jollyroger's picture

    Ron Paul:"Even the Nazis got trials."

    Goddamit, this is worth something.

    I have earlier flirted with the lure of the one-issue constituent, or more precisely in Paul's case, three issues...) and I have humbly swallowed the inevitable scorn that (deservedly) is heaped upon one who would ignore acres of batshit crazy evil, so blinded by the beacon glare of an end to oppressive adventure abroad and at home.

    And with props to t-mac, et al, I ask (plaintively) what is it worth for a national politician to stand up and say, "No, you can't simply snuff your enemies, no matter how convenient you find it to do so."?

    I know that I can't put a precise price on this pearl, and I waver and cringe before the newsletters and the rather clumsy lies.

    But, Precious Blood of the Sweet Baby Jesus, Paul is so right  on the Drug/surveillance/war and due process issues, and so alone in being right!

    There may be sufficient quantum of virtue in these areas that does, as has elsewhere been framed, make this Trotskyite agree to tolerate all the intolerable baggage that comes with it.

    [Ed. This thread has been locked due to excessive meta, singling out bloggers, and other bad stuff. Genghis]

    Comments

    He is absolutely right.

    Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
    The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. -Senator Obama, 2007

    It's a shame that Senator Obama didn't become our President. I would've preferred him.


    I was trying to figure out if there was a Godwin exposure for invoking Nazis, but only as the recipients of the luxury of a trial.  Tough call.

     


    I think Paul gets a pass on this one, for two reasons. One, what you said, and two, he didn't say it in an internet forum. wink


    Plus, as I understand it, there is a good chance that when referring to Nazis getting trials, Paul is not speaking abstractly, but about one of his current supporters somewhere in Idaho with parking tickets on his souvenir Panzer.


    "No, you can't simply snuff your enemies, no matter how convenient you find it to do so."?

    Except if you have strong reason to believe he's trying to snuff you. You're allowed to pre-empt, but not prevent. If you don't pre-empt, and he strikes you, then you might well get impeached (as President). Isn't that, in part, what the hue and cry were about over Bin Laden Determined To Attack America?


    A state is permitted neither to prevent nor pre empt unlawful conduct by murdering the suspect.

    You can arrest, you can (where the law permits) use deadly force to prevent immanent flight.

    That's a long way from Hellfire from above, sorry if you are standing too near the prey.


     

    A state is permitted neither to prevent nor pre-empt unlawful conduct by murdering the suspect

    :Permitted by whom? 

    God? 

    The world's Constitution ?Got a copy you can lend me.?

     By the code of ethics which its own citizens voted into existence by an election ? I must  have missed that one. 

     


    The usage to which my comment was directed was the distinction referenced by Schwartz, vis, pre-emtive vs. preventive war.  

    Thus, an army masses on your border, you may pre-empt and strike first.

    But, if you justify your attack on the grounds that in six months you fear they will mass on your border and wish to prevent that from happening, you may not.

    I was riffing on that aspect of the law of war, as it would appear to be inapplicable to police actions which I maintain are what is afoot when an individual miscreant is pursued.

    As to the authority for declaring extra judicial execution to be impermissible, I take refuge in the US Constitution, Amendment V.

     


    I guess there's a fine line when it comes to asymmetric warfare, no?

    Is the person a miscreant...or someone carrying out military or even paramilitary operations against a country or its people? Your use of the word "enemy" would seem to suggest the later and not someone like Public Enemy No. 1.

    The asymmetry...the efficiency of today's technology...the ability to ship a powerful bomb across 6,000 miles.

    If the rule is that the person must be dressed in uniform and be leading a conventional army, then okay--but you're ignoring today's reality.

    And does it matter to your principle whether you send in a drone or a special ops unit? To be sure, the latter will result in fewer innocent deaths if any at all--but you're still killing the guy without trial.


    l do not conflate the military and police functions.

    Sadly, I am swimming against the American current in that.

    As to the lack of due process in either death by hellfire or death by special ops, both offend the foundation of our laws.

    We have degenerated into pure Star Chamber Bullshit-or Judge Dredd, if you prefer the modern incarnation.

    And the practices that result (eg, the preposterous refusal to permit Alwaki's father to seek some sort of due process on the grounds that his son was an adult (so what, they wanted a notarized power of attorney for the father??). deform our entire jurisprudence, as we wrench more and more of our formerly held absolutes into loopholes.


    Thus, when I hear a voice, even from a whackjob, that cries "halt", it gets my attention.


    Fair enough

    Happy New Year


    I wasn't aware of the father's plea. That does make a difference. Presumably, he could have been "talked down" and brought in to stand trial.

    I might say we're in a kind of war that requires police, intelligence, and special ops functions--not armies.

    The relatively small size of terrorist groups these days makes it hard to tell whether to treat them as, in fact, lone whackjobs, like Ted Bundy with bombs, or as para or full military groups conducting essentially military operations against us.

    But actually, we need a much bigger frame on these issues, I think. Our whole foreign policy needs to be discussed. No time now, sorry...


    Just to add on a bit...

    Police functions are essentially domestic. When someone is operating from another country, you need to have the cooperation of that country's police.

