Ron Paul: Not My Cup Of Coffee...no tea here

RON PAUL: There's just a whole lot going on under that affable exterior that deserves a hard second look before we clutch the man to our collective bosom.

Molly Ivins: Bless her big heart, warned us about Ron Paul over a decade ago. Her coverage of these 1996 Texas congressional races included this prescient precis:

Dallas' 5th District, East Texas' 2nd District and the amazing 14th District, which runs all over everywhere, are also in play. In the amazing 14th, Democrat Lefty Morris (his slogan is ''Lefty is Right!'') faces the Republican/Libertarian Ron Paul, who is himself so far right that he's sometimes left, as happens with your Libertarians.

I think my favorite issue here is Paul's 1993 newsletter advising ''Frightened Americans'' on how to get their money out of the country. He advised that Peruvian citizenship could be purchased for a mere 25 grand. That we should all become Peruvians is one of the more innovative suggestions of this festive campaign season. But what will the Peruvians think of it?

Molly, with her usual insight, laid out the essential struggle we're having with Paul. As a libertarian leftist, I understand viscerally the charm of Paul's message. Who wouldn't be charmed? He's anti-war, anti-torture, anti-drug war, and anti-corporation -- a real progressive dream date. Until you reflect on the fact that he's also anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-environment, anti-sane immigration policy, and apparently, anti-separation of church and state as well:

The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of public life.

From a "War on Religion" article Ron Paul wrote in December 2003 (found at Lew Rockwell.com):

And that's the trouble we're having with Ron. There's just a whole lot going on under that affable exterior that deserves a hard second look before we clutch the man to our collective bosom. The political writers in Texas back in that '96 campaign knew quite a bit about this, and their writing survives to tell some interesting tales. Here, for example, is Clay Robison, writing in the Houston Chronicle the same week Molly wrote the above:

[Democratic candidate] Morris recently distributed copies of political newsletters written by Paul in 1992 in which the Surfside physician endorsed the concept of secession, defended cross burning as an act of free speech and expressed sympathy for a man sentenced to prison for bombing an IRS building.

Cross-burning as free speech? (And sympathy for domestic terrorist bombers?) Um, yeah. Two months later, the Austin American-Statesman let Paul share his views in his own words:

Not all officials express alarm when discussing cross burnings. U.S.Rep.-elect Ron Paul, a Texas Republican from Surfside, described such activity as a form of free speech in some situations.
"Cross burning could be a crime if they were violating somebody's property rights,'' he said during his campaign. But if you go out on your farm some place and it's on your property and you put two sticks together and you burn it, I am not going to send in the federal police."

See, here's that problem again. When Paul explains it, it sounds all nice and reasonable. What you do on your property absolutely should be your business, and nobody should be able to tell you what you can and can't put on your Saturday night bonfire. But Texas was having a huge upswing in cross-burnings that year, which were part of an (all-too-successful) effort to terrorize its African-American community.

There's plenty of legal precedent that one person's right to free speech ends when it begins to terrorize others into silence -- and, because of this, cross-burning is recognized as a hate crime in many jurisdictions across the country. But Ron Paul, for all his libertarian talk, apparently doesn't believe in putting any restrictions on speech, even when it damages other individuals and the overall level of civil behavior in society.

And then there's the company he keeps. Dave is going to have more on this soon; but if you want to know someone's character, look at the people he surrounds himself with. (Most of us wish we'd understood more about Bush's friends before the 2000 election -- let's not repeat that mistake here.)

First, there's Tom DeLay. Paul may be loudly anti-corporate and anti-GOP establishment; but that didn't stop him from taking $6,000 from DeLay's ARMPAC. According to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Paul returned the favor by voting to weaken House ethics rules when DeLay proposed doing so as GOP Majority Leader; and to allow DeLay to continue to serve after an indictment. Since DeLay is easily the biggest corporate whore Washington has seen since Mark Hanna, we're not wrong to wonder about Paul's true enthusiasm for curbing corporate excess.

