Tag: Paul

The Free-Fall Of Ron Paul | Tea-Bagging Man

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Ron Paul, Ron Paul Conspiracy Nut, Ron Paul Fascist Theocrat, Ron Paul is a Kook, Ron Paul Tea-Bagging Man, Ron Paul Theocratic Fascist, Ron Paul Theocratic Nut, Tea Baggers, Tea Party, Tea Party Racism, Tea Party Racists

The Free-Fall Of Ron Paul

Thanks to:- lynnrockets

How fortunate that wacky Republican Ron Paul announced his candidacy for the 2012 presidency on a Friday the 13th. He now has a ready-made excuse for why his campaign was such an abysmal failure. Despite what the pundits constantly refer to as Paul’s fervently devoted group of grassroots supporters and Tea Party nut-jobs, nobody seems to ever vote for this guy. In Iowa he garnered a respectable 21% of the vote but finished only third. In the New Hampshire primary election, his percentage of the vote plateaued at 22% and in South Carolina his support dropped to 13%. It remains to be seen how low his support will drop today in the Florida primary election.

We knew that, as always, Ron Paul’s candidacy would go nowhere.  He is after all, a radical crazy person. If you need evidence of Ron Paul’s zaniness, consider these tidbits:

–  He is known as “Dr. No” because of his insistence that he will “never vote for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution;

– He advocates withdrawal from the United Nations, and from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO);

– He opposes birthright citizenship;

– He advocates for the elimination of the Federal Reserve;

– He would deny women their right of freedom of choice in birth;

– He believes that the civil Rights act of 1964 is unconstitutional; and

– He would rather have sick people die from their illnesses than receive government provided health care.

Now let’s take a look at some of Ron Paul’s quotes as published in his newsletters:

– “Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for that pro-communist philanderer Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.”;

– “even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.”;

– “opinion polls consistently show only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions”;

– “if you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.”; and

– “hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos.” (referring to the crime of carjacking).

This is scary stuff. Is it any wonder that this man is never taken very seriously by the majority of Americans?

Nevertheless, Ron Paul does have the capacity to do some good for his country. He demonstrated that this last autumn when he decided not to seek re-election to his Texas House of Representatives seat. Consequently, there is certain to be one less radical insane person in the next Congress. Also, there is always the possibility that as soon as Paul realizes that he has no chance of capturing the Republican nomination, he may decide to run as either an Independent or a third party candidate. He would still have absolutely no chance of being elected, but he would steal a certain percentage of votes form the Republican nominee (Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich) thereby helping Barack Obama to win the general election.

Do the right thing Mr. Paul.

Please remember to click on the song link below to familiarize yourselves with the tune and to have more fun singing along with today’s song parody.

“Piano Man” song link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBC6IVP-C84

TEA BAGGING MEN (RON PAUL VERSION)

(sung to the Billy Joel song “Piano Man”)

It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday Rand Paul comes marching in A proud member of the Tea Party Like so many white racist men

He says, “Boy you know that I’m from Kentucky And I think that Obama blows It was sad and back-street how he chastised BP Just because their damn oil rigs explode”

La la la, di da da La la, di di da da dum

Sing us a song you Tea-Bagging men Sing us a song tonight Give us some patriotic imagery Tri-corn hats and a wig that’s too tight

Now Sarah Palin is no friend of mine Thank God she’s not the VP Yes she looked like a dope every time she misspoke As McCain claimed she was “mavericky”

She says, “Why does the press keep on grilling me?” As her smile runs away from her face “Can’t they see I’m a tabloid-bred superstar, Though I quit my job in disgrace?”

Oh, la la la, di da da La la, di da da da dum

Ron Paul is a right-wing apologist He is anti-gay and pro-life Grasp of history’s hazy and he’s moon-bat crazy Ron Paul should be confined for life

And Scott Walker’s union-busting politics Sparked a recall to get him de-throned While Mike Huckabee thinks his “down-hominess” Will coax liberals to leave him alone

Sing us a song you Tea-Bagging men Sing us a song tonight Give us some patriotic imagery Tri-corn hats and a wig that’s too tight

Had a pretty big crowd just last Saturday With the Tea Baggers dressed in high style They were at a rally with signs misspelled badly To express ignorance all the while

And the town common, it looks like a carnival With the Tea Baggers from far and near They unload from their cars lots of feathers and tar As they fan flames of hatred and fear!

