Mr. Paul says that one reason he can’t be a racist is that he opposes the war on drugs. Well, does he?

Or does he merely oppose a federal war on drugs?

In the past Mr. Paul has disassociated himself from drug decriminalization by saying that he merely wanted to leave the matter up to the individual states. In other words, he is not favoring decriminalization he just wants to change who does the criminalizing. That is a far cry from opposing the war on drugs itself. 

Texas Monthly, in 2001, did an in-depth look at Paul and noted that his opponents frequently tried to beat him up for want to legalize drugs. But the magazine clarified that Paul’s “office position was (and is) that federal drug laws ought to be repealed: Let the states handle all drug laws.”

So if the state of Texas wants to arrest people for drugs Paul has nothing to saw about it. He is not an advocate of drug legalization at all. At best he wants to redistribute those sorts of control to the state level. 

Who has to prove what in the Ron Paul scandal? Actually the burden of proof rests in different places at different times.  

If ten days ago someone said that Ron Paul was a bigot the burden of proof clearly rests with them. They have to offer evidence for this assertion. 

But when The New Republic published their article on Paul’s odious newsletters they also printed pdf versions of the actual newsletters. The content of those newsletters demonstrated rather convincingly that Mr. Paul regularly published a newsletter with bigoted statements all printed under Mr. Paul’s rather prominent name. 

With such stark evidence on the table Mr. Paul had to respond and repudiate that evidence. He could do this by claiming that the newsletters were forgeries. He didn’t. He didn’t dispute them at all. 

He did call them “old” news. Well, some were and some weren’t. In the past Mr. Paul was faced with some comments from one of his newsletters. So having that come up was old news. But the rest were newly added to the pile and were not previously known of during prior discussions of Mr. Paul’s bigotry. It is actually false to call this “old” news that has been answered before when in fact the bulk of the evidence has been put on the table for the first time. 

The problem is that Mr. Paul has shifted his explanation. When an election opponent raised the issue of Paul’s newsletter in 1996 the answer given by Paul was rather clear. At that time Paul said he had written the statements but that they were taken out of context. He was asked about his unkind statements about Barbara Jordan and said he was merely expressing “his clear philosophical differences”. In none of the news articles regarding the Ron Paul Newsletter that was under discussion in the past did the Congressman deny writing his own publication. He merely claimed he was taken out of context. 

By 2001 Mr. Paul’s story on the newsletter changed. He no longer admitted authoring the publication and countercharging that his critics were misinterpreting him. Now he claimed  that he was never the author. And what about Barbara Jordan? Previously Paul admitted writing the comment but claimed it only showed his differences with her. But by 2001 he was saying “I think the one on Barbara Jordan was the saddest thing, because Barbara and I served together and actually she was a delightful lady.” 

In other words by 2001 Ron Paul was saying that his previous statements about the newsletter were false. He basically claimed that he lied before. 

The original theory was that Ron Paul was a bigot. Newsletters indicating that were introduced as evidence. The burden of proof for that original claim was meet. Paul then offered a counter-theory. He argued that the newsletter was written by someone else. Who? He won’t say. 

But when Paul introduced a counter-theory the burden of proof shifted onto his shoulders. Since he previously did not deny authorship of the newsletters but does no now what evidence can give us to support his claim that someone else wrote it. He has offered precious little. The most he said was that it doesn’t sound like him. In essence he offers no proof to back up his counterclaim. 

As the story sits at the moment Paul admits he published the newsletter. He admits the comments are genuine and doesn’t assert they were faked. He no longer claims they were taken out of context merely that he didn’t write them. The newsletter had Paul’s name in big letters on the front page. Subscriptions to it were taken by his staff. It was printed by his campaign manager and it was edited by former aide and close friend Lew Rockwell. What  you have then is basically an admission that he published a bigoted newsletter for several years out of his own office. He put his own name on it but wants to say someone else wrote it.

Of course if they ghost wrote if for Paul then Paul is still responsible. And as the publisher he is still responsible. He was the one who put out the newsletter. At best if he proves someone else wrote it he will have only shown that he paid someone else to write bigoted articles in his name -- hardly an improvement.  But he’s not even attempting to prove that.

He’s refused to name the author. In addition he claims he can’t remember who it is. So why did he allow this to happen. He says it happened during a transition. Apparently it last several years which is hardly a transition. So why didn’t he stop this when he noticed it. He claims he didn’t notice it because he didn’t read his own newsletter. And apparently no one on his staff, his including his campaign manager, ever saw fit to tell Mr. Paul that bigotry was being promoted from his own office.  No subscriber mentioned it to him either. All his closest friends and allies who worked for him apparently conspired to keep him in the dark from what was going on right under his own nose.

