Jesus Christ, there is no evidence that he has been a racist beyond a newsletter he did not write by himself 22 years ago, by now you should know that.
Got anything more convincing?
I'm pretty sure there must be hundreds of racist quotes of him since and before the newsletters, right?
It's a matter of interpretation, Oliver, of Ron Paul's words over the years. 20 years ago he was more off the cuff (if that's possible
). Clearly he changed over the years to either be more careful, or maybe he's even softened his bigotry from that time period.
But when I hear Ron Paul today, I hear a man who sincerely believes there are more people who are poor that resent their situation and want a handout because of it than there are poor people who are poor by circumstance of birth, who do work very hard, who don't want a free lunch and who nonetheless need one.
From my point of view there are more people in the latter group, in Paul's there are more in the former group. If you believe the latter is true, Paul is a bigot, stereotyping the disadvantaged people he sees. And certainly one sees plenty of disadvantaged blacks. I think Paul, from hearing his own words, can't help but see lots of blacks as wanting resources they didn't earn and don't deserve.
If you believe Paul's underlying premise that a large percentage of the needy are needy because of their own actions, then you would not see Paul as a bigot, you would see him correctly reflecting the population of poor people. What makes a person a racist or a bigot is assuming false attributes about someone at a single glance because the racist has false underlying premises.
Maybe Ron Paul has learned to stop himself from repeating racist remarks about blacks. In fact, there's little doubt he has. He goes out of his way now to talk about legalizing drugs and other consenting adult behavior as something that would correct the raw deal black males get in the justice system. That focus serves to compensate for a lot of his past racist remarks. But such a focus doesn't disguise completely Paul's long history of seeing poor black men as responsible for their own situation.
The narrative needs to be rewritten. For Libertarians with Paul's underlying premises, those that blame poor adults for their own situation, I wish they'd look instead at the disadvantages children of the poor have and stop resenting the financial burden Libertarians of Paul's position see in the poor adults' situations. But you don't hear that from Ron Paul, to my knowledge. Correct me if I'm wrong. Paul is all about disavowing any responsibility for adults Paul believes caused their own problems. Do we ever hear him say society should invest in equalizing the playing field with programs for poor children?
No, he says tough luck what cards were dealt to you, it's up to you, not the group to do anything about it. This is the attitude of someone who blames the poor for being poor. It's also the attitude of people who see the poor as leeches. And given Paul's past racists rants and current beliefs about the poor, I don't see convincing evidence Paul has had any kind of major changing of his views just because 20 years have passed and he verbalizes denial of those underlying beliefs. The underlying beliefs show through the denials.