Oh, la la la, di da da La la, di da da da dum

Sing us your song you Tea Bagging men Sing us your song tonight Cuz we’re all in the mood for a melody Sung by folks that are old, dumb and white

(fade into extinction)

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Ron Paul Signed Off On Racist Newsletters | Ron Paul’s Newsletters Best Loved by Neo-Nazis and Jew-Hating Extremists

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Hateful Bigots, Hatemongers, Holocaust Deniers, Racist Tea Party, Racists, Religious Reich, Religious Right, Right Wing Conspiracies, Right Wing Crackpots, Right Wing Extremism, Right Wing Fascists, Right Wing Nuts, Right Wing Terrorists, Ron Paul

Ron Paul Signed Off Racist Newsletters | Ron Paul’s Newsletters Best Loved by Neo-Nazis and Jew-Hating Extremists
WaPo: Ron Paul Signed Off On Racist 1990s Newsletters
Ron Paul’s newsletter problem gets worse, but Paulians won’t care
The Washington Post has new information today on Ron Paul’s racist, antisemitic newsletters; a former secretary in the company that produced the newsletters says Ron Paul was fully aware of their content: Ron Paul signed off on racist 1990s newsletters, associates say.

Ron Paul, well known as a physician, congressman and libertarian , has also been a businessman who pursued a marketing strategy that included publishing provocative, racially charged newsletters to make money and spread his ideas, according to three people with direct knowledge of Paul’s businesses.

The Republican presidential candidate has denied writing inflammatory passages in the pamphlets from the 1990s and said recently that he did not read them at the time or for years afterward. Numerous colleagues said he does not hold racist views.

But people close to Paul’s operations said he was deeply involved in the company that produced the newsletters, Ron Paul & Associates, and closely monitored its operations, signing off on articles and speaking to staff members virtually every day.

“It was his newsletter, and it was under his name, so he always got to see the final product. . . . He would proof it,’’ said Renae Hathway, a former secretary in Paul’s company and a supporter of the Texas congressman.

And there’s more; Paul apparently made a deliberate effort to peddle his newsletters to racists and extremists, using the mailing list of a notorious antisemitic newspaper published by Holocaust denier Willis Carto:

Ed Crane, the longtime president of the libertarian Cato Institute, said he met Paul for lunch during this period, and the two men discussed direct-mail solicitations, which Paul was sending out to interest people in his newsletters. They agreed that “people who have extreme views” are more likely than others to respond.

Crane said Paul reported getting his best response when he used a mailing list from the now-defunct newspaper Spotlight, which was widely considered anti-Semitic and racist.

This comes as absolutely no surprise, but I predict it will have no impact on Ron Paul’s popularity. Anyone who still supports this creepy old crypto-racist has either found a way to rationalize this stuff, or has no problems with it.

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Nazis, Racists, Bigots and Theocrats For Ron Paul

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Religious Reich, Ron Paul Fascist Theocrat

Ron Paul has a lot of racist supporters, including white supremacist website Stormfront, conspiracy theorist group the John Birch Society and neo-Confederates who believe that the South was right during the civil war. And the support is mutual. While Paul would like you to believe that his connection to racism ended with his newsletters, he has continued to address this group well into the 21st century. Take a look at Ron Paul’s top 10 most-racist supporters.

10. Willis Carto

Willis Carto is a holocaust denier, Hitler admirer and a white supremacist.  A former campaigner for segregationist candidate George Wallace, Carto founded the National Alliance with William Pierce, the author of the “Turner Diaries,” which is credited for inspiring Timothy McVeigh. Carto founded the Populist Party in 1984 and ran David Duke as a presidential candidate.  Carto also founded the American Free Press, which is labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), where Paul’s column runs. Paul has not sued Carto for running his column or explained how it wound up in a white supremacist publication. The New York Times writes that Paul used the subscription list to a white supremacist publication of Carto’s to solicit donations.

9. Chuck Baldwin

Chuck Baldwin is a neo-Confederate New World Order conspiracy theorist who praises the confederacy and  its leaders, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and calls the Civil War the “War of Northern Aggression.” Baldwin writes a weekly column on the white supremacist site Vdare and is a proud supporter of American militia movements. Baldwin is also an Islamaphobe and homophobe.

Not only did Baldwin endorse Paul for president in 2007, but Paul returned the favor, endorsing Baldwin, who he calls his “friend,” for president in 2008. While Paul was quick to criticize Michele Bachmann for her Islamaphobia, he has said nothing about Baldwin’s, the man he endorsed for president. Here are some choice quotes from Baldwin:

I believe homosexuality is moral perversion and deserves no special consideration under the law. I believe the South was right in the War Between the States, and I am not a racist. I believe there is a conspiracy by elitists within government and big business to steal America’s independence. The Muslim religion has been a bloody, murderous religion since its inception.