Then, there's the 100% legislative ranking Paul got from Cannabis Culture magazine -- a fact that lifts liberal spirits everywhere, and is very consistent with his libertarian views. But we shouldn't let that blind us to the fact that he also got 100% rankings from both the Christian Coalition and the John Birch Society -- two entities far more powerful and serious than Cannabis Culture,, and which actively wish ill on people like us. Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson actively helped midwife Paul's budding political career: according to the New York Times, his political teams were circulating campaign letters promoting Paul over Bush I as a presidential candidate all the way back in 1988.

More serious are the friends on the farthest right edges -- the tax patriots, "sovereign citizens," and proto-fascists who have supported him from the beginning and are supporting him still. It's been quite a while since the militia fever of the early 90s acquainted us all the permutations of these loony-right movements (if you can't tell the players without a scorecard, the ADL provides a very good one here); but commenter Hume's Ghost pointed us to this excellent summary:

Many commentators have portrayed the Patriot and militia movements as fascist. We believe it is more accurate to describe them as right-wing populist movements with important fascistic tendencies-thus they are quasifascist or protofascist. Like the America First movement of the early 1940s, the Patriot movement and the militias represented a large-scale convergence of committed fascists with nonfascist activists. Such coalitions enable fascists to gain new recruits, increase their legitimacy among millions of people, and repackage their doctrines for mass consumption.

Mary Rupert dubbed the Patriot movement "A Seedbed for Fascism" and suggested that the "major missing piece in looking at the Patriot Movement in relation to fascism is that it does not overtly advance an authoritarian scheme of government.

In fact, its emphasis seems to be on protecting individual rights." According to Rupert, there are two "portents of possibility" that could shift this situation: "First is the below-the-surface disposition of the Patriot Movement towards authoritarianism, and second is the way in which Patrick Buchanan...picked up and played out the Patriots’ grievances.

" We would add that "individual rights," like states’ rights, can also be a cover for the sort of decentralized social totalitarianism promoted by the neofascists of the Posse Comitatus and Christian Reconstructionism -- both of which helped lay the groundwork for the Patriot movement itself.

This puts a new context around Paul's relationship with The Patriot Network, a South Carolina-based group that's part of the "tax resistance" movement. This crew threw a 2004 banquet in Ron Paul's honor, as I mentioned in an earlier post (their newsletter noted that "most of the state's leading nationalist figures attended,").Groups like this one aren't just a bunch of Howard Jarvis-type disgruntled taxpayers. The Patriot Network, like others going all the way back to the Posse Comitatus of the 70s, coaches members on how to avoid taxes, bilking them of thousands of dollars by selling them "untax" packages that will enable them -- under their own bizarre theory of government -- to exempt themselves from taxation.

These "untax" theories have been repeatedly refuted by the courts across the country over the past couple decades; and several leaders of previous organizations offering similar services have been convicted and jailed for tax fraud. As noted above, the Patriot movement overlaps strongly with a variety of Christian Identity, militia, "sovereign citizen," and other ideologies dear to the heart of the far-right domestic terrorist agenda.

Another site that's endorsed Paul is the Dixie Daily News, a neo-Confederate website full of articles on states' rights, gold-backed currency, and how the South was right all along. Paul writes for this site frequently -- as does his friend and former legislative aide Gary North, who is also R.J. Rushdooney's son-in-law and a leading light of the Christian Reconstructionist movement. At the moment, the headline at the site is promoting Ron Paul's appearance at the group's "FreedomFest" in Las Vegas next month.

If Paul is making public appearances for this group, we need to be asking: why is he running for office in a government he clearly doesn't believe in?If you doubt that Paul has the support of our proto-fascists, don't take my word for it -- take theirs. This endorsement, for example, recently appeared on national KKK leader David Duke's website. And I'll let an anonymous commenter from Stormfront, the far right's favorite Web watering hole, have the final word:

Anyone who doesn't vote for Paul on this site is an assclown. Sure he doesn't come right out and say he is a WN [white nationalist], who cares! He promotes agendas and ideas that allow Nationalism to flourish. If we "get there" without having to raise hell, who cares; as long as we finally get what we want.

