LogisticEarth:Yeah, I'm getting a 404 on his link right now, I wanted to go back and read the stuff about Reed. Has anyone uploaded it anywhere else yet?
I already said that I took it down from that domain. Just go to my blog and follow the links.
If you want to read a decent case for Reed as the ghostwriter, go here. I removed that section because I don't want to get implicated for defamation.
Your second statement is valid, but I wouldn't get particularly concerned over the Huffington Post making an alarmist headline about Ron Paul. You have been reading the typical approach of the Beltway outlets for the last four years, right?
No actually, I haven't. So I might be overreacting. For what it's worth. Still, 5000 6,300 comments on the article already.
Why anarchy fails
I'd like to submit the following relation: the shrillness and fervor with which establishment mouthpieces pursue this issue is directly proportional to the establishment's fear and desperation.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
Yeah, I guess I knew it would come to this. No matter. Ron Paul is what he is. The movement toward freedom presses on whatever happens to him. The brushfires cannot be put out now.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/12/ron-paul-denies-writing-coming-race-war-letter-he-signed/46622/
The articles mentions that RP left the interview after being asked about the newsletters; however, the article does not mention that RP did answer the questions and left because CNN had already asked him about the newsletters the day before.
So much for investigative journalism.
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
Remember, they're more concerned with perception than the underlying reality.
Yeah, from what I gather - and actually this is pretty obvious so far from how the hit pieces present it - there are some newsletters Ron did write, some on which he is listed as editor, some which bear his actual signature, but those ones sound like him and have nothing inflammatory in them. Then there are others that he didn't sign and don't sound like him and do have the inflammatory material. Then there are still other newsletters that have what looks like an auto-sign or photocopy of his signature. It's too messy for most readers to sort out, especially if the media deliberately makes it so.
However, knowing Ron as Mr. Consistent, he's probably actually never physically signed one with anything bad in it (unless he's really trusting and actually signed without reading them), and so maybe some of the better reporters will figure this out and put it out there. But it looks like a quagmire.
Either someone will have to fall on their sword or the campaign will have to start handling this properly and turning it to advantage rather than shrinking away. But given it's probably a sticky interpersonal matter, and knowing how averse Ron probably is to asking someone to step up and take the heat for him, I'm not sure this will go well.
But if Ron goes down in flames, it was only because he was too trusting and had too much integrity to rat anyone out. A hero to the very end, his only weakness being that he demonstrated poor judgment in delegating authority - 20 years ago.
I don't understand why more people don't seem to take those last three words of your post into account. Twenty years is a long time.
lol postbug
Anyway, half of those comments are Paul supporters and zealots defending him and the other half are the same handful of zealots loyal to the blog in question who consider him Satan
Also, latest polls. Poll on 21st shows Paul still in lead, aggregate of polls still favor him: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/
I'm uh, pretty sure most of the voters in Iowa have had this topic hammered into their heads by this point, and so far they don't seem to give a shit.
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
That was a much better interview with Ron Paul on Fox. He kept his cool and explained himself well. Far better then walking away from the interview. Listening to KFI, the local talk station in Los Angeles,you can hear how these talk show hosts use those kind of situations to keep bashing someone like him over and over. Before this latest newsletter controversy, some of these local hosts seemed to be on the fence about Ron Paul. Talk show hosts like John & Ken said they agreed with Ron Paul about 60% of the time. But then this newsletter thing came out and all of a sudden they spent two segments making fun of him and calling him a nut case. But they were not going to harp on it anymore after that, until the CNN interview walk out happened, then I heard hosts bashing Ron Paul AND Libertarianism for the next day and a half. So situations like that give the media even more fuel. It's always better for him to keep his cool as much as possible because they want to potray him as a "grumpy crazy old kook".
I'd hate to think Lew Rockwell wrote those controvesial lines, but his overall silence on the issue makes him seem like he really was behind it. I'm a LRC fan and visit the site everyday, and Lew doesn't come off as some kind of hate filled homophobic racist at all. He certainly has a lot of hate for the state(which is why I'm a fan) but who knows, it was 20 years ago, maybe those were his thoughts back then.
The full video of ron Pauls interview with Gloria is on CNN. They spliced it up good to look like he was just so upset and had to walk off. Let the media paint him how they want- no one who's a paul supporter or is about to be a paul supporter trusts them anyway.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2011/12/23/borger-ron-paul-iowa.cnn
The funniest part is when ron is like "What??!" when she says something incoherent like "Did you know that you didn't know?" or something like that.
Why don't independent news organizations go and interview Gloria and ask her why she and her husband support racist policies in the US
nirgrahamUK: Seems like the perfect interview Or am I biased...
That is an excellent interview.