8. Don Black

Don Black is a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, a current member of the American Nazi Party, and the owner and operator of the white supremacist site Stormfront. Black regularly organizes “money bombs” for Ron and Rand Paul and has even taken a picture with Ron Paul, who refused to return donations from Black and Stormfront even with the political tradition of not accepting donations from people who seem unfit. Black, who was sentenced to three years in jail for trying to overthrow the Caribbean country of Dominica in 1981, supports Paul through his Twitter account and on message boards for Stormfront.

Black told the New York Times that it was Paul’s newsletters that inspired him to be a supporter:

That was a big part of his constituency, the paleoconservatives who think there are race problems in this country.

7. Lew Rockwell

Lew Rockwell is a close friend and adviser of Paul’s who served as his congressional chief of staff between 1978 and 1982, worked as a paid consultant for Paul for more than 20 years, and was an editor and alleged ghost writer for his racist newsletters. Rockwell formed the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, which Paul still has a close working relationship with.

The Ludwig Von Mises Institute is listed by the SPLC as a neo-Confederate organization. They also add that Rockwell said that the Civil War “transformed the American regime from a federalist system based on freedom to a centralized state that circumscribed liberty in the name of public order” and that the Civil Rights Movement was the  “involuntary servitude” of (presumably white) business owners. Rockwell was listed as one of the racist League of the South’s founding members but denies membership. Rockwell regularly posts articles on his website, attacking a New World Order conspiracy.

6. David Duke

David Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and candidate for Governor of Louisiana. Duke is also a New World Order conspiracy theorist who believes that Jews control the Federal Reserve. On his website, Duke proudly boasts about the endorsements and kind words that Paul gave him in his newsletters and in turn endorses Paul for president:

Duke’s platform called for tax cuts, no quotas, no affirmative action, no welfare, and no busing… To many voters, this seems like just plain good sense. Duke carried baggage from his past, the voters were willing to overlook that. If he had been afforded the forgiveness an ex-communist gets, he might have won. …David Broder, also of the Post and equally liberal, writing on an entirely different subject, had it right: ‘No one wants to talk about race publicly, but if you ask any campaign consultant or pollster privately, the sad reality that a great many working-class and middle class white Americans are far less hostile to the rich and their tax breaks than they are to the poor and minorities with their welfare and affirmative action programs.” Liberals are notoriously blind to the sociological effects of their own programs. David Duke was hurt by his past. How many more Dukes are waiting in the wings without such a taint?

“Duke lost the election,” it said, “but he scared the blazes out of the Establishment.” In 1991, a newsletter asked, “Is David Duke’s new prominence, despite his losing the gubernatorial election, good for anti-big government forces?” The conclusion was that “our priority should be to take the anti-government, anti-tax, anti-crime, anti-welfare loafers, anti-race privilege, anti-foreign meddling message of Duke, and enclose it in a more consistent package of freedom.”

Duke also gave advice to Paul on his website, saying:

What must Paul do to have any real chance of winning or making a bigger impact? I think he should do exactly what I did in Louisiana, and for Ron Paul to follow exactly the same advice Ron Paul gave in his newsletters for others, take up my campaign issues with passion and purpose.

Could it be that Paul is taking Duke’s advice by hiding the racist “baggage from his past” in a more consistent package of “freedom?”

5. Thomas DiLorenzo

Thomas DiLorenzo is another neo-Confederate who believes the South was right in the the civil war and that Abraham Lincoln was a wicked man who destroyed states’ rights. DiLorenzo is listed as an affiliated scholar with the racist League of the South, which promotes segregation and a new southern secession. Paul invited DiLorenzo to testify before congress about the Federal Reserve and is close friends with Paul and works for the Ludwig Von Mises Instiute. Paul cited DiLorezno’s book when telling Tim Russert that the North should not have fought the Civil War.

4. James Von Brunn

James Von Brunn was a white supremacist and anti-Semite who opened fired at the Holocaust museum, killing an African-American security guard. Von Brunn was an avid Paul supporter who posted a message on the Ron Paul Yahoo Group, saying, “HITLER’S WORST MISTAKE: HE DIDN’T GAS THE JEWS.” In 1983, Von Brunn was convicted of kidnapping members of the Federal Reserve Board, a common target of Paul’s, and was sentenced to six years in prison.Von Brunn died while awaiting sentencing for his crime.

3. William Alexander “Bill” White

Bill White is a neo-Nazi who is a former member of of the neo-Nazi group the National Socialist Movement and founder of his own Nazi group, the National Socialist Worker’s Movement. He has called for the lynching of the Jena 6 and the assassination of NAACP leaders. White previously campaigned for Pat Buchanan and the Reform party. This year, White was convicted of threatening a juror but then freed by a judge who called the threats free speech. White is a former Ron Paul supporter who became disenfranchised with Paul, when a Paul spokesman called white supremacy “a small ideology.” Here is what White wrote about Paul on a popular white supremacist website:

I have kept quiet about the Ron Paul campaign for a while, because I didn’t see any need to say anything that would cause any trouble. However, reading the latest release from his campaign spokesman, I am compelled to tell the truth about Ron Paul’s extensive involvement in white nationalism.