I don't understand why some people do not support this man, Hitler is dead, and we shall probably never see another man like him.Pat Buchanan's book "Where the Right Went Wrong" is a prime example of getting the point across without having the book banned for anti semitism. The chapters about the war in Iraq sound like a BarMitzvah, but he doesn't have to put the Star of David next to each name for us to know what he means. We are running out of options at this point, and I will take someone is 90% with us versus any of the other choices.Not to mention if Paul makes a serious run, he legitimizes White Nationalism and Stormfront, for God's sake David Duke is behind this guy!

Bill Maher and Jon Stewart may love the ratings Ron Paul brings in. But the growing pile of evidence is proving that Paul, for all his freedom-loving talk, is in the pocket of the very people this blog has spent the past four years warning about. His links to the murderous brownshirt fringe that brought us the Freemen standoff and the Oklahoma City bombing are too strong to be ignored.

If America ever becomes a fascist state, it will be Ron Paul's long-time followers who bring it about. And we -- progressives, miniorities, feminists, gays, "intellectuals," and Jews like Maher and Stewart -- with be the first ones to feel their genocidal rage. We cannot overlook his long association with far-right extremists just because he agrees with us that the war is wrong and pot should be legal. If Bush has taught us anything, it's that we need to hold ourselves and our candidates to much higher standards than that. What we choose to overlook now, we will live to regret later.http://www.publiceye.org/index.html

http://www.publiceye.org/gsearchresults.html?cx=011032660137154094571%3Azugoiswk3su&cof=FORID%3A11&q=RON+PAUL&sa=Search#933

Well now…there are a lot of folks watching for anything posted up about Ron Paul.

But candidly, the types of things political supporters write gives me a good indicator of just why they stand in support and the type of people you are and, isn’t it funny that people who can’t disagree appropriately always like to talk amongst themselves about how stupid the people they disagree with are?

Well let’s practice a little bit of that here and now shall we? You have heaped your abuse and diatribes upon me and I guess this is the only type of communication and conversation you understand, and yes I’m sinking to your level…so you will get the message!

I found that a very high volume of people who commented were coming from coordinated emails that were sent around. How can I tell? Well, because my logs are littered with gmail and yahoo mail and hotmail referrers, that’s how. It’s pretty obvious what’s going on.

And here’s another forum where you can go and get all weepy and cry about how we are all criticizing their god, Ron Paul: (Because I’m not going to print the crap that has arrived here. I don’t want to embarrass you.

These idiots don’t like me calling their beloved Ron Paul a racist. They probably won’t like me calling them idiots either, but that’s okay. They don’t like the truth, and it certainly shows.
Ron Paul is opposed to our constitution, particularly the 14th amendment, and his right-wing nuttery will see to it that nobody but rich white businessmen have any freedom in this world, okay that may go a bit far. I think he likes rich white women, too.

According to his own statements (quoted here), Ron Paul does not believe that the federal government should:

Help the poor
Help people who have survived disasters
Help people who cannot afford healthcare
Help senior citizens
Help veterans (My Solution: Stop Making Them For No Good Cause)

But he does believe that we should send troops to the borders to enforce his twisted–and yes, racist–anti-Mexican policies. Why do I call it racist? Well I’m glad you asked! According to the same article posted above, Ron Paul believes that immigrants (note that he did not specify legal or illegal) can:

Be diseased and carry those diseases in to infect our population
Cause huge crime problems
Damage American culture (this is the one I find most racist, by the way)

Ron Paul and his supporters, proven by their actions on my very blog that they are dangerous to America in my opinion, and would like nothing better than to impose their sick world-view on the rest of us.

Ron Paul Will Destroy America

So, one of the big things that I kept getting grilled about with my criticism of Ron Paul is that people vehemently argue that the man isn’t a racist. Well, I think I found the ultimate proof that I need to finally lay this to rest.