That is hardly believable. To make it worse Paul’s office has stated that he will not investigate the matter. He won’t see who was on his staff at the time the newsletter was written. He won’t ask his editor, Lew Rockwell, who wrote this articles. (It should be noted that as editor Rockwell would have to either approve the articles or write them himself.)

So what about editor Rockwell? If Paul’s memory is so faulty that he can’t remember the name of the author what about Rockwell’s memory? Is it too faulty and faded? Why is Rockwell ducking the press and refusing to answer questions about his role in the newsletter? Why is Mr. Rockwell leaving his good friend out there by himself? As editor surely he could offer some evidence but he too is refusing. 

So Paul and his accomplices on the newsletter are blaming a nameless, faceless entity for work which Paul previously did not dispute as his own. So which time was Paul lying? Was he lying when accepted the articles as his own? Or now? 

I suspect it was before. I don’t think he wrote them. No matter. They went in to his publication edited by his long-time friend Lew Rockwell. Paul isn’t saying anything about why his editor allowed this to happen. He isn’t really saying anything at all.

So the first accusation, that Paul encouraged bigotry and expressed bigoted views in his newsletter is  pretty much proven. Whether the words were his own or a paid writers of his is of little importance actually. Even the Paul cult wouldn’t make this sort of exception in other circumstances. For instance, we all know that President Bush lied to the public about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Now I can assure you that while Bush repeated these statements he didn’t write them. They were written for him. That Mr. Bush had someone else put the words in his mouth doesn’t exonerate Bush for lying.

That Mr. Paul had someone else put the words in his newsletter doesn’t exonerate Mr. Paul for expressing them and distributing them. Mr. Paul has not made his case. 

First, I want to apologize for something. When I began this blog in 2005 I had the hope that once the information was out in libertarian circles that people would basically disassociate themselves from the Far Right types with their conspiracy theories and bigotry. I guess I expected too much. And I became despondent.

And while there was more material to write about then I could possibly cover I basically stopped most my writing. I didn’t see any progress in getting back to the saner libertarianism that I found so attractive. Even people who didn’t buy into the bigotry and conspiracism seemed to ignore it when they came across it -- as if they didn’t see what harm could be inflicted on libertarianism because of it. 

So when Ron Paul’s campaign came along, I didn’t post on him. I had lots of reasons for not doing this. One is that I’ve always liked Ron as an individual. He was pleasant enough. But he was always a social conservative in many ways, and his close associations with the John Birch Society was very disconcerting. In addition, Paul clearly bought into the wacky conspiracy theories that the Birchers and the Far Right were promoting. In some ways I was glad he was in Congress, but I did wish he were more libertarian and less kooky. 

I also hoped that Paul’s campaign wouldn’t push issues that are anathema to libertarianism. But he did. His anti-immigration stand and his desire to restrict abortion are troublesome. But there is much more that made me feel that libertarians shouldn’t get behind Paul. And part of that was a concern that if they did, they would get tarnished if Paul’s sordid connections with racialist thinking and such were to come out. I didn’t want libertarianism to be hurt. And the more Paul was associated with libertarianism the more likely it was it would be hurt. But to expose Paul’s background would itself bring about the very thing I feared.  So I hoped that after the first few primaries the Paul campaign would become a footnote in history, and libertarianism would escape the damage such revelations would bring.

There was another reason I didn’t mention the newsletters. While I was a subscriber, and remember being horrified by some of the things in them, my memory of them was distorted. I actually forget just how vicious they were. When these old newsletters were reprinted, and I reread them for the first time since their original publication, my memory was refreshed. I must say I was actually surprised that they were far worse than what I remembered. And what I remembered was bad enough.

Now for some thoughts on this Paul debacle. We must accept that the connection of Ron Paul to libertarianism means that his connection to vile, bigoted statements does tarnish libertarianism as well. How badly this will be, only time will tell. 

But the real problem isn’t Ron Paul. He was just a visible manifestation of the problem. I think the problem comes out of the Mises Institute and their promotion of very unlibertarian, Right-wing positions. Immigration is the most clear manifestation of that.

Since their guru, Mr. Hoppe, appeared on the scenes to sully libertarianism, the Rockwell position against immigrants has been seeping into libertarian thinking. Not only is that argument attracting bigots and racists to libertarianism, it pushes some libertarians in the racist direction. Not long ago a Libertarian Party elected city council member in Missouri proposed city legislation to confiscate the businesses of anyone who hires an illegal immigrant. This sort of racist thinking has gone so far that it is  now deemed “libertarian” to confiscate private businesses for not discriminating.  Worse yet, when a libertarian activists in the state tried to get the state LP to disassociate themselves from this act, the party officials refused. At that point I thought the Libertarian Party was too infested to be saved. And every time I would talk with these people they were throwing back at me the exact same arguments that the Rockwell site was promoting.