Both Congressman Paul and his aides regularly meet with members of the Stormfront set, American Renaissance, the Institute for Historic Review, and others at the Tara Thai restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, usually on Wednesdays. This is part of a dinner that was originally organized by Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis and Joe Sobran, and has since been mostly taken over by the Council of Conservative Citizens.

I have attended these dinners, seen Paul and his aides there, and been invited to his offices in Washington to discuss policy.

For his spokesman to call white racialism a “small ideology” and claim white activists are “wasting their money” trying to influence Paul is ridiculous. Paul is a white nationalist of the Stormfront type who has always kept his racial views and his views about world Judaism quiet because of his political position.

I don’t know that it is necessarily good for Paul to “expose” this. However, he really is someone with extensive ties to white nationalism and for him to deny that in the belief he will be more respectable by denying it is outrageous – and I hate seeing people in the press who denounce racialism merely because they think it is not fashionable

Bill White, Commander American National Socialist Workers Party

Ron Paul has not sued White for libel, which would be in his rights to do if White’s statement’s were lies. White is out of jail and has not lost credibility in the white supremacist world, writing for the neo-Nazi website the American Free Press and the same paper that used to carry Paul’s column.

2. Richard Poplawski

Richard Poplawski is a neo-Nazi from Pittsburgh who regularly posted on the neo-Nazi website Stormfront. Poplawski would post videos of Ron Paul talking about FEMA camp conspiracy theories with Glenn Beck.

Polawski was afraid of a government conspiracy to take away people’s guns and wound up killing three police officers who came to his house after his mother made a domestic dispute call.

1. Jules Manson

Jules Manson was a failed politician from Carson, Calif. Mason was also a big Paul supporter who would write, “I may be an athiest, but Ron Paul is my God,” on Paul’s website. Manson would also write, “Assassinate that n*gger and his family of monkeys,” of President Barack Obama.

This is not guilty by association. Ron Paul has spread white supremacy on conspiracy theories for years in his newsletters. The racism and conspiracy theories have driven some people to violence. Not only have Ron Paul’s racist supporters endorsed him and his views, he has endorsed them through his positions on the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement, without disavowing the support he gets from racists. This is guilt by racism.

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The Crazy, Paranoid World of Ron Paul

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in John Birch Society Crazies, John Birch Society Cult, Ron Paul Conspiracy Nut

Ron Paul’s World

By JAMES KIRCHICK

Earlier this week, Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, said that he would not vote for his fellow presidential candidate Ron Paul should Paul become the Republican nominee. The immediate cause of this dissension – highly unusual in a party primary – was the repugnant newsletters that Paul published from the late 1970s until the mid-1990s, which contain a raft of bigoted statements. Paul has denied authorship and implausibly claims not to know who wrote them.

The story of the newsletters is not new. In 1996, Lefty Morris, Paul’s Democratic Congressional opponent, publicized a handful, and in January 2008, I published a long piece in The New Republic based on my discovery of batches of the newsletters held at the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society. Yet Paul’s popularity in the prelude to the Iowa caucuses, where many polls put him in first place, has renewed attention to their revolting contents.

Recent media reports have tended to focus on the newsletters’ bigotry, which was primarily aimed at blacks, and to a smaller extent at gay people and Jews. The newsletters have complicated the situation for writers who have defended Paul, who point out that there is no trace of such prejudice in his public statements. Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Beast, for instance, writing last week about “rethinking” his original endorsement of Paul, suggests that

A fringe protest candidate need not fully address issues two decades ago that do not in any way reflect the campaign he has run or the issues on which he has made an appeal. But a man who could win the Iowa caucuses and is now third in national polls has to have a plausible answer for this.

In a long, anguished post on the Web site of The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf wrote that “the question is complicated by facts not in evidence and inherently subjective judgments about politics, race and the norms that govern how much a candidate’s bygone associations matter.” As long as one accepts the most charitable explanation for Paul’s opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act (it infringes on private property rights) or re-litigation of the Civil War (the government should have bought and released the slaves instead), perhaps there’s something to that argument. Though Paul’s penchant for promoting the cause of secession puts these stances in a dubious context.

But there is one major aspect of the newsletters, no less disturbing than their racist content, that has always been present in Paul’s rhetoric, in every forum: a penchant for conspiracy theories.

