Raz0rama, you and others are defending statements that Ron Paul himself has now denounced. Is he wrong to denounce? Or is he just playing politics? You know, saying whatever it takes to get elected, like all the Tweedledees and Tweedledums. Which do you think it is?
I pose this question under the highly sketchy assumption that Paul was unaware of the contents.
I'm not defending anything that he's denounced. I'm defending his denouncement of what I believe does not reflect his views or the platform he stands on today.
Ron Paul has not distanced himself from the views expressed in the book I quoted and linked, the views I'm defending. He distanced himself from the smattering of derogatory and racially charged statements gleaned from 10 years of newsletters under his name that have become the source of controversy.
As I put in one of my previous posts, I'm not defending the newsletters, merely pointing out that it is not unreasonable to believe that he did not write the offending statements, and that he does not hold the offending views. I do not endorse or support the offending parts of the newsletters.
He does not believe that anyone should get special treatment by the government, white, black, Latino, woman, homosexual, or bigot. All should be treated as equal under the law, and none should be subjected to forcible deprivation of property justly acquired. That is a platform I can support and endorse. It is also the least racist position of any that is possible, since it denies the premise that different people should be treated differently because of race.
If Ron Paul was any other politician who makes campaign promises and breaks them, changes views on issues to suit the political winds, or attempts to portray failures as successes, misleads their constituency about what is actually going on under their term in office, then I would probably feel much as you do that there is no reason to believe him when he says he doesn't support those viewpoints and did not write them. By and large however, he is the most genuine, principled, and consistent candidate for the nomination, and as such I believe he deserves the benefit of the doubt in this instance.
I believe questions about the newsletters are valid, and that any concerns they raise are justified. I also believe that explanations that he has given are adequate, and that this far down the road (15-20 years later) one should base their opinion of the man on the platform and message he is campaigning on today, which is largely unchanged from what he ran on in the 80's.
As a white man who is married to a black woman, has several family members in active duty in the military, and several close friends who are gay or bisexual, I can't honestly support any other candidate who is currently running for the GOP. I would probably support Gary Johnson if he had enough of a chance to win, but he was already excluded from the national stage by the organizers of most of the publicized debates, and I'd rather have Ron Paul with his baggage than any of the other candidates.
Somewhat off the current topic, but relevant to my views if you're interested, here's how I would compare Ron to our current commander-in-chief:
I think Paul is more principled than Obama, and I think Obama is more principled than most of the current GOP field. But Obama has continued and expanded many of the programs started under Bush that have eroded personal freedom in America, and he has failed to make good on some of the promises he made that helped him get elected that were actually within his power to keep, such as ending the Iraq War as soon as he got into office. I think Obama mistakenly believes that Government can be effectively used as a tool to improve the lives of people, but in order to do so, you have to increase the degree that Government is involved in their lives, increase the amount of funds appropriated from the people to support Government, and decrease the autonomy of individual citizens, make arbitrary and sometimes baseless decisions on who to help and who not to help, what to punish and what to reward, and so on. The same policies do not work for all people, so the closer to the people the policies are enacted, the more control people have over them, and the more freedom people have to vote with their feet if they do not like policies but can't effectively change them.
For what its worth, I don't believe that Obama should be judged by the words or actions of those he has associated with, and found the attacks based on Ayers and Wright to be distractions from the issues and pointless. Obama should be judged by what he actually says and does, as well as what he acknowledges he wrote, such as what is in his books. If I found out that there was an objectionable passage in something bearing Obama's name, and he claimed he hadn't written it and disavowed it, I'd be cautiously willing to accept his word. I just think he was swayed too much by his affiliations after he entered office, and tried too hard to please too many.
I'd rather a president who is principled and can't get any new expansionist legislation passed than one who panders to special interests and winds up allowing the worst parts of both parties to outweigh the actual needs and interests of the american people.
I know that Ron Paul hasn't got a hope in hell of achieving all of what he wants to do even if he's elected president, but the more support he gets the more other politicians will have to shift their views to compete, and the more chance there is for Americans to honestly evaluate the course of a country that was founded on the principle of individual liberty and restricted government, and has become one of the most expansionist, militaristic empires in the history of the world, engaged in everybody's business everywhere, with questionable return on investment for the huge debt its citizens will some day have to repay.
If you're happy with the way things are going and our prospects for the future, and believe we are on the right track, I'm happy for you, it's just not my cup of tea. I will however defend your right to support the ideas you want to support, as long as you do not initiate force against others to support those ideas. I can't grant you any rights - no one can - but I can do my damnedest to keep our rights from being further restricted and ease current restrictions on our rights.
