, that he's chiefly interested in ceasing animosity with Israel's enemies and most passionate about ending support of Israel. The other countries are just added for consistency. We can see what's animating this little anti-semitic cunt.

He's just "prone to nutty conspiracy theories," eh? Let me paraphrase Umberto Eco by saying There is no conspiracy theory on the planet that does not, at some point, involve the Jews.

This is rather obvious. I can count on one hand the conspiracy theories I've heard that didn't involve Jews, "international bankers," Mossad, or Golda Fucking Meir at the center of the web of manipulation.

Who the fuck did Reason think Ron Paul had in mind for the ultimate malefactors of the Vast International Banker Conspiracy? The Knights Fucking Templar?

At the heart of every conspiracy theory is irrational hatred and scapegoating, boys. Not "Love," not even the backwards kind of love in R3VO_|ution.

Was it really up to me to alert the brain trust at Reason of this fact? You guys didn't sort of figure that out on your own?

No wonder you were so blindsided. Committed conspiracy-nut suspects International Jewry might be up to some malfeasance. Surely no one could have seen that surprise twist coming. It's like the end of The Usual Suspects, except Keyser Sose turns out to be Rabbi Moishe Lefkowitz.

Reason can take its pose of being shocked, shocked to find anti-semitism in the heart of an anti-Israel, anti-AIPAC, anti-"international banker" conspiracy nutter and stick it straight up its wannabe-hipster ass.

Most at Reason -- most; one can detect a bit of disgust in Dave Wiegel's rather brief post -- assert to us that they believe Ron Paul didn't write the newsletters. None of them. Or at least not the objectionable parts.

O RLY?

reason: What do you think of Martin Luther King?

Paul: Martin Luther King is one of my heroes because he believed in nonviolence and that's a libertarian principle. Rosa Parks is the same way. Gandhi, I admire. Because they're willing to take on the government, they were willing to take on bad laws. So I believe in civil disobedience if you understand the consequences. Martin Luther King was a great person because he did that and he changed America for the better because of that.

reason: You didn't write the derogatory things about him in the letter?

Paul: No.

At the very end of that very same newsletter:

Yes, Paul's wife's name is indeed Carol and he does have grandchildren.

The idea that Ron Paul published this screedy, LaRouchian crap for twenty years and never once inquired into precisely what contents may lie therein is so transparently absurd I'm literally angry to read the supposed smarty-pants Poindexters at Reason attempting to spin this as plausible.

This was Ron Paul's periodic manifesto to his like-minded political brethren.

This was a newsletter that cost money to produce and disseminate, particularly if we are to believe that Lew Rockwell spent so much of his free time writing anti-semitic and racist zingers under the pen name "Ron Paul."

This most likely was the source of some amount of income for Ron Paul, as he claims he had some 100,000 subscribers at one point.

This was Ron Paul's attempt to keep in the mind of possible future voters, and donors (Ron Paul loves him some donors!), should he return to Congress (as he ultimately did).

And you are trying to sell me on the idea that Ron Paul had no idea what published in this piece of shit rag, ever?

He never once read his own newsletter? Never asked Lew Rockwell, his conspiracy-addled, Jew-hating, black-savagery-noting partner in crime (and best bud) what this month's issue might be all about?

Tell me: Did Ron Paul ever issue a missive to his supposed ghostwriter to clean up his act? Can anyone at Reason point to newsletter apologizing for the inflammatory and hateful tone of a previous issue? Is there a date certain at which point this sort of hateful language stops entirely, thus lending at least thin credence to the notion that Ron Paul didn't approve of such sentiments and stopped them the moment he got wind of them?

As no one has yet noted any of the above, I take the answer to be "No."

Here are some more apologetics:

Any time you're a fringe candidate cobbling together support from those who feel disaffected and left behind by the two-party system, you're going to end up bumping elbows with a few weirdos.