Ron Paul at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington on Feb. 11, 2011.
Jonathan Ernst/ReutersRon Paul at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington on Feb. 11, 2011.

In a 1990 C-Span appearance, taped between Congressional stints, Paul was asked by a caller to comment on the “treasonous, Marxist, alcoholic dictators that pull the strings in our country.” Rather than roll his eyes, Paul responded,“there’s pretty good evidence that those who are involved in the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations usually end up in positions of power. And I believe this is true.”

Paul then went on to stress the negligible differences between various “Rockefeller Trilateralists.” The notion that these three specific groups — the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Rockefeller family — run the world has been at the center of far-right conspiracy theorizing for a long time, promoted especially by the extremist John Birch Society, whose 50th anniversary gala dinner Paul keynoted in 2008.

Paul is proud of his association with the society, telling the Times Magazine in 2007, “I have a lot of friends in the John Birch Society. They’re generally well educated, and they understand the Constitution.” In 1998, Paul appeared in a Birch Society documentary which lauded a bill he had introduced to force American withdrawal from the United Nations. With ominous music in the background and images of United Nations peacekeepers patrolling deserted streets, the film warned that the world body would destroy American private property rights, replace the Constitution with the United Nations Charter and burn churches to the ground.

Paul has frequently attacked the alleged New World Order that “elitist” cabals, like the Trilateral Commission and the Rockefeller family, in conjunction with “globalist” organizations, like the United Nations and the World Bank, wish to foist on Americans. In a 2006 column published on the Web site of Lew Rockwell (his former Congressional chief of staff and the man widely suspected of being the ghostwriter of the newsletters, although he denied it to me), Paul addressed the alleged “Nafta Superhighway.” This is a system of pre-existing and proposed roads from Mexico to Canada that conspiracy theorists claim is part of a nefarious transnational attempt to open America’s borders and merge the United States with its neighbors into a supra-national entity. Paul wrote that the ultimate goal of the project was an “integrated North American Union” — yet one more bugbear of conspiracy theorists — which “would represent another step toward the abolition of national sovereignty altogether.”

In his newsletters, Paul expressed support for far-right militia movements, which at the time saw validation for their extreme, anti-government beliefs in events like the F.B.I. assault on the Branch Davidians and at Ruby Ridge. Paul was eager to fan their paranoia and portray himself as the one man capable of doing anything about it politically. Three months before the Oklahoma City bombing, in an item for the Ron Paul Survival Report titled, “10 Militia Commandments,” he offered advice to militia members, including that they, “Keep the group size down,” “Keep quiet and you’re harder to find,” “Leave no clues,” “Avoid the phone as much as possible,” and “Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

The closest Paul has come in his public statements to endorsing violence against the government was during an interview in 2007, when he was asked about Ed and Elaine Brown, a New Hampshire couple who had refused to pay federal income taxes. In the summer of that year, they instigated a five-month armed standoff with United States marshals, whom Ed Brown accused of being part of a “Zionist, Illuminati, Freemason movement.” Echoing a speech he had just delivered on the House floor, Paul praised the pair as “heroic” “true patriots,” likened them to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., and compared them favorably to “zombies,” that is, those of us who “just go along” and pay income tax.

Finally, there’s Paul’s stance on the most pervasive conspiracy theory in America today, the idea that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were perpetrated not by Al Qaeda, but by the federal government or some other shadowy force. While Paul has never explicitly endorsed this claim, there is a reason so many 9/11 “truthers” flock to his campaign. In a recent YouTube video posted by a leading 9/11 conspiracy group, “We Are Change,” Paul is asked, “Why won’t you come out about the truth about 9/11?”

Rather than answer, say, that the “9/11 Commission already investigated the attacks,” or ask the questioner what particular element of “the truth” remained unknown, Paul knowingly replied, “Because I can’t handle the controversy, I have the I.M.F., the Federal Reserve to deal with, the I.R.S. to deal with, no because I just have more, too many things on my plate. Because I just have too much to do.”

Paul knows where his bread is buttered. He regularly appears on the radio program of Alex Jones, a vocal 9/11 and New World Order conspiracy theorist based in his home state of Texas. On Jones’s show earlier this month, Paul alleged that the Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador on United States soil was a “propaganda stunt” perpetrated by the Obama administration.

In light of the newsletters and his current rhetoric, it is no wonder that Paul has attracted not just prominent racists, but seemingly every conspiracy theorist in America. The title of one of Paul’s newsletter series – the Ron Paul Survival Report – was a conscious appeal to followers of the “survivalist” movement of the 1990s, whose ideology blended white supremacy and anti-government militancy in preparation for what Paul himself termed the “coming race war.”

