--- In [email protected], "Craig Thomas" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I remember the first time I heard of Lew Rockwell. It was in the
> early 90's on a small local talk radio station in the small city I
> live in in Southern California. He appeared several times as a guest
> and I agreed with many things he said about runaway govenment power,
> but his language was very sharp and sarcastic. I thought he was
> articulate, but he came across as mean spirited, which I suppose can
> be effective in certain situations. I was nonetheless happy to hear
> someone with his viewpoints on the air, and I called the station and
> commended them for having him on.
>
> Soon after I heard Rockwell on an LA radio talk show, I think it was
> Tom Leykis, talking about "animal rights" I believe. He was much like
> his appearances on the local station, very harsh and confrontational.
> Sometimes this is necessary to get your point across.
>
> The next time I encountered the name Lew Rockwell was an op-ed in the
> LA Times. It was some very terse comments on the Rodney King incident
> and the LA riots. From one comment he made I was simply flabbergasted.
> There was a letter to the editor some after the article came out from
> a Libertarian activist from LA denouncing the comments by Rockwell.
>
> The point of all this is, Lew Rockwell has a history of this type of
> rhetoric. It's his unmistakable style. Ron Paul does not. Lew
> Rockwell has worked for Ron Paul over the years and it would make
> perfect sense that Rockwell was the person who wrote the objectional
> material in the Ron Paul Newsletter. If this in fact is the case, I
> would whole-heartedly agree that Rockwell should come forward and
> admit or deny that he wrote these statements.
>
>
Lew Rockwell already denied it.
>From the Economist.com (in part):
"While his statements sometimes leave the impression that Mr Paul
simply licensed his name to people with whom he had little contact,
there is much evidence to the contrary. The newsletters that appeared
under his name were published by M&M Graphics and Advertising, a
company run by Mr Paul's longtime congressional campaign manager Mark
Elam—which Mr Elam himself confirms. And according to numerous
veterans of the libertarian movement, it was an open secret during the
late-80s and early-90s who was ghostwriting the portions of Mr Paul's
newsletters not penned by the congressman himself: Lew Rockwell,
founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and members of his staff,
among them Jeffrey Tucker, now editorial vice president of the Institute.
Mr Rockwell denied authorship to Jamie Kirchick, the reporter whose
New Republic article published earlier this week reignited controversy
over the newsletters. But both Mr Rockwell (who attacked the New
Republic article on his site) and Mr Tucker refused to discuss the
matter with Democracy in America. ("Look at Mises.org," Mr Tucker told
me, "I'm willing to take any responsibility for anything up there,
OK?") According to Wirkman Virkkala, formerly the managing editor of
the libertarian monthly Liberty, the racist and survivalist elements
that appeared in the newsletter were part of a deliberate
"paleolibertarian" strategy, "a last gasp effort to try class hatred
after the miserable showing of Ron Paul's 1988 presidential effort."
It is impossible now to prove individual authorship of any particular
item in the newsletter, but it is equally impossible to believe that
Mr Rockwell did not know of and approve what was going into the
newsletter."
