To those who have followed Paul's long career as a failed presidential candidate—these campaigns have become a family business—the appearance of yet another racist nut job in his orbit is scarcely news. The newsletters that earned millions of dollars for him from gullible subscribers over the decades were often soiled with vile invectives against blacks and other minorities. He is a perennial favorite of the John Birch Society and kindred extremists on the right. He once refused to return a donation from a leader of the Nazi-worshipping skinheads in the Stormfront movement.
What is it about the seemingly kindly old doctor that attracts some of the most violent and reactionary elements in society to his banner?
Turning Back 20th-Century Progress
For many years, Paul was merely an outlying crank in the ranks of the Republican Party—a "libertarian" who courted the paranoid bigots in the John Birch Society, whose monthly magazine featured his name on its masthead as a "contributing editor." More than a decade ago, during his 1996 campaign for Congress, Paul was exposed in connection to the racist ravings in his newsletters—the same series of articles that besmirched Martin Luther King and Barbara Jordan and encouraged every racist stereotype about African Americans as criminals and welfare dependents. He disowns those words now, but at the time a spokesman defended them as merely "taken out of context."
Back then, his rhetorical flirtations with the White Citizens' Council hardly mattered. Almost nobody bothered to listen seriously to his urgings that America return to the gold standard, repeal the income tax and the direct election of U.S. senators and erase all of the advances of the past century in protecting the public from cyclical depressions, poisonous food, water, air and drugs, and the insecurities of poverty, old age and ill health. Most Americans still could remember when this ideology influenced policy and knew that the nation was not better off—except for a few robber barons—back in the days before Theodore Roosevelt inaugurated the Progressive Era, beginning a century of reform.
On the far right, including wealthy figures such as the Koch family that once supported the Birch Society and now back the tea party, there are many who share Paul's brand of political nostalgia. Kindly and gentle as he appears, Paul has always known how to sound the dog whistle that excites them, whether it was in the race-baiting that adorned his newsletters for years, the claims that medicine served us better before Medicare and Medicaid or the campaign against the Federal Reserve. Although Paul has occasionally disavowed his supporters on the ultra-right when political expediency demanded it, they have never abandoned him—and they won't, because whether or not he is actually a racial bigot, he shares their disdain for the 20th century.
There is little reason to worry about the policies of a Paul administration, despite his current lead in the Iowa polls. But the rise of the tea party and the vacuum of leadership in the Republican Party have created a space for Paul's lethal fantasies, which if enacted would return us to the bad old days of mass poverty, rampant pollution, racial supremacy and all the other ills that characterized the America of the robber barons.
© 2011 Creators.com
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The presstitutes have been hammering away incessantly at Dr. Paul these last few weeks ever since he took the lead in Iowa; it's a good thing hardly anyone with a brain gets their news from the mainstream media anymore. I used to think the Shepherd had a modicum of independence and journalistic integrity, but that assumption has been proven wrong time and time again as it is clear they tow the line for the Democrats. I guess the point of this article is to make progressives thank their lucky stars for St. Obama. Unlikely. Racist comments that were written by someone other than Dr. Paul over 20 years ago and disavowed by Dr. Paul nearly 15 years ago have no relevance whatsoever in this election. It should be noted that despite Blacks only comprising 13% of the U.S. total population, they account for 65% of the non-violent drug offenders who are currently sitting behind bars. Dr. Paul has vowed to end the War on Drugs and to fully pardon all non-violent drug offenders who are currently incarcerated. That doesn't sound like something a racist would do, in fact, it sounds like the complete opposite. Dr. Paul has never appeared at any white supremacist rallies, whereas President Obama has appeared at events with the New Black Panther Party. What's more offensive are the criminals like Jon Corzine that President Obama has surrounded himself by and continues to receive advice from.
The non-wealthy portion (the older ones, especially) want some relief from all those hated income redistribution and civil rights reforms from school integration of 1954, Civil Rights Act of 1964, LBJ's Great Society bringing in the hated redistribution programs of Earned Income Credit, AFDC Welfare, and Medicaid, Affirmative Action in hiring, Equal Employment Opportunity rules and so forth. I even hear steadfast Democrats (living in West Waukesha County of all places), complaining that "those people [blacks] have screwed up everything!"
The wealthier, business owning ones really do not complain about all those social reforms, these actually provided a larger workforce, and that drove down wages due to the abundant supply of labor. Besides, the great inequality of wealth allows these owners to retreat to high cost regions where "those people" can't rub shoulders with them anyway. This class complains more about taxation, and the business cost of meeting regulations, such as environmental, accounting reforms, IRS deduction rules. Free market takes care of wages.
For the Republicans to pull these opposing factions together, they need someone who not only appeals to the John Birch attitudes, but also appeals to the Libertarian "no rules and regs" crowd, plus crossover enough Obama-voting young to swing the election. This is where Ron Paul gets the college crowd, wanting international isolation, meaning no more young people sent to die in foreign wars. I suspect Ron's Libertarian appeal also wants the legalization of marijuana, a surefire young vote getter.
I've heard even inner city blacks claim they want the 1800's back again, when nobody paid an Income tax except for the top 3%, and one could hunt and fish freely with no fear of mercury or PCB's in their fish. Of course, not all births and deaths were registered, one could slip through society fairly anonymously. Medicine really was not as good, but at least you did not need a good credit score and a job-funded insurance plan before the doctor or dentist would treat you. Even those in Mr. Livingston's "choice/culture of poverty" could muster up a few chickens to pay the doctor with.