A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words

Ron Paul: A man who profits off of racism

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ron-paul-signed-off-on-racist-newsletters-sources-say/2012/01/20/gIQAvblFVQ_story.html

This doesn't surprise me. The "Ron Paul Survival Report" newsletters were all approved by Ron Paul! Wow, I couldn't have seen that one coming. The newsletters include so many hateful statements (MLK Jr. was a pedophile, most black men are criminals, NYC should be renamed "Welfaria," Israeli secret agents bombed the world trade center, he misses when gays were "in the closet,") that he has long denied having seen them.

People who worked on the newsletters are now coming forward and saying that he actually approved all of the material in the newsletters that bore his name.

Got to love this explanation from the article:

A person involved in Paul’s businesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid criticizing a former employer, said Paul and his associates decided in the late 1980s to try to increase sales by making the newsletters more provocative. They discussed adding controversial material, including racial statements, to help the business, the person said.

“It was playing on a growing racial tension, economic tension, fear of government,’’ said the person, who supports Paul’s economic policies but is not backing him for president. “I’m not saying Ron believed this stuff. It was good copy. Ron Paul is a shrewd businessman.’’

Ron Paul is the Worst because ... he wants to abolish the Department of Education

http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/education/

Just to be clear, his proposed federal budget has $0 for the Department of Education.

That means:
- No more National Student Lunch Program
- No more Title I funding (which provides supplemental funding to the poorest students)
- No more FERPA (which requires school districts that receive Department of Education funding to get students consent before disclosing the students' records)
- No more federal student loans for college students

It seems like Ron Paul would never allow any federal spending on education. EXCEPT actually he proposes that parents who homeschool their children will get a $5,000 tax credit. Of course, a tax credit is just a form of spending through the tax code - it has the same effect on the budget.

Just to recap, in the Ron Paul worldview, when the federal government provides funding to school districts, that's unconstitutional socialism, but when it provides $5K per year per home-schooled student, that's small-government brilliance.

Ron Paul is the Worst because ... he believes the United States was in charge of the 9/11 terrorist attacks!!!!!!

Here's the back story on this one. Ron Paul made a comment a few years ago that said that we needed to research the "true" origins of 9/11. After this comment, he has spent years vigorously denying that he is thinks the United States government was responsible for perpetrating 9/11. The reason that his comment arose suspicion is that a "9/11 truther" is someone who believes that the US Government caused 9/11 in order to have an excuse to go to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The craziness of the view can not be over-stated. Because that view is so extreme, I always assumed that Ron Paul did not really hold it.

Until I saw this video...

Why won't Ron Paul speak the "truth" about 9/11? "I can't handle the controversy."

What does this tell us?
1. Ron Paul believes the US Government caused 9/11 and is willing to say it when he doesn't know there are any cameras.
2. I never want to hear again about how "honest" Ron Paul is! He tells one thing to the national media and another thing to his supporters in secret.
3. Ron Paul is a bad and scary man.

Ron Paul is the Worst because ... he opposes the Civil Rights Act of 1964!

The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a great moment for America. After 100 years of segregation following the Civil War, President Johnson signed into law a bill that made segregation by  government (e.g., schools), at the workplace, and and in public accommodations illegal.

I would have assumed that any candidate running for President in 2012 would support the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But, oh wait, Ron Paul has done it again...

Let's look at Paul's arguments in this video:

1. He was opposed to the portions of the law regulating private conduct (e.g., the workplace and "public accommodations" owned by private companies) because of the "property rights element."

It's important to note as Chris Matthews does that most southern employers refused hire to African American employees and most public accommodations in the south were segregated in 1964. So if the law had passed without regulating private conduct, massive segregation would have remained in the south in 1964.

I find Paul's "property rights" answer extremely unconvincing. Of course, it places some restriction on how someone can use their property if he or she can't discriminate against African Americans. However, the absolute unrestricted use of one's own property is not the only value that we are trying to uphold in American society. Another value is freedom (which Ron Paul talks about a lot). I would posit that southern segregation is a great example of how government is not the only entity that can stop someone from being truly free. When the social norms of an entire society (such as the South from the end of Reconstruction to 1964) inhibit one race of people from being hired by employers or from staying in public accommodations then the freedom of people of that race is being curtailed.

2. No one would discriminate even if there was no 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Discrimination existed for 100 years after the Civil War. The discrimination went away not because "times changed" but because of the specific changes caused by the Civil Rights Act. Ron Paul is playing so dumb here, it's outrageous.   

It's hard for me to believe that Ron Paul even believes what he is saying. Note in the video on the Civil War below, he notes that "hatred lingered" for 100 years after the Civil War, aka 1965. What does he think happened in 1965 that started to make the hatred dissipate? Was it just that magically racism started to decrease? Come on...there is an obvious explanation here for anyone who is not willfully ignorant history.

