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"Ron Paul racist rant caught on tape!" (note, in quotes)

Government does not have a right to take money from their people without the consent of the people. If the people agree to a tax, that is constitutional.
You're playing fast and loose with terms--a lot of equivocation with "consent" and "agree". Whether you as an individual agree to a specific tax doesn't mean the government can't collect that tax even against your will.



Nothing is indivisible, even an atom. I see no problem with states seceding from a Union. We are in fact the United States of America (plus a few commonwealths and non-state territories). If a sufficient group of people in any state wished to leave the union, I see no reason why that should be prohibited.
So you reject the U.S. Constitution? According to it, states cannot secede or join the Union without the consent of Congress. This has been settled law for a looong time--at least since 1868 and the Texas v. White decision.

And if a world state wanted to join our Union, if the states currently in our union were agreeable, I don't see why they shouldn't be accepted.
It's not done by the consent of the individual other states, but through Congress. At any rate, I'm glad you don't support unilateral joining the Union. Why do you support unilateral secession?
 
When you hire someone to ghost-write a speech or book for you, and you deliver that speech or publish that book under your name, those words can then be considered yours. Numerous quotes attributed to public figures in books published under their name were ghost-written for them. We still attribute those quotes to them....

Same standard applies to Ron Paul. He may not have written those newsletter items himself. But when those items were published in his newsletter, he said them.


So your logic is: He didn't write them, but he wrote them. I think most people have the intelligence to understand that he didn't approve of those words, even if you don't.


No, that is not my logic. I chose my words fairly carefully, thinking that would make the point easier for you to understand, but apparently I did not make the point clearly enough.

Please re-read what I wrote, especially the last paragraph. I've bolded two of the key words.

The verb write is fairly specific. It refers to words in written form. The verb say, in contrast, is much broader. It can refer either to words written down or spoken aloud.

For instance, it would not be considered strange for someone to comment, In The Audacity of Hope Barack Obama says: "I have to side with Justice Breyer’s view of the Constitution--that it is not a static but rather a living document and must be read in the context of an ever-changing world."

With that in mind, look again at that last paragraph:

[Ron Paul] may not have written those newsletter items himself. But when those items were published in his newsletter, he said them.


This is the same standard we use with other public figures who hire ghost-writers and publish the ghost-writer's words as their own. When we quote from those books, we do not attribute the words to the ghost-writer; we attribute them to the person whose name is on the book as the author. Even though they didn't originally write the words, when the work was published under their name they said them.
 
Likewise with votes to award medals to Mother Teresa and one of the Popes and possibly some other people. He was right to vote no. Why should the government be handing out costly medals? He did offer to contribute $100 of his own money towards the Rosa Parks medal, because he greatly admires Rosa Parks, but no other Congressman would do so. They prefer to spend other people's money. Hmm, maybe that's why we have trillions of $ of debt, dya think?

So Ron Paul opposes Jim Crow and spending irrelevant amounts of money to honor the greatest people of our lifetime? Wow!

The proposed United States federal budget for FY 2012 is $2,762,000,000,000. The cost of the Congressional medal for the Dalai Lama -- known to you as "possibly some other people" -- was $30,000. The average amount collected from a Federal tax return in a recent year was $8156.80. If we calculate the ratios, we learn how much this medal cost the average taxpayer: 1/100 of a cent.

It says a lot about Ron Paul's values that he'd rather save 1/100 of a cent than honor someone who improved millions of lives. And it says a lot about your values that you so proudly proclaim this the right decision.

Then, as if this were a magnanimous gesture, Mr. Paul offers to pay $100 towards the $30,000 cost of the medal. The total cost of which would be barely 3 percent of the total income from one year's worth of Ron Paul newsletters. You know, those newsletters he didn't write, disavows, and had nothing to do with, but somehow took in $940,000 from the sale of, because he's not a money-grubbing crook like other politicians:

A tax document from June 1993 —wrapping up the year in which the Political Report had published the "welfare checks" comment on the L.A. riots — reported an annual income of $940,000 for Ron Paul & Associates, listing four employees in Texas (Paul's family and Lew Rockwell) and seven more employees around the country.

