Freedom Fighter, Racist, Homophobe and Anti-Semite

Neither the world nor America took notice when Texan Ron Paul made history one autumn day in 2009. House Resolution 2121, a bill introduced and supported by Ron Paul that deals with the transfer of a piece of government-owned real estate in Texas to the Galveston Historical Foundation, was signed into law.

It was notable because it was Paul’s first legislative success after 482 failed attempts over eleven two-year congressional sessions. Even more curious: It was the fourth time out of 620 attempts that a Paul-backed bill achieved unanimous committee approval.

Whether or not Paul celebrated his success as a late-blooming legislator is unknown, but the reasons given in a December 27 Washington Post article making Paul’s name as a legislator noteworthy are anything but flattering.

Spotlighting Paul’s Earlier Life

Shortly before Christmas, The New Republic turned the spotlight on the early career of a man who has run for his party’s nomination to be president three times between 1988 and 2008 and who just may win the upcoming Iowa caucuses.

According to the New Republic article, Ron Paul is not only the quixotic Libertarian crusader against America’s wars and oppressive policies (for which his peace-oriented student supporters love him), but he’s also a racist of the worst sort, a paranoid conspiracy theorist with anti-Semitic undertones, and a homophobe worshiped by America’s right wing militias.

His “Ron Paul Investment Letter,” where he was always listed as senior editor and publisher in the 1980s and 1990s, is replete with hair-raising attacks on America’s minorities that should be sufficient to forever exclude him from serious political discourse in America.

Paul’s Denials Are Vehement but Unconvincing

Things would be simpler if Paul had a realistic chance of getting the nomination. And if he would just admit that he had actually authored the pamphlets, many of them written in the first person, or that he had at least authorized their publication. But he vehemently denies both possibilities, albeit unconvincingly. He claims to have absolutely nothing to do with the contents of the newsletters and that he knows nothing about the authors of the articles. He merely distances himself from the atrocities published in them, maintaining that anyone who knows him would never believe he held such ridiculous opinions. He further says that he was extremely busy in his OB-GYN practice and paid little attention to anything else, claiming he had been somewhat negligent about anything related to the newsletters. He concluded that that had probably been his greatest mistake.

Paul apparently expects, or at least pretends to expect, that his angry statements should be accepted by the American media as the final word on the issue. He refuses to see that his ignorance of and indifference to such inflammatory things being published in his name is no less disqualifying than if he had actually written them.

Not One Mention of the Newsletters During the Debates

The only thing that saved Paul in 2008 when the newsletters were first revealed was pure chance. But even in 2011, the twee grandfatherly politician got through 13 televised debates with other Republican candidates without ever having to answer for his newsletters.

But now, in Iowa, he has been gaining momentum so there are no taboos and he is no longer just a curiosity. In 2008, Obama the candidate learned the past never dies. Especially if there is any videotape, the nourishment of cable television news.

The tirades from Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, condemning (an imperialist and pitiless) America nearly became the candidate’s downfall, although he didn’t author Wright’s sermons, he only sat through them.

Against People with AIDS and Powerful Jews

But there are no video recordings of Paul attacking his arch-enemy Martin Luther King, whom he described as a world-class adulterer and seducer of children, nor of Paul inveighing against AIDS patients, powerful Jews like “Rockefeller and Kissinger” who were out to destroy him, or Israel’s Mossad intelligence service that he claimed was behind the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.

If such recordings existed, Paul would have long since been discredited. Instead, the media pundits wait to see whether Paul’s campaign will self-destruct in Iowa.

Noted academics debate back and forth in Politico’s online forums what effect Paul’s newsletter might have on his election chances. The majority opinion is that anyone who sows hatred — or allows it to be sowed in his name — has to own up to it. Even decades after the fact and even if he wasn’t the author, but allowed the articles to be published under his name.

Jeffrey Stewart, professor of Black Studies at the University of California in Santa Barbara, recalls that Paul’s arguments are exactly like those who championed states’ rights over federal law in defending slavery in the 1860s and by racists against the civil rights movement 100 years later.

It’s not just pure chance that Paul is able to pull off the trick of attracting supporters from armed militia groups as well as the Occupy Wall Street movement. He accepts all volunteers saying if they support him that it doesn’t necessarily mean he supports them.