Over and over I found myself facing Rockwell’s arguments ,and every time it was pushing people toward some sort of bizarre combination of libertarianism, isolationism (as opposed to non-interventionism) and racialism. The threads of hate, that I have exposed here, were coming together and the whole libertarian movement was being effected, even if the people mouthing these arguments often didn’t know where they originated. Eventually it reached the point that Hoppe felt confident enough to openly bring advocates of racial supremacy to speak at his “libertarian” conference -- which is meant to be an alternative to the Mont Pelerin Society, where the Rockwellians have no influence.

Now Paul’s skeletons are partially out of the closet. His newsletters are now infamous. His close connections to the Mises Institute is now public knowledge. For the most part the Mises Institute connections to racists and anti-Semites is still not known, or at least not publicized. Some have noticed and commented on Rockwell’s ties to neo-Confederate (and heavily racialist) groups. But the mentions have been few and far between. At some point some journalist will stumble across that vipers nest and the truth will come out.

So the damage will be done. Is this good or bad? It is both. There is no question that libertarianism is going to take a hit because of it. But if I may appeal to something Ludwig von Mises said (the real Mises, not Rockwell’s invention). Mises said that government policies can create the business cycle, the boom and bust scenario. When government artificially stimulates a boom a bust will follow. Actions can be taken to stop the process but the actions will lead to economic pain. However, the longer one delays taking action, the greater the pain will be. So pain now is always better than the pain later. It does less damage.

The same is true here. This is going to hurt the libertarian movement. But if it didn’t happen now, the influence of the racialists and bigots would have only increased. That was the other threat of the Paul campaign. It was connecting a lot of people to Rockwell’s so-called “paleo-libertariani sm”. It would have strengthened their hand and their influence. The greater their influence the greater the harm when the eventual crash (the exposure) came along. 

I’m terribly depressed this happened. I had really hoped that Paul would escape on this issue, especially since his campaign was about to end anyway. But if that happened, then maybe libertarians wouldn’t have received the wake-up call they got from the New Republic article.  Maybe now they will ask themselves how it is that we got into this mess, who is responsible, and what we should do about it.

Maybe now they will see that some people are very destructive to libertarianism and that they sully the honor of a great man. I do think we need an institute that promotes the thinking and economics of Ludwig von Mises. But what did Mises say about the Confederacy? Mises fled a racialist regime that was about to arrest him. He was long dead when his name was used to promote policies and thinkers who, I think, Mises would have found repulsive. I can’t see the man who fled Nazi prosecution hanging out with people who speak to neo-Nazi conferences. 

So this is the opportunity libertarians have to clean house. They must severe their ties to the racialists and bigots. They can end their support of the Rockwellians. Just because these people do some good things does not undo the great harm they are also doing. Disassociation is the only real option that libertarians have. They ought to stop funding this group and stop associating with it -- even if they do like some of the policies or some of the projects. The utter immorality of the racism and bigotry more than undermines what good the MI people do. The good is corrupted because it is associated with the evil. The evil does not bring anything of value to the good but the good policies and projects give credibility to the evil. 

Speak out against the bigotry and racism. Disassociate yourself from these people and their projects -- even the goods ones. I hope someone else starts a good institute promoting Austrian economics, without the baggage that some people have imposed on it.  So while this is a time of crisis it is also a time of opportunity to set things right. 

Our warnings were basically ignored. And now the whole issue has exploded with the shocking (to some) revelations of Ron Paul’s newsletter and the vile statements that were published there.

The Paul newsletters were usually a joint project between Paul, Lew Rockwell and Burt Blumert. Perhaps they all were but I will only say what I’m confident about. Paul really did provide the name and the public face. He was the bait to attract the subscribers. The money came from Blumert to set things up and Rockwell did much of the writing. Of course Paul was fully aware of the newsletters and can’t really argue that he didn’t know what was published.

After all these articles appeared over a period of years. We are talking multiple issues and multiple years. To say Paul didn’t know implies he was totally comatose. It went on too long and in too many issues for him to feign ignorance.