As Paul told The Times last week, he has no interest in dissuading the various extremists from backing his campaign, which is hardly surprising considering he’s spent three decades cultivating their support. Paul’s shady associations are hardly “bygone” and the “facts” of his dangerous conspiracy-mongering are very much “in evidence.” Paul has not just marinated in a stew of far-right paranoia; he is one of the chefs.

Of course, it is impossible to know what Ron Paul truly thinks about black or gay people or the other groups so viciously disparaged in his newsletters. What we do know with absolute certainty, however, is that Ron Paul is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who regularly imputes the worst possible motives to the very government he wants to lead.

James Kirchick is a contributing editor for The New Republic and a fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

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Treat Ron Paul With Extreme Caution

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in American Godnuts, John Birch Society Crazies, Right Wing Nuts, Ron Paul is a Kook, Ron Paul Theocratic Fascist

Ron Paul is more than just anti-war, he's the anti-Civil-Rights-Act Republican. (photo: Charlie Neibergall/AP)
Ron Paul is more than just anti-war, he’s the anti-Civil-Rights-Act Republican. (photo: Charlie Neibergall/AP)

Treat Ron Paul With Extreme Caution

By Adele M. Stan

‘Cuddly’ Libertarian has some very dark politics. He’s anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-senior-citizen, anti-equality and anti-education, and that’s just the start.

here are few things as maddening in a maddening political season as the warm and fuzzy feelings some progressives evince for Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, the Republican presidential candidate. “The anti-war Republican,” people say, as if that’s good enough.

But Ron Paul is much, much more than that. He’s the anti-Civil-Rights-Act Republican. He’s an anti-reproductive-rights Republican. He’s a gay-demonizing Republican. He’s an anti-public education Republican and an anti-Social Security Republican. He’s the John Birch Society‘s favorite congressman. And he’s a booster of the Constitution Party, which has a Christian Reconstructionist platform. So, if you’re a member of the anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-senior-citizen, anti-equality, anti-education, pro-communist-witch-hunt wing of the progressive movement, I can see how he’d be your guy.

Paul first drew the attention of progressives with his vocal opposition to the invasion of Iraq. Coupled with the Texan’s famous call to end the Federal Reserve, that somehow rendered him, in the eyes of the single-minded, the GOP‘s very own Dennis Kucinich. Throw in Paul’s opposition to the drug war and his belief that marriage rights should be determined by the states, and Paul seemed suitable enough to an emotionally immature segment of the progressive movement, a wing populated by people with privilege adequate enough to insulate them from the nasty bits of the Paul agenda. (Tough on you, blacks! And you, women! And you, queers! And you, old people without money.)

Ron Paul’s anti-war stance, you see, comes not from a cry for peace, but from the deeply held isolationism of the far right. Some may say that, when it comes to ending the slaughter of innocents, the ends justify the means. But, in the case of Ron Paul, the ends involve trading the rights and security of a great many Americans for the promise of non-intervention.

Here’s a list – by no means comprehensive – of Ron Paul positions and associates that should explain, once and for all, why no self-respecting progressive could possibly sidle up to Paul.

1) Ron Paul on Race

Based on his religious adherence to his purportedly libertarian principles, Ron Paul opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Unlike his son, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., Ron Paul has not even tried to walk back from this position. In fact, he wears it proudly. Here’s an excerpt from Ron Paul’s 2004 floor speech about the Civil Rights Act, in which he explains why he voted against a House resolution honoring the 40th anniversary of the law:

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society. Federal bureaucrats and judges cannot read minds to see if actions are motivated by racism. Therefore, the only way the federal government could ensure an employer was not violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to ensure that the racial composition of a business’s workforce matched the racial composition of a bureaucrat or judge’s defined body of potential employees. Thus, bureaucrats began forcing employers to hire by racial quota. Racial quotas have not contributed to racial harmony or advanced the goal of a color-blind society. Instead, these quotas encouraged racial balkanization, and fostered racial strife.

He also said this: “[T]he forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.”

Ron Paul also occasionally appears at events sponsored by the John Birch Society, the segregationist right-wing organization that is closely aligned with the Christian Reconstructionist wing of the religious right.

In 2008, James Kirchick brought to light in the pages of the New Republic a number of newsletters with Paul’s name in the title – Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, Ron Paul Political Report, The Ron Paul Survival Report, and The Ron Paul Investment Letter – that contained baldly racist material, which Paul denied writing.

At NewsOne, Casey Gane-McCalla reported a number of these vitriolic diatribes, including this, on the L.A. riots after the Rodney King verdict: “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began.”

In a related piece, Jon C. Hopwood of Yahoo!’s Associated Content cites a Reuters report on Paul’s response to the TNR story, which came in the form of a written statement:

The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts…. I have publicly taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.