    If you don't or can't get their cooperation, then it no longer becomes strictly a police action, IMO.


    It is very easy to disregard the wackjob. Just apply a little reason.

    "It’s perfectly rational and reasonable for progressives to decide that the evils of their candidate are outweighed by the evils of the GOP candidate, whether Ron Paul or anyone else. An honest line of reasoning in this regard would go as follows:

    Yes, I’m willing to continue to have Muslim children slaughtered by covert drones and cluster bombs, and America’s minorities imprisoned by the hundreds of thousands for no good reason, and the CIA able to run rampant with no checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for “espionage,” and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers in secret, and a substantially higher risk of war with Iran (fought by the U.S. or by Israel with U.S. support) in exchange for less severe cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, the preservation of the Education and Energy Departments, more stringent environmental regulations, broader health care coverage, defense of reproductive rights for women, stronger enforcement of civil rights for America’s minorities, a President with no associations with racist views in a newsletter, and a more progressive Supreme Court.

    One problem is that so many *liberals* have decided that Glenn Greenwald must be wacko too.


    I think these are some valid points. An analogy might be made to Christianity versus Scientology. Both faiths are based on what seem to outsiders like some very shaky foundations. However, one has the legitimacy of tradition and majority support (at least in the United States). Similarly, the concept of "collateral damage" (AKA to "have Muslim children slaughtered by covert drones and cluster bombs") has gained a surprising amount of legitimacy, even among the center-left. Similarly with the other points Greenwald brings up. For whatever reason, they just "feel" less crazy, even though they're not.


    collateral damage

    How can it be possible for a nation simultaneously to trumpet values that, if actually vindicated, would make it exceptional indeed, while failing even to meet the Scarface standard of limiting brutality to adult men?


    I dunno Jolly.

    But, Precious Blood of the Sweet Baby Jesus, Paul is so right  on the Drug/surveillance/war and due process issues, and so alone in being right!

    Nothing is free and the states will just be pissed that they cannot get enough money to get into your bathroom cabinet.

    hahahahahaha


    Nah, they'll just apply civil forfeiture and sell my tiny time pills...


    And now, Happy New Year y'all.  I'll be back next year.  There's pussy out there...upwind if I don't deceive myself...


    Greenwald:

     

    " few progressives want to acknowledge that the candidate they are supporting — again — is someone who will continue to do these evil things with their blessing. Instead, we hear only a dishonest one-sided argument that emphasizes Paul’s evils while ignoring Obama’s (progressives frequently ask: how can any progressive consider an anti-choice candidate but don’t ask themselves: how can any progressive support a child-killing, secrecy-obsessed, whistleblower-persecuting Drug Warrior?)."


    I've changed my mind.  I want Ron Paul as President.


    Under Ron Paul, Blacks would have had no problem with the Montgomery Police Dept enforcing the rights of the Montgomery, Alabama businesses removing Blacks who performed sit-ins since those Blacks were violated private property. A government agency would be forced to participate in discrimination.

    Would Paul have felt it justifiable for Blacks to be removed from public transportation if they refused to go the back of the bus? Could the government police be used to deny Black citizens access to businesses and public buses? Would Paul have used to his power as an elected official to keep bus drivers from forcing Blacks to the back of the bus even though the White bus riders were in support of Blacks in the back?

    Paul seems to think that the government caused racial tension tension because the government enforced slavery and segregation. This seems remarkably naive given that the White population in certain regions was in favor of both slavery and segregation.

    Paul has had virtually no influence on Republicans in Congress who view Rep.Paul as a nut job. If you think Obama can't get anything passed, Ron Paul would be even more mired down

    Since Paul is not man enough to either take responsibility for his newsletters, is clueless or in denial on issues of race, and has no visible support in Congress, I don't see him as a viable candidate.

    If Paul can't address the newsletters, why should we believe that he will be forceful on a host of issues?

    Obviously, Paul is attractive to many. His negatives are just too high for me.



    I believe he could elevate his discourse, by simply editing out the definite article.  Elsewhere he mentions "the blacks" (maybe it would be better if he said " teh" and could claim irony?  Nah, prolly not...)


    He speaks out against the effect of the war on drugs on minorities, the short shrift blacks get in the court, and the devastating effect of wars. Did you find nothing to applaud in this?

    Did you consider that if the courts had fairly upheld the complaints of blacks, much of the Civil Rights legislation might not have been necessary? Try to think out of the box - the guy's not going for your typical 1 from column A one from column B Chinese menu, however much we like our politics served that way.


    Generally, when we communicate bad things happen. In short I view Ron Paul as someone who opines a great deal, but will accomplish nothing. He is a non-viable candidate. He traffics with White Supremacists and refuses to reveal the "author" of his racist newsletters. He is not trustworthy.

    Ron Paul is like going to a restaurant, ordering your favorite meal, having the meal prepared in excellent fashion, then having the meal served on he smelliest, urine and fecal invested garbage pail top the waiter could find. The stench makes the meal unpalatable.

    The courts did not uphold the complaints of Blacks, the Mayan calendar's 2012 endpoint is a good movie idea but not reality, and the Martians haven't landed. The Civil Rights movement was necessary.

    Blacks will find other champions for their issues. Progