Not in the article, but very much in CNN reports, RP criticized Reagan for
approving the MLK holiday --which he characterized as "Hate Whitey Day"
BR note
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New Republic
Why Don’t Libertarians Care About Ron Paul’s Bigoted Newsletters?
* _
James Kirchick
_ (http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/98811/ron-paul-libertarian-bigotry#)
James Kirchick
Assistant Editor
* December 22, 2011
Nearly four years ago, on the eve of the New Hampshire Republican
presidential primary, The New Republic published _my expose_
(http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/angry-white-man?passthru=NjNkZTVlNTQ4OWUyMzllYWEzOTg3ZWQ2MDI4Yz
AzYTc) of newsletters published by Texas Congressman Ron Paul. The
contents of these newsletters can best be described as appalling. Blacks were
referred to as “animals.” Gays were told to go “back” into the “closet.”
The “X-Rated Martin Luther King” was a bisexual pedophile who “seduced
underage girls and boys.” Three months before the Oklahoma City bombing, Paul
praised right-wing, anti-government militia movements as “one of the most
encouraging developments in America.” The voluminous record of bigotry and
conspiracy theories speaks for itself.
And yet, four years on, Ron Paul’s star is undimmed. Not only do the latest
polls place him as the frontrunner in the Iowa Caucuses, but he still
enjoys the support of a certain coterie of professional political commentators
who, like Paul himself, identify as libertarians. Most prominent among them
is Daily Beast blogger Andrew Sullivan, who gave Paul his _endorsement_
(http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/12/ron-paul-for-the-gop-nominatio
n.html) in the GOP primary last week, as he did in 2008. But he is not
alone: Tim Carney of The Washington Examiner recently _bemoaned_
(http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/gop-will-take-gloves-if-ron-paul-wins
-iowa/264111) the fact that “the principled, antiwar,
Constitution-obeying, Fed-hating, libertarian Republican from Texas stands
firmly outside the
bounds of permissible dissent as drawn by either the Republican
establishment or the mainstream media,” while Conor Friedersdorf of The
Atlantic
_argues_
(http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/12/pretending-that-ron-
paul-doesnt-matter-wont-make-him-go-away/250035/) that Paul’s ideas cannot
be ignored, and that, for Tea Party Republicans, “A vote against Paul
requires either cognitive dissonance—never in short supply in politics—or a
fundamental rethinking of the whole theory of politics that so recently drove
the Tea Party movement.”
To be sure, these figures, like the broader group of Paul enthusiasts, don’
t base their support on the Congressman’s years-long record of supporting
racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and far-right militias. Quite the
opposite: Like the candidate himself, they manage to mostly avoid making any
mention of his unsavory record at all. It’s an impressive feat of repression,
one that says volumes about the type of enthusiasm Paul inspires.
Ultimately, Paul’s following is closely linked with the peculiar
attractions of the libertarian creed that he promotes. Libertarianism is an
ideology
rather than a philosophy of government—its main selling point is not its
pragmatic usefulness, but its inviolable consistency. In that way, Paul’s
indulgence of bigotry—he says he did not write the newsletters but rather
allowed others to do so in his name—isn’t an incidental departure from his
libertarianism, but a tidy expression of its priorities: First principles of
market economics gain credence over all considerations of social empathy and
historical acuity. His fans are guilty of donning the same ideological
blinders, giving their support to a political candidate on account of the
theories he declaims, rather than the judgment he shows in applying those
theories, or the character he has evinced in living them. Voters for Ron Paul
are privileging logical consistency at the expense of moral fitness.
But it’s not simply that Paul’s supporters are ignoring the manifest
evidence of his moral failings. More fundamentally, their very awareness of
such
failings is crowded out by the atmosphere of outright fervor that pervades
Paul’s candidacy. This is not the fervor of a healthy body politic—this
is a less savory type of political devotion, one that escapes the bounds of
sober reasoning. Indeed, Paul’s absolutist notion of libertarian rigor has
always been coupled with an attraction to fantasies of political
apocalypse.
A constant theme in Paul’s rhetoric, dating back to his first years as a
congressman in the late 1970s, is that the United States is on the edge of a
precipice. The centerpiece of this argument is that the abandonment of the
gold standard has put the United States on the path to financial collapse.