The New Republic article accurate notes that to understand Paul you have to understand the Mises Institute -- the fount from which so much racism in the movement comes. And it noted that the crowd at the Mises Institute “are nothing like the urbane libertarians” at Cato or Reason. In fact they are unlike the libertarians I knew most of my life. As we have shown here repeatedly, people connected with Rockwell and his misnamed Institute regularly hang out with racists, bigots, anti-Semites and hate-mongers for all kinds. This article was correct to point out how the Mises Institute and Rockwell play a prominent role in the disastrous newsletters that were recently republished.

My understanding over the years has been that the newsletter was in fact written by Lew Rockwell. Mr. Rockwell is notorious in libertarian circles for having been the author. The problem is that this was one of those issues that was so widely known that no one archived the evidence. It just was. And Rockwell is refusing to talk. Paul is refusing to the name the individual who wrote the hate material.

So why won’t Paul name him? He has referred to him as a “former aide”. People assume that means he and the individual are no longer associated. That is a false assumption. Many people who are “former aides” merely move higher in the hierarchy. Rockwell was a former aide. He was also Paul’s business partner in the newsletter and has remained a major confidant and adviser to Paul. I suspect that Paul won’t name names because his previous answers were intended to imply he was so shocked by the content that he dismissed the writer.

Paul could get away with that excuse when it was limited to one issue of the newsletter. Now it covers many issues over many years and that doesn’t wash. The rumor is that Rockwell was the author and he remained Paul’s close ally and ghost writer for many years. They are still closely linked. So Paul’s previous answer would be exposed as intentionally misleading if he were to reveal that he and the actual author were still working together. If Paul was ever actually embarrassed by the content, and there is zero evidence he was, then he clearly wasn’t embarrassed enough to severe his connections with the alleged author.

Rockwell’s group publishes Paul’s books. I think we’d find that Rockwell, or other Mises Institute individuals, actually author much of Paul’s work. Paul’s books are on a far higher level than some of his rambling answers or explanations when he is interviewed. That seems a strong indication that Mr. Paul didn’t write his own books.

So I do, in large part, buy Paul’s story that he didn’t write much of this material. Though I can’t rule out that he wrote some of it. But the line that he didn’t read it or know about it is just too absurd to be believed. Nor do I buy that he was repulsed by the content of these newsletter since it looks to me that he has continued his close allegiance with the likely author of the pieces.

Does Paul agree with the hateful comments. I don’t know. He’s smart enough to know not to say such things on the campaign stump. And my interactions with Paul were always in the role of questioning him on things where he was defensive and trying to cover his ass on unlibertarian votes or positions he took.

The reason for this blog was to warn people about this festering sore before it really did a lot of damage. But Paul, who is closely allied to this vipers nest of Rockwellians, rose to some prominence mainly due to his strong opposition to the war -- one issue where he is right I might add. Unfortunately Paul’s close alliance with bigots meant that at some point the sordid newsletters would be exposed.

Every increase in the Paul campaign also increased the chance that these newsletters would be made public. I suspect Paul and Rockwell were counting on the relative obscurity of the publication and time to make that impossible. I believe some of the later years, without the racism, are available on line but neither Paul nor the Mises Institute would put the early issues on line. In fact Paul claimed he didn’t have any copies and couldn’t release them. But copies were found and that is what brought forth the rather unpleasant publicity.

The real tragedy here is that libertarianism itself is smeared because of this. Ron Paul was promoted as some sort of icon. Rockwell’s site published the claim that “’the Ron Paul question’ constitutes a litmus test for libertarians. Simply put, the ‘Ron Paul questions’ consists of determining whether or not a person supports Dr. Paul. If so, as I see matters, he passes the test and can be constituted a libertarian; if not, his credentials are to that extent suspect.”

What cheek!

Here is what is absurd. The racists at Stormfront have been cheering Paul all along. Many of these people are open about their race hatred and their support for Hitler or some form of racialist agenda. But they support Paul. According to Rockwell’s site, if someone supports Paul, “he passes the test and can be constituted a libertarian”. So apparently the Nazis are libertarians but many prominent libertarians are “suspect” because they don’t support Paul. Well, since Mr. Paul’s racist newsletters were exposed the number of libertarians in the world apparently dropped because lots of people are now sorry they were backing Paul.

I will state my main thesis again. It is lethal and destructive for any libertarian to be associated with bigotry and racism. Not only is it destructive to the cause of liberty but I would assert that it is morally wrong and contemptible. I don’t care how “pure” this individual pretends to be -- in fact many of the most racist types around the Rockwell circles brag about “anarcho-capitalist s” though their anarchism consists of massive state aggression against immigrants. Libertarians need to take back their movement from the racists and the bigots and let they people know they are not welcome. Maybe the bad publicity associated with the Paul debacle will do that, but I won’t hold my breath.