Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, presents himself as a libertarian who believes in smaller, limited government and a strict adherence to the Constitution.
Hogwash.
For decades, Ron Paul churned out vile newsletters peddling unfiltered racism, anti-gay hysteria, and anti-Semitic, John Birch Society “trilateral” insanity.
If you’ve got the stomach for it, you can peruse dozens of these at Mr. Destructo. It’s the kind of old-school, flagrant racism you only see inside a closed circle of angry white people certain that only other angry white people are listening. This is how white racists talk when they’re confident that no one who isn’t a white racist — no one black or brown and/or smart — might overhear what they’re saying. It’s despicable stuff.
Here are Ron Paul’s suggestions for renaming New York City: “Welfaria. Zooville. Rapetown. Dirtburg. Lazyopolis.”
And here is his advice for his readers who live in “a major city”:
You’ve probably already heard about the newest threat to your life and limb, and your family: carjacking.
It is the hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos. … In the old days, average people could avoid such youth by staying out of bad neighborhoods. Empowered by media, police and political complicity, however, the youth now roam everywhere looking for cars to steal and people to rob.
What can you do? More and more Americans are carrying a gun in the car. An ex-cop I know advises that if you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposed of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example).
I frankly don’t know what to make of such advice, but even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming.
That, in essence, is the recurring theme of these Ron Paul newsletters: “The animals are coming.” Watch out for “the coming race war in our big cities.”
Civilization is under attack, Paul’s newsletters warned. So arm yourself. And invest in gold. Not stocks and bonds, not bank deposits, just gold.
Ron Paul is invested in gold. The value of those investments is ultimately based on just one thing: Getting lots of other people to invest in the same thing. As Joshua Brown puts it, gold is “the ultimate supply-demand trend bet.”
And Ron Paul, like everyone else who’s ever used the word “trilateralist” unironically, is all-in on that bet.
Observe any far-right fringe organization, publication, website or radio show and you’ll find ads urging you to put all your savings into gold. Those ads will be juxtaposed with non-advertising content urging the same thing. From Ron Paul to Rush Limbaugh to Glenn Beck to Brannon Howse, this is how these guys make a living. It’s a racket, a scam, a long con — and a lucrative one, apparently.
Now, just because Ron Paul is up to his ears in this invest-in-gold scam doesn’t mean he isn’t also a true believer in the nasty “the animals are coming” racist filth he’s promoted for years to push up demand for gold.
Maybe he believes this garbage, or maybe it’s nothing more than a cynical scam. But those are the only options. As Ta-Nehisi Coates notes, the best we can say about Ron Paul is that he might not be a bigot, “simply part of a coalition who saw bigotry as a potent political force … the ugly tradition of non-racist demagogues”:
It is comforting to think of racism as species of misanthropy, or akin to child molestation, thus exonerating all those who bear no real hatred in their heart. It’s much more troubling to think of it as its always been — a means of political organization and power distribution. Such a definition makes the “I’m a good person” defense irrelevant.
I could easily believe that Ron Paul holds no more particular disdain for blacks than George Wallace or John Patterson. These were not evil men. They were good people, who consented to evil in the pursuit of power.
And that is why Ron Paul, whatever else he may be, is not a libertarian or an advocate of smaller government or a friend to the Constitution.
Because when power is attained by such means it becomes power in service of those means.
If you want to know what Ron Paul’s “small-government” utopia of personal liberty looks like, just read the following.
Nicholas K. Peart, “Young, Black and Frisked by the NYPD“
Last May, I was outside my apartment building on my way to the store when two police officers jumped out of an unmarked car and told me to stop and put my hands up against the wall. I complied. Without my permission, they removed my cellphone from my hand, and one of the officers reached into my pockets, and removed my wallet and keys. He looked through my wallet, then handcuffed me. The officers wanted to know if I had just come out of a particular building. No, I told them, I lived next door.
One of the officers asked which of the keys they had removed from my pocket opened my apartment door. Then he entered my building and tried to get into my apartment with my key. My 18-year-old sister was inside with two of our younger siblings; later she told me she had no idea why the police were trying to get into our apartment and was terrified. She tried to call me, but because they had confiscated my phone, I couldn’t answer.
Meanwhile, a white officer put me in the back of the police car. I was still handcuffed. The officer asked if I had any marijuana, and I said no. He removed and searched my shoes and patted down my socks. I asked why they were searching me, and he told me someone in my building complained that a person they believed fit my description had been ringing their bell. After the other officer returned from inside my apartment building, they opened the door to the police car, told me to get out, removed the handcuffs and simply drove off. I was deeply shaken.
Radley Balko: “Kafka Surrenders“
The trial court, the appellate court, and the prosecution all concluded that these two cops broke the law, yet still, all three have deemed that the cops’ testimony is more credible than the testimony of Crossland, his cousin, and the other witnesses — none of whom was doing anything wrong before the confrontation. … Only one party broke the law before the confrontation. But because that party sports a badge and works for the government, they still get the presumption of credibility over the guy who was minding his own business, his cousin, and the other witnesses. …
Police need only the flimsiest of suspicions to stop you on the street, detain you, and search you. But even if they don’t even have that, they aren’t likely to suffer any serious sanction for an illegal search. Nor is a court likely to believe you should you try to complain. If you resist — physically or verbally, whether the search was legal or illegal — they can bring the hammer down, with damn-near impunity. And after the violence, you’ll be the one going to jail.
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