On top of that spectacular pettiness, we're supposed to be impressed that he wasted Congress' time explaining why he wouldn't vote for something unainmous enough to pass on voice vote.

Hell, the Government Printing Office probably spent more money printing Ron Paul's remarks than not issuing a medal to the Dalai Lama would have saved. If Ron Paul is that deeply concerned about saving government money, maybe he should just shut up.
 
For a supposed non-racist, it's curious how Paul is constantly catering to white supremacists and other hardcore bigots. Conversely, he seems to be the preferred candidate for this crowd, at least amongst the A-listers who have announced support for a candidate.
This is by no means the end of the list. I'll be adding to it later on.
 
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The endorsements that a candidate makes are highly significant data points, none moreso than an endorsement for POTUS.

Ron Paul said:
Chuck Baldwin has been a friend and was an active supporter in the presidential campaign ... I’m supporting Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party candidate.

And Chuck Baldwin is a piece of work indeed. He's all about a concept called The American Redoubt which carves out a large, extremely white chunk of the US to be taken over by fellow Christian white separatists. The proposed area consists of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, eastern Oregon and eastern Washington. Unsurprisingly, they'll even have their own currency.

Baldwin was a long-time pastor of a church in Florida. In 2010 he retired and moved to Montana.

This is the abject lunatic Ron Paul endorsed for president of the f'in USA.
 
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... He does not believe that anyone should get special treatment by the government, white, black, Latino, woman, homosexual, or bigot.
You don't know what he believes and "by the government" isn't the be all, end all.

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.
In one sense you're right, the libertarian position is the least racist. But in another sense it's the most racist:








... 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.
You're taking the self-serving word of a politician despite that it's contradicted by a written record, and despite that:
  • former aide says Paul reviewed/approved all newsletters
  • it defies credulity that he wasn't informed about the incendiary newsletters by a friend or family member
  • his excuse has morphed over time
  • he's cozy with neo-nazis / white separatists (see prior posts)
  • he endorsed a white separatist for POTUS
To give him the benefit of the doubt in light of this evidence is to swallow a hook, line and sinker.

If you still think the good outweighs the bad, that's you're prerogative. My only interest (at present) is hashing out the pertinent facts, not debating libertarian philosophy.
 
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For a supposed non-racist, it's curious how Paul is constantly catering to white supremacists and other hardcore bigots...



  • Wow! I hadn't seen this one quoted before, but it certainly should be:

    Ron Paul said:
    The Duke's Victory​

    David Duke received 44 % of the vote in the senate primary race in Louisiana, 60% of the white vote and 9% of the black vote! ...

    Duke lost the election, but he scared the blazes out of the Establishment. If the official Republican hadn't been ordered to drop out, he might have won...

    Duke's platform called for tax cuts, no quotas, no affirmative action, no welfare, and no busing. "Tonight, we concede the election," he said. "But we will never concede our fight for equal rights for all Americans."

    To many voters, this seems like just plain good sense. Duke carried baggage from his past, but the voters were willing to overlook that. And if he had been afforded the forgiveness an ex-communist gets, he might have won...


    So David Duke was the real non-racist, who was fighting for equal rights for everybody and speaking just good old-fashioned common sense.

    Has Ron Paul addressed this newsletter item yet? I'm curious whether this is another one which is simply out of context, and which his followers will start reprinting in full so people can see how different and innocent the full version is from what's being passed around.
 
In one sense you're right, the libertarian position is the least racist. But in another sense it's the most racist:
And I would again point to the Preamble to the Constitution. The federal government is the entity one of whose purposes is to "secure the blessings of liberty".

People like Ron Paul seem to think we're still under the Articles of Confederation and often try to portray the federal government as the usurper of liberty.

The actual history of our country (as your sign illustrates) seems to agree with the framers of the Constitution more than with Paul's perspective.
 
The endorsements that a candidate makes are highly significant data points, none moreso than an endorsement for POTUS.



And Chuck Baldwin is a piece of work indeed. He's all about a concept called The American Redoubt which carves out a large, extremely white chunk of the US to be taken over by fellow Christian white separatists. The proposed area consists of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, eastern Oregon and eastern Washington. Unsurprisingly, they'll even have their own currency.