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2011/12/how-did-we-get-here-or-why-do-20-year-old-newsletters-matter-so-damn-much/
Intersting article on the newsletter and the divisions within libertarianism.
Could someone address the "paleo-libertarian" approach? Is it fair to say that Rothbard was attempting to appeal to racists, in order to gain support for libertarianism?
Just so it's clear that I'm not trolling with this post - I am a huge fan of both Rothbard and the Mises Institute. This is just something that has been bugging me. I have always seen libertarianism as incompatible with racism, and I have taken pride in that, as a libertarian. I suppose it is possible that Rothbard was simply being pragmatic in his attempt to spread the ideology. However, I view Rothbard as a very principled and uncompromising individual, so it remains unsettling for me.
Antagonist:Is it fair to say that Rothbard was attempting to appeal to racists, in order to gain support for libertarianism?
I would say no.
Please keep in mind that people who consider themselves on the "left" are extraordinarily sensitive and schismatic when it comes to matters of race. Some people considered the newsletters' pointing out (the objectively true fact!) that MLK was a plagiarist and a philanderer to be "racist". According to Jamie Kirchick, reviewing Jared Taylor's books makes you a "racist", and having anything but the upmost praise for the behaviour of San Francisco homosexuals is "prejudiced".
This Beltway-libertarian smear of Rothbard is really incredible. Just go and read his thing on David Duke. Was Rothbard advocating racism or appealing to racists? No, since for one thing Duke was explicitly running 1992 on the rejection of racism, as Rothbard notes. He was only pointing out the extraordinary mainstream propaganda assault on someone who really wasn't saying much back then that libertarians don't say now, and suggesting that libertarians who are serious about having influence should consider a kind of right-wing populism, in the same way Marxists have exploited soapbox proletarian left-wing populism for generations.
Rothbard, to his credit, was always interested in strategy, as opposed to the mamby-pamby leather jacket-sporting sissies at Reason who have far too much riding on their cool and hip reputation to dirty their hands with such pedestrian concerns.
Please go and read my FAQ before you read anything else. There's an extraordinary amount of evidence that the small number of newsletters that really were "racist" were freak accidents, the product of a carefree, freelancing ghostwriter who is long gone. There is very little in the newsletters on race that wasn't already being said by major organs of conservative and popular media at the time.
'Whites, it seems to me, and not blacks, suffer the deleterious effects of slavery. The crime, AFDC, Section Eight housing, the other costs of supporting illegitimate children, the burned cities, the enormous hidden cost of affirmative action, the constant lowering of standards for blacks, the cost of police forces: Whites bear this burden. It is not light.'
Fred Reed
http://www.fredoneverything.net/Slavery.shtml
The rumors that Fred wrote these newsletters seem probable, but there are a few problems. Fred isn't really an anti-semite or a homophobe. After going through lots of his posts, he seems progressive on Homosexuality and the so called 'jewish problem.'
I also don't think that Fred would have written for the Ron Paul newsletters. In one of his posts he makes an argument from emotion about the nuances of socialised medicine. He doesn't outright call for it, but he definitely sympathises with leftists who advocate it.
Antagonist:http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2011/12/how-did-we-get-here-or-why-do-20-year-old-newsletters-matter-so-damn-much/ Intersting article on the newsletter and the divisions within libertarianism.
I agree that it's interesting, and thank you for posting a link to it. This part struck me as especially interesting:
Scott Horwitz:We can’t make Ron Paul name the authors or make the authors step forward, either of which would help immensely. We can, however, take pains to make clear that some of Ron Paul’s past and current associations are rejected by libertarians who understand the “liberal” in libertarian and whose vision of a free society is one that is so clearly in conflict with racism, homophobia, antisemitism and all the rest that people like Stormfront would never even consider sending us a donation and we would recoil at being photographed with them.
The thing is, I don't see how a free society is necessarily in conflict with racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, or other forms of prejudice per se. Libertarian property rights allow for any and all forms of discrimination. In this respect, prejudice is a non-issue for libertarianism. Where it's an issue for libertarianism is when prejudice goes on the offensive - when people's rights are violated (i.e. when they are aggressed against) due to prejudice. One is not prima facie and inalienably entitled to enter another's property, even if it's "open to the public".
The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that the divisions within libertarianism are founded upon seeing freedom as a means vs. seeing it as an end. Many libertarians, such as "left-libertarians", desire a free society because they think it'll lead to [insert cultural aesthetics here]. In other words, it's the cultural aesthetics that constitute their ultimate goal, not a free society per se. Other libertarians simply desire a free society (i.e. freedom) as an end in itself.
I'm not saying that one "side" is right and the other is wrong. They're just different. My point here is to show how the difference leads to these disputes within the wider libertarian "movement".