Over the years, Paul has added other potential catastrophes to his
repertoire of dark premonitions. In the early 1990s, it was racial apocalypse,
with
Paul dispensing “survivalist” tips to the readers of his newsletter like
the admonition to stock up on guns and construct fall-out shelters. More
recently, he has argued that America’s foreign policy was a “major
contributing factor” to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, an argument that has
earned
him admiration from some liberals. The 2008 financial crisis, the Obama
administration’s continuation of many Bush anti-terror policies (and the
launching of the Libya War), and the formation of the Tea Party have all
boosted
Paul’s image as a prescient sage.
And so it’s not hard to see why Paul’s more ardent supporters stand by
him: They too find it seductive to believe that the United States is on the
verge of utter collapse. The benefit of indulging in such visions is that it
sets the stage for the arrival of a savior: This is the role that Paul
himself plays, of course. Fiercely independent, uncorrupted by the “
establishment,” speaker of unpopular truths, only Paul is capable of saving
the
country. What are a handful of uncouth newsletters really worth when the
stakes
are so high?
What’s important to realize is that this sort of political myopia is
endemic to libertarianism. The movement’s obsession with consistency is
actually
a mark of paranoia. If you’re already persuaded by Paul’s suggestions that
fiat money is what ails our economy, that our country’s foreign policy is
rotten to its very core, it’s tempting to take the next step and interpret
his failure to be nominated as the result of political persecution.
Sullivan, thus, complains of a deliberate media blackout against the Texas
Congressman, blaming “liberals who cannot take domestic libertarianism
seriously
and from neocons desperate to keep the Military Industrial Complex humming
at Cold War velocity.” There is a bitter irony of course in the fact that a
movement so devoted to individual responsibility is so apt to be on the
search for others to blame. Paul of course is the prime example: Here is an
absolutist libertarian who advocates the ideals of individual rights and
responsibility, yet cannot own up to the words that were published under his
name, instead blaming it on a variety of as yet unnamed aides.
Some Paul supporters acknowledge the newsletters but dismiss them as “old
news,” arguing that there is no trace of the racist and conspiratorial ideas
he promoted for decades in his speeches today on the campaign trail. But
while it’s true that Paul has not said anything explicitly racist in public,
the same cannot be said for his promotion of conspiracy theories. He
appears regularly on the radio program of Alex Jones, perhaps the most popular
conspiracy theorist in America (_profiled_
(http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/truther-consequences) by TNR in 2009),
where he often indulges the host
’s delusional ravings about the coming “New World Order.” He continues to
associate with the John Birch Society, the extreme-right wing organization
that William F. Buckley denounced in the early 1960’s after it alleged that
none other than President Dwight D. Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious
agent of the Communist conspiracy.” Asked about the group in 2007, Paul
_told_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/22/magazine/22Paul-t.html?scp=1&sq=Oh,%20my%20goodness,%20the%20John%20Birch%20Society!%20Is%20that%20bad?&st=cse)
the New York Times, “Oh, my goodness, the John Birch Society! Is that bad?
I have a lot of friends in the John Birch Society.” Indeed, Paul
_delivered_
(http://www.jbs.org/birchtube/viewvideo/1007/constitution/ron-paul-at-the-50th-anniversary-of-jbs)
the keynote address at the organization’s 50th
anniversary dinner in September. In May, Paul _said_
(http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/05/12/ron-paul-ordered-bin-laden-raid/)
President Obama’s
order to execute Osama bin Laden “was absolutely not necessary.” This
statement earned a rebuke from Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, a
movement one would presume would be quite favorable to Paul. “If there is any
doubt that Ron Paul should not even get near the Oval Office, even on a
tour of the White House,” Phillips said, “he has just revealed it.”
If Paul is responsible for conjuring the apocalyptic atmosphere of a
prophet, it’s his supporters who have to answer for submitting to it. Surely,
those who agree with Paul would be able to find a better vessel for their
ideas than a man who once entertained the notion that AIDS was invented in a
government laboratory or who, just last January, alleged that there had been
a “CIA coup” against the American government and that the Agency is “in
drug businesses.” Why, for instance, do these self-styled libertarians not
throw their support to former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, who, unlike
Paul, can boast executive experience and doesn’t have the racist and
conspiratorial baggage? At this late stage, that Ron Paul’s supporters haven’t
found an alternative candidate says more about them, and the intellectual
milieu they inhabit, than it does about the erstwhile publisher of racist
newsletters.
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
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Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