Baldwin was a long-time pastor of a church in Florida. In 2010 he retired and moved to Montana.

This is the abject lunatic Ron Paul endorsed for president of the f'in USA.

Still, I don't see Ron Paul supporters caring about any of this stuff, I just don't know what it will take to get them to sit up and pay attention to the troubling things that the candidate they support has actually said.
 
The New Republic went through more of Ron Paul's newsletters and found more instances of racism, homophobia, anti-semitism, NWO conspiracy theories, praise for Scientology and other bizarre stuff.

TNR said:
Ron Paul has recently suggested there was only a “total of about eight or ten sentences” of “bad stuff” in the newsletters that he regularly used to publish under his name. This assertion was patently false: As TNR has shown, the newsletters contained dozens of statements marked by bigotry and conspiratorial thinking. In light of Paul’s continuing evasions about the newsletters, and with hopes of clarifying the matter definitively, TNR is now making more of them available.


There are several dozen items listed, none of which have been mentioned yet in this thread. TNR gives a brief summary of each, with a link to a PDF of the newsletter pages so that people can see the full text for themselves.

When people first began reporting on the stuff that was in the newsletters, Ron Paul first defended the material. Then he said it was being taken out of context. Then he conceded the quoted items were bad but claimed he didn't write them, and hadn't been aware of them because it was only a handful of items over a large number of years.

But the more of the newsletters which people are able to read through, the more of this material they find.

And there's more bad news for Ron Paul: his claim that he didn't write the newsletter items and was completely unaware of them is becoming increasingly untenable.

Paul and his supporters have repeatedly claimed that, even though the newsletters had “Ron Paul” in the title, were sometimes written in the first person, and often carried his signature and photo, the general lack of bylines proves he didn’t author them. Others have claimed that Lew Rockwell, Paul’s former chief of staff, was the author. However, the most infamous of Paul’s publications, the June 1992 issue of his Political Report entitled “A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism” (which James Kirchick reported on in his original 2008 investigation for TNR), was later published as a monograph entitled “Race Terrorism in America,” and was bylined by Paul.

In the December 1996 Survival Report, the last issue before he re-entered Congress, Paul wrote that subscribers would receive a free subscription to The Triple R, or Rothbard-Rockwell Report, published by Lew Rockwell and libertarian activist Murray Rothbard. Paul, who has repeatedly claimed over the past month that he “didn’t read” his own newsletters, wrote, “I don’t agree with it 100% either, but I still grab it from the mailbox and read it, front to back, the minute I get it.” This issue also referred to Rockwell in the third person: “The editor, my old friend Lew Rockwell, was my chief of staff in the House, and he’s worked with me for 12 years on this newsletter.” The June 1991 Political Report invited readers to “Join Me” at a conference, mentioning that Rockwell and Rothbard would be speaking alongside Paul.
 
TNR said:
[T]he most infamous of Paul’s publications, the June 1992 issue of his Political Report entitled “A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism” (which James Kirchick reported on in his original 2008 investigation for TNR), was later published as a monograph entitled “Race Terrorism in America,” and was bylined by Paul.


Good news for Ron Paul defenders: WorldCat lists only one library (University of California, Davis) which has a copy of this.

Bad news for Ron Paul defenders: the booklet is now available online at various sites.

I had trouble accessing the PDF copy which TNR has posted, but was easily able to read the entire booklet on scribd
 
Another former staffer has contradicted Paul's (already lame) excuse:
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
 
Another former staffer has contradicted Paul's (already lame) excuse:

Who would do anything else? You have a newsletter going out in your own name; who on earth wouldn't want to know what's in it? Who on earth would let others put words in his mouth without making sure that those words are words he agrees with? I sure wouldn't.
 
Who would do anything else? You have a newsletter going out in your own name; who on earth wouldn't want to know what's in it? Who on earth would let others put words in his mouth without making sure that those words are words he agrees with? I sure wouldn't.

And especially since for years and years these newsletters were something he liked to talk about and promote. The notion that they were just something produced by a company he was a part owner of and he was quite distant from doesn't line up at all with reality.
 

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