The Ron Paul supporters are going to come out in force on this one, so it should be a good time, but let’s hope Google and Yahoo pick this up so that the American people can know who this Ron Paul person really is.

I just got finished reading an article by David Duke–a former “Grand Wizard” (read grand asshole) of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan–which I found rather enlightening. Besides being a former Grand Wizard, but has also been a Louisiana congressman, but he has also been convicted of mail fraud and filed a false tax return. All of this information is available on Wikipedia at this URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Duke

While David Duke’s staff claims that he isn’t explicitly endorsing any candidates, he says an awful lot of nice things about Ron Paul. He also does a lot of attacking those who criticize Ron Paul. Suspicious, no?

Well, I found in the URL that one of the lovely Ron Paul supporters put onto my blog a link to a white supremacy site, so I’ve been doing a little digging. Here are some interesting things that I found.

Ron Paul has been the subject of no fewer than three articles on David Duke’s personal site.

Ron Paul has been praised by the white supremacy group White Civil Rights

Ron Paul is published in white supremacist newspapers: See here

I am nowhere near the only person suspecting Ron Paul of racism and or white-supremacy: see here, and here, and here

Ron Paul has a large volume of white supremacist supporters: ivorypower.com/blog(the racism and “jews” categories are particularly showing)

Ron Paul has ties to the John Birch society, a group of rather serious conspiracy theorists.

The Alabama Green Party has identified Ron Paul as a racist and as dangerous to the United States of America:

Ron Paul has a disgusting track record when it comes to environmental protection: see here(PDF)

Ron Paul voted against H.R. 9, called the “Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Coretta Scott King Voting Rights Act Reauthorization and Amendments Act”. This bill passed 390-33 and is to protect the rights of Americans to vote, and to protect voters before, during, and after the polls: see here

Do I really need to go on? Ron Paul is the type of person who will destroy America.

As I hope to make this the last post dedicated to this festering pustule on the face of America, I would like to thank all of Ron Paul’s supporters who have helped me to really discover how horrifying this man really is. I would especially like to thank Josh, who so conveniently linked himself to the Ku Klux Klan by putting his blog’s URL in his comment this evening. I really could have not informed readers this well without you.

WARNING, since this is an editorial wrap-up, I will not be permitting comments to this post. My blog, I get the last say. Sorry trolls.

Well, today really surprised me. I expressed my opinion and a lot of real basket cases emerged from the wood-work. I really should have expected this sort of response from such a far-right fascist supporters of Ron Paul, so I apologize to all of the folks who normally read my blog for inviting this sort of thing.

I didn’t mean to have such a dialog. At least I improved upon the deluge of email and comments I received by replying in a tone and with vocabulary “a cut above “what I was served up with.

I also apologize for feeding the trolls and responding to the comments.

I think for the most part we had some debate going, and that is good, but anybody who is going to argue against long-established constitutional amendments that protect something as essential and fundamental as citizenship really has no place in moderate society; so I apologize for bringing that here where folks are much more accustomed to sensible dialog about topics.

Unfortunately, however, I hope you all understand that I am a very politically opinionated person, and as such this blog will get more and more into this sort of thing as the 2008 election season comes upon us. Hopefully the debate will be more useful and respectful than this.

All-in-all, I think I’ve learned that I just probably shouldn’t respond to the comments of the kool-aid drinkers, but every so often and when I find people making a concerted effort at assault and insult; I give in!

These people had no interest in honest debate, they only sought to bully me into accepting their position by implying that I was somehow stupid, illegal, socialist, or the classic communist. The evidence of this is even more apparent when you look at the comments that some of my diggs got.

I sincerely hope that Ron Paul manages to wrangle his campaign supporters back in before they marginalize him any more than his dangerous policies already have.

Thanks everybody for reading and for commenting, I appreciate the dialog. I hope to be making some positive posts here soon about some candidates that I think are more desirable, I hope… and maybe some more that I don’t think are so swell. Catch you later folks.

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