3. He's not a racist.

Matthews never called him a racist. However, Paul's position shows that he is not dedicated to racial equality. Rather, he is more interested in some abstract absolutist conception of property rights than ensuring racial equality. I find it irritating how quickly Ron Paul screams, "I'm not a racist" when no one has accused him of it. It's a smokescreen to distract from the terrible impact his policies would have on racial equality.

I'd like to end with Hubert Humphrey's words from the 1948 Democratic Convention when he spoke in favor of passing a Civil Rights Act (mostly because I find them moving).

My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights. People -- human beings -- this is the issue of the 20th century. People of all kinds -- all sorts of people -- and these people are looking to America for leadership, and they’re looking to America for precept and example.

My good friends, my fellow Democrats, I ask you for a calm consideration of our historic opportunity. Let us do forget the evil passions and the blindness of the past. In these times of world economic, political, and spiritual -- above all spiritual crisis, we cannot and we must not turn from the path so plainly before us. That path has already lead us through many valleys of the shadow of death. And now is the time to recall those who were left on that path of American freedom.

For all of us here, for the millions who have sent us, for the whole two billion members of the human family, our land is now, more than ever before, the last best hope on earth. And I know that we can, and I know that we shall began [sic] here the fuller and richer realization of that hope, that promise of a land where all men are truly free and equal, and each man uses his freedom and equality wisely well.

Ron Paul is the Worst because ... he blames Abraham Lincoln for the Civil War!!!

I'm beginning with a set of posts that examine Ron Paul's views on American history because it's important to understand just how wrong Ron Paul is about American history before diving into his policy positions.

So, here's Ron Paul on the Civil War.

Ron Paul makes two OUTRAGEOUS(LY WRONG) claims in this video:
1. He says that Abraham Lincoln engaged in the Civil War to get rid of the original intent of the Republic.

Lincoln did not start the Civil War. It's incredible that Paul could miss this elementary fact of US history. When Lincoln was elected (but before he was even inaugurated), South Carolina (and seven other states) succeeded. Then, the South Carolina military blockaded Fort Sumter. When Lincoln was inaugurated, he sent food and supplies to Fort Sumter. In response, South Carolina fired on the federal fort, thus starting the Civil War.

Let's do a simple couter-factual. If the South not succeeded, would there have been been a Civil War in 1861? No. Lincoln was trying to stop the spread of slavery to the territories but he wasn't even calling for the immediately abolition of slavery, let alone a Civil War.

2. Slavery in the United States would have gone away without a Civil War. Slavery went away in other countries without a war and the federal government could have just bought the slaves.
There are many, many problems with Paul's plan:
i. Lincoln actually wanted a government buy-out of the slaves and the Southerners rejected it. 
ii. As Yglesias point out in the link above, Southern opposition to ending slavery wasn't just about economics. It was also about maintaining a belief system about white supremacy. It was precisely that depth of feeling which caused the South to be willing to fight so hard for four years and lose 100,000s of men.
iii. Paul is arguing here that slavery would have just naturally gone away. What he is missing is that slavery was not a dying or even declining institution in 1860. In 1810, there were 1.1 million slaves. In 1860, there were 4.0 million slaves.  Furthermore, technology wasn't making slavery useless. Rather, the cotton gin made slavery more profitable and its invention in 1793 was one of the causes of the increase in slavery.

Ron Paul is the Worst at ... understanding the Constitution

Ron Paul claims to be a "constitutionalist." On the about page on his website, he claims to want "a return to constitutional principles." 

What, according to Paul was the main purpose of the U.S. Constitution? In the video below (from late 2011), Ron Paul says, "The main purpose of the Constitution was to limit and restrict the federal government and the purpose was to protect liberty."

That's just historically wrong. The purpose of the Constitution was to create a more robust federal government because the Articles of Confederation created a federal government to too weak. Of course, the Bill of Rights were quickly added to the Constitution and the goal of the Bill of Rights was to protect liberty. However, the federal government emerged vastly stronger after the adoption of the Constitution than under the Article of Confederation.

At the time the Constitution was adopted by the states, there was a great debate between the proponents and opponents of the Constitution. (At the time, the proponents were called the Federalists and the opponents were called the Anti-Federalists.) In order to understand the arguments during that time period, a great source is the "Federalist Papers" in which the Federalists published arguments in favor of the Constitution.

Ron Paul's view of the Constitution reminded me of something that Alexander Hamilton (who later signed the Constitution) wrote in Federalist #1:
"An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic and hostile to the principles of liberty. An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good. It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government." 


Hamilton defeated the opponents of the Constitution in his time. We must do the same.