2) Ron Paul on Reproductive Rights

The sponsor of a bill to overturn Roe v. Wade, Ron Paul’s libertarianism does not apply to women, though it does apply to zygotes. His is a no-exceptions anti-abortion position, essentially empowering a rapist to sire a child with a woman of his choosing. Although Paul attributes his stance on abortion to his background as an ob-gyn physician, it should be noted that most ob-gyns are pro-choice, and that Paul’s draconian position tracks exactly with that of his Christian Reconstructionist friends.

While mainstream media, when they’re not busy ignoring his presidential campaign in favor of the badly trailing former Utah Gov. John Huntsman, invariably focus on Paul’s economic libertarianism, Sarah Posner, writing for the Nation, noted that during his appearances leading up to the Iowa straw poll (in which Paul finished second only to Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minn., by a 200-vote margin), “launched into gruesome descriptions of abortion, a departure from his stump speech focused on cutting taxes, shutting down the Federal Reserve, getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan and repealing the Patriot Act.”

3) Ron Paul on LGBT People

While it’s true that Paul advocates leaving it to the states to determine whether same-sex marriages should be legally recognized, it’s not because he’s a friend to LGBT people. Paul’s position on same-sex marriage stems from his beliefs about the limits of the federal government’s role vis-a-vis his novel interpretation of the Constitution.

In fact, a newsletter called the Ron Paul Poltiical Report, unearthed by Kirchick, shows Paul on a rant against a range of foes and conspiracies, including “the federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS,” to which Paul parenthetically adds, “my training as a physician helps me see through this one.” The passage, which also portends a “coming race war in our big cities,” complains of the “perverted” and “pagan” annual romp for the rich and powerful known as Bohemian Grove, and takes aim at the “demonic” Skull and Bones Society at Yale, not to mention the “Israeli lobby,” begins with the paranoid claim, “I’ve been told not to talk, but these stooges don’t scare me.”

While Paul denied, in 2001, writing most of the scurrilous material that ran, without attribution, in newsletters that bore his name in the title, this passage, according to Jon Hopwood, bears Paul’s byline.

4) Ron Paul Calls Social Security Unconstitutional, Compares It to Slavery

Earlier this year, in an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” Paul declared both Social Security and Medicare to be unconstitutional, essentially saying they should be abolished for the great evil that they are – just like slavery. Here’s the transcript, via ThinkProgress:

[“FOX NEWS SUNDAY” HOST CHRIS] WALLACE: You talk a lot about the Constitution. You say Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid are all unconstitutional.

PAUL: Technically, they are…. There’s no authority [in the Constitution]. Article I, Section 8 doesn’t say I can set up an insurance program for people. What part of the Constitution are you getting it from? The liberals are the ones who use this General Welfare Clause…. That is such an extreme liberal viewpoint that has been mistaught in our schools for so long and that’s what we have to reverse – that very notion that you’re presenting.

WALLACE: Congressman, it’s not just a liberal view. It was the decision of the Supreme Court in 1937 when they said that Social Security was constitutional under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.

PAUL: And the Constitution and the courts said slavery was legal, too, and we had to reverse that.

5) Ron Paul, Christian Reconstructionists and the John Birch Society

The year 2008 was a telling one in the annals of Ron Paul’s ideology. For starters, it was the year in which he delivered the keynote address at the 50th anniversary gala of the John Birch Society, the famous anti-communist, anti-civil-rights organization hatched in the 1950s by North Carolina candy magnate Robert Welch, with the help of Fred Koch, founder of what is now Koch Industries, and a handful of well-heeled friends. The JBS is also remembered for its role in helping to launch the 1964 presidential candidacy of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., and for later backing the segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace in his 1968 third-party presidential bid.

The semi-secular ideology of the John Birch Society – libertarian market and fiscal theory laced with flourishes of cultural supremacy – finds its religious counterpart, as Fred Clarkson noted, in the theonomy of Christian Reconstructionism, the right-wing religious-political school of thought founded by Rousas John Rushdoony. The ultimate goal of Christian Reconstructionists is to reconstitute the law of the Hebrew Bible – which calls for the execution of adulterers and men who have sex with other men – as the law of the land. The Constitution Party constitutes the political wing of Reconstructionism, and the CP has found a good friend in Ron Paul.

When Paul launched his second presidential quest in 2008, he won the endorsement of Rev. Chuck Baldwin, a Baptist pastor who travels in Christian Reconstructionist circles, though he is not precisely a Reconstructionist himself (for reasons having to do with his interpretation of how the end times will go down). When Paul dropped out of the race, instead of endorsing Republican nominee John McCain, or even Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, Paul endorsed Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin (who promised, in his acceptance speech, to uphold the Constitution Party platform, which looks curiously similar to the Ron Paul agenda, right down to the no-exceptions abortion proscription and ending the Fed).