Josh:'Whites, it seems to me, and not blacks, suffer the deleterious effects of slavery. The crime, AFDC, Section Eight housing, the other costs of supporting illegitimate children, the burned cities, the enormous hidden cost of affirmative action, the constant lowering of standards for blacks, the cost of police forces: Whites bear this burden. It is not light.' Fred Reed http://www.fredoneverything.net/Slavery.shtml
The funny thing is, many leftists would consider that to be racist.
Autolykos,
That's an interesting point. I think there is a lot of truth to it.
Personally, I see freedom as both a means and an end, if that makes sense. I believe freedom is intrinsically valubale, but I also value what freedom produces (i.e. greater wealth, equality, and overall quality of life).
I often find myself arguing the case of freedom by describing it as a means. Not only is there a strong argument to be made there, but I find it more appealing to outsiders. Someone who places a high intrinsic value on freedom is likely already somewhat of a libertarian.
This goes back to the point that someone else made in the Rothbardian Ethics thread. We are given two great ways to make such an argument. To say that only one way is right would only be hurting the movement.
It would certainly help Ron Paul if the Beltways and the Rothbardians could cooperate right now. The Kochs have some great resources (Cato, IHS, Reason, etc.), but they are only hurting libertarianism with their attacks on Paul. And it seems to be more about their grudge against Rockwell and Rothbard than Paul, himself. It would be sad if this internal split cost Paul his chance at the presidency.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/us/politics/ron-paul-disowns-extremists-views-but-doesnt-disavow-the-support.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss and http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/26/opinion/frum-ron-paul-newsletters/index.html?eref=rss_mostpopular&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_mostpopular+%28RSS%3A+Most+Popular%29 .
Saying that blacks don't suffer the "deleterious effects" of slavery certainly raises my eyebrow. Does it not raise yours?
Former Aide to Ron Paul says Paul is not a homophobe, racist or anti-semite but is out of touch with black culture, feels uncomfortable around gays, and wishes that israel ceases to exist.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57348489-503544/ron-paul-camp-fires-back-at-ex-aide-over-column-on-israel-gays/
Eric Dondero writes on Right Wing News that his former boss "is not all bigoted towards homosexuals" and supports their rights to do whatever they want in private. He is, however, "personally uncomfortable around homosexuals
Personally uncomfortable around homosexuals is about as bigoted as an an arachnophobe being personally uncomfortable around spiders. Most elderly people i know definitely feel uncomfortable around gays. It's nothing more than a product of the times.
I also found this. A collection of stories that I could only describe as cute...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/26/eric-dondero-ron-paul-racist-homophobic_n_1170054.html?ref=politics
Basically just anecdotes of Paul around gay people. Nothing there strikes me as bigoted behaviour, just a man who is out of touch with the times a littler. Now who isn't a bit out of touch and over 70 years old? Let's be honest here.
Overall Paul comes off looking great.
@Josh, this is the crux of the whole issue, isn't it? People would rather look at a person's personal beliefs and attitudes rather than their policy implementations. If Person A gives to charity, loves his family, is a productive member of society, and has never committed a crime and happens to be uncomfortable around gays or minorities but Person B is a nasty, mean-spirited, non-productive member of society who has no problem with minorities, the Left will frown upon Person A and criticize them more visciously than they would Person B, especially if they happen to be a poltical opponent.
This approach is completely silly. You would rather vote for non-racist Obama who will destroy families and blow up people to smithereens over "racist" Ron Paul who would prevent that? Makes no sense.
NonAntiAnarchist:Saying that blacks don't suffer the "deleterious effects" of slavery certainly raises my eyebrow. Does it not raise yours?
It does raise mine. Sorry if I implied otherwise - I didn't mean to. I certainly don't agree that blacks don't suffer any "deleterious effects" of slavery. It seems obvious to me that they have and unfortunately still do. However, I can't be certain whether Fred Reed made that statement out of a racist attitude toward blacks. Some people would probably assume that he did, based on the statement itself.
Antagonist:Autolykos, That's an interesting point. I think there is a lot of truth to it. Personally, I see freedom as both a means and an end, if that makes sense. I believe freedom is intrinsically valubale, but I also value what freedom produces (i.e. greater wealth, equality, and overall quality of life).
Thanks! Yes, I also see freedom as both a means and an end in itself. However, I think that desiring something as an end in itself necessarily takes priority over desiring something as a means to an end. So the things we believe that freedom can produce - greater wealth, equality, and overall quality of life - are not as important to us as freedom per se.
Antagonist:I often find myself arguing the case of freedom by describing it as a means. Not only is there a strong argument to be made there, but I find it more appealing to outsiders. Someone who places a high intrinsic value on freedom is likely already somewhat of a libertarian.