True enough, but when you're cobbling such support from Stormfront, Alex Jones' Prison Planet lunatics, Truthers, etc., perhaps you ought to step back and ask if this is the sort of coalition you're comfortable associating yourselves with. I haven't seen such a motley collection of mutants and malcontents since the Cantina sequence in Star Wars.

It wasn't Ron Paul who wrote that stuff. It was Greedo.

Oh, my apologies: Doctor Greedo.

And yeah: What is up with him keeping Don Black's money? Seems to me that, given the racist shit that appeared in his newsletter previously, he's actively courting these people and wishes not to offend them. Gotta dance with the girl that brung ya, after all.

To be fair, several Reason writers express "disappointment" or the like in Paul, and Paul's typical non-response response. And a call for him to answer "questions" about the newsletters.

But most of it is just self-serving nonsense. Reason's folks are likely embarrassed, and I can't blame them for feeling so. They were taken in hook, line and sinker by an oddball hick secessionist and confirmed Jew-hater who brought precious exposure to their quixotic quest to legalize drugs. One can forgive them, perhaps, for the initial attempts to make excuses.

Not just for Ron Paul. But for themselves and their own poor judgment.

But one can forgive them for only so long. This absurd nonsense that Ron Paul didn't approve of his own newsletters, even as he concedes he wrote much of them (just not the embarrassingly racist or anti-semitic parts, mind you!), and thus should be held blameless is embarrassing and simple apologetics for a bitter, twisted old Jew-hatin' reject from the John Birch Society.

You want to keep "the movement" alive? Fine. But reject and renounce Ron Paul himself and stop making absurd claims about his innocence.

Or else continue standing with your venomous, anti-American, conspiracy-mongering Jew-hating twat of "leader." And be counted as one of his disciples, the same sort of disciples who made sure to read The Ron Paul Survival Report back in its dubious heyday, in order to be alerted as to when "the animals" might be moving in on them.

At some point credulity becomes complicity.

PS: Stop telling me that "Doctor Paul" shows his high regard for blacks by seeking to legalize crack.

You know, I've heard some people throw their hands up about the War on Drugs too and say, resignedly, "Oh, what do I care, let them kill themselves if they want."

And when they said "them," they weren't thinking of nice white kids. They weren't thinking of helping blacks. They were thinking of "Let the blacks kill themselves off if they like, what does it have to do with my life?"

I don't mean to say that those who oppose drug laws do so out of antipathy for the most battered victims of drug addiction. But there are a lot of people who do. And based on Ron Paul's, ahem, "ghostwritten" opinions about blacks, I'm thinking he came to his position by a similar route.

Every one of "Doctor Paul's" often-absurd policy positions can be explained by the very same hatreds that the malcontent militiamen and Klansmen feel. And it's no coincidence -- no coincidence I assure you -- that such groups support Paul and also think his policies are pretty cool.

And Tucker Carlson? Your claim that Ron Paul is such a straight-from-the-lip truth-teller that he would simply announce his hatred of Jews and blacks and gays if he harbored such hatred is fucking stupid, you bow-tied buffoon. Even David Duke attempts to spin his racism and anti-semitism not as hatred but simply as "pride in the accomplishments and culture of European-Americans." Even the Ku Klux Klan itself has attempted a similar recasting of its belief.

You stupid twats. You're all so taken with yourselves with being so clever and contrarian and free-thinking you just can't admit you were punked by a half-crazy old bigot of a crank, forever nattering on about Trilateral Commissions and international bankers and Bildersbergers and the CFR and AIPAC and other front-groups for the International Zionist Conspiracy.

Oh, And As For The Convenient Scapegoat of Lew Rockwell... Errr, if Lew Rockwell is such a rotten guy with a head full of bad chemicals, why are he and Ron -- sorry, Doctor -- Paul so tight?

"Oh, I didn't write those nasty passages, of course. It was merely one of my closest and oldest political allies and personal friends. Had nothing at all to do with me, you see."

posted by Ace at 07:02 PM

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