At his shadow rally that year in Minneapolis, held on the eve of the Republican National Convention, Paul invited Constitution Party founder Howard Phillips, a Christian Reconstructionist, to address the crowd of end-the-Fed-cheering post-pubescents. (In his early congressional career, Julie Ingersoll writes in Religion Dispatches, Paul hired as a staffer Gary North, a Christian Reconstructionist leader and Rushdoony’s son-in-law.)

At a “Pastor’s Forum” at Baldwin’s Baptist church in Pensacola, Florida, Paul was asked by a congregant about his lack of support for Israel, which many right-wing Christians support because of the role Israel plays in what is known as premillennialist end-times theology. “Premillennialist” refers to the belief that after Jesus returns, according to conditions on the ground in Israel, the righteous will rule. But Christian Reconstructionists have a different view, believing the righteous must first rule for 1,000 years before Jesus will return.

They also believe, according to Clarkson, “that ‘the Christians’ are the ‘new chosen people of God,’ commanded to do what ‘Adam in Eden and Israel in Canaan failed to do … create the society that God requires.’ Further, Jews, once the ‘chosen people,’ failed to live up to God’s covenant and therefore are no longer God’s chosen. Christians, of the correct sort, now are.”

Responding to Baldwin’s congregant, Paul explained, “I may see it slightly differently than others because I think of the Israeli government as different than what I read about in the Bible. I mean, the Israeli government doesn’t happen to be reflecting God’s views. Some of them are atheist, and their form of government is not what I would support … And there are some people who interpret the chosen people as not being so narrowly defined as only the Jews – that maybe there’s a broader definition of that.”

At the John Birch Society 50th anniversary gala, Ron Paul spoke to another favorite theme of the Reconstructionists and others in the religious right: that of the “remnant” left behind after evil has swept the land. (Gary North’s publication is called The Remnant Review.) In a dispatch on Paul’s keynote address, The New American, the publication of the John Birch Society, explained, “He claimed that the important role the JBS has played was to nurture that remnant and added, ‘The remnant holds the truth together, both the religious truth and the political truth.'”

Is there a progressive willing to join that fold?

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Theocon Theocrat Ron Paul Courts Religious Conservatives

by The Age of Blasphemy, posted in Right Wing, Right Wing Crackpots, Right Wing Crazies, Right Wing Lies, Ron Paul, Theocon, Theocon Fascists, Theocons

Saint Paul: Inside Ron Paul’s effort to convince Christian conservatives that he’s their man

As most lizards already know Ron Paul is just a paleocon theocrat in Libertarian trappings
by Randall Gross — Wingnuts

[Link: news.yahoo.com…]

If the press weren’t so lazy they would pin down Paul on the large logical inconsistencies between his libertarian posturing and pronounced theocrat leaning.

During his years in public office, Paul branded himself more as a “constitutional conservative” than a crusader against gay marriage and abortion. Most political observers know him more for his youthful fan base of passionate and, occasionally, rowdy supporters and his earnest defense of drug legalization. But the latest Iowa Poll, conducted for the Des Moines Register at the end of November, found that 17 percent of likely Republican caucusgoers said they thought Paul was “the most socially conservative” candidate in the race, second only to Michele Bachmann with 27 percent. (The margin of error was plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.)

Only 1 in 10 likely caucusgoers in the poll said Newt Gingrich was the most socially conservative candidate, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney fared even worse with just 8 percent. The same poll found that 64 percent of Iowa’s likely voters considered themselves to be “very” or “mostly” conservative on gay marriage and abortion. In June, a survey conducted by the same group found that 58 percent of likely caucusgoers said a candidate’s support for civil unions for gay and lesbian couples would be considered a “deal killer.”

Paul sides with social conservatives on most issues: He believes that marriage should be defined as being between only one man and one woman and he does not think the federal government should guarantee women the right to have an abortion, a position influenced by his decades as an obstetrician who delivered thousands of babies. In public speeches, Paul often articulates a biblical foundation for his economic policies, framing capitalism as the moral giant among all other economic systems.

Prominent religious conservatives in Iowa, however, object that Paul does not apply his beliefs at the national level. Paul does not support a constitutional amendment to ban abortion, and he opposes a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. He thinks both issues should be left up to the states.

“I don’t want the federal government dictating marriage definitions nor a position on right to life,” Paul said in March during an event at the University of Iowa. “It should be done locally. It’ll be imperfect, probably, because every state won’t be the same, but what is really bad is when you allow the federal government to define marriage and put the pressure and make the states follow those laws.”

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