Agreed. What I try to do is find out where people are hypocritical in their beliefs. Groupthink and other double standards, self-serving bias and other forms of special pleading, and confusion of correlation with causation stand out here. And all too often, people employ multiple logical fallacies simultaneously. That only compounds the problem, because now one has to untangle the various fallacies from one another.
The problem, as I see it, with only desiring freedom as a means is that one can conclude later that the end(s) in question can't be achieved by freedom after all. Presumably, he would abandon his desire for freedom and desire one or more other things instead. It seems to me that this happens, as a rule, to those who adopt statist positions after holding libertarian or even anarchist positions.
Antagonist:This goes back to the point that someone else made in the Rothbardian Ethics thread. We are given two great ways to make such an argument. To say that only one way is right would only be hurting the movement.
I agree here also. My criticism was against those who (apparently) desire freedom only as a means to one or more ends. In retrospect, I don't think I made that sufficiently clear before.
Antagonist:It would certainly help Ron Paul if the Beltways and the Rothbardians could cooperate right now. The Kochs have some great resources (Cato, IHS, Reason, etc.), but they are only hurting libertarianism with their attacks on Paul. And it seems to be more about their grudge against Rockwell and Rothbard than Paul, himself. It would be sad if this internal split cost Paul his chance at the presidency.
Some of the disagreement between the Beltway libertarians and the Rothbardian libertarians concerns what I call "cultural aesthetics". Some of it concerns strategy and tactics. It seems to me that the Beltway libertarians don't value freedom as an end in itself, but only as a means. I could be wrong though.
@Josh
Many people today consider a person who feels personally uncomfortable around homosexuals to be a homophobe. That is to say, such people consider "homophobia" to constitute, at the very least, feeling personally uncomfortable around homosexuals.
As Eric put it, actions have no meaning to them - only attitudes.
The RevolutionPAC is combating quite well.
Consider making a donation to help get this ad on the air...
What do you think about this statement of Paul's ex "close" personal assistent Eric Dondero. At first it sounds as if he defends Ron Paul. But the more you get to the end it appears to be a clear attack.
Dondero certainly wasn't defending Paul across the board. That doesn't even seem to be the point of his article. Rather, the point seems to be for him to clarify his stance on Paul and the newsletters. Since he's adamantly opposed to Paul, there's a possibility that he embellished some of the anecdotes he related in his article. However, it seems clear to me that Paul is not entirely tolerant of homosexuals, at the very least. Leftists and self-styled "liberals" will consider this to be "homophobia", because they define it as consisting minimally of personal discomfort around homosexuals. Given that definition, Paul certainly fits the bill of being a "homophobe".
Dondero's main point of contention with Paul, as he states, is foreign policy. I believe him here, because he's brought it up many times in the past. As he relates, he apparently left Paul's staff after the 9/11 attacks, presumably because of Paul's stance on them. I wouldn't be surprised if the anecdote he relates about Paul wanting to vote "No" on the 2001 AUMF is entirely accurate. Assuming so, it's a shame to me that Paul sacrificed principles for politics there.
Sounds like a reasonable interpretation, Autolykos. (I always want to write "Autokylos". Don't ask me why, I wonder if anyone else has this problem as well or if I am the only retarded in at least this respect...)
I really think whoever wrote that stuff should have the guts to show up. Even or especially if it was Rockwell. That's the only right thing. I understand though that Paul may not be in the position to reveal that, the ghostwriter has to do it himself. Anyway we have to get used to that kind of stuff for the whole next year.
Honestly I can't imagine how many people were probably writing for those half dozen different newsletters over the course of a decade(?).
Playing the devil's advocate (white devil perhaps?):
Ron Paul's White Supremacist Radio Connections
Top 10 Racist Ron Paul Friends and Supporters
Not surprised Lew Rockwell and Thomas DiLorenzo are on that list. Hell, at this point I'm surprised they didn't put the whole LvMI on the list.
They did actually:
The Ludwig Von Mises Institute is listed by the SPLC as a neo-Confederate organization.
Well, damn, skipped my eye. I'm pretty sure I have some LvMI pamplets (the ones you get when you order books) and I'm sure in the description there was a paragraph about how they've been labeled various things, including neo-Confed.
Because the Confederates simply loved uncoerced labor!
Ron Paul reacts to the "Compassion" ad from the RevolutionPAC:
Those fucking simpletons can't understand that just because we are against Lincoln and the Union, that does not follow that we love Jefferson Davis and slavery.
Same goes with the US in WWII. Just because we think FDR and Truman were awful, doesn't make us Nazis.
John James:
Incredible ad on so many levels. Perfect timing, too. Anyone watching this has to conclude that not only is he not a racist by any stretch, he's a hero.
As an added bonus, it refutes the whole "libertarians want to let poor people fend for themselves" nonsense. The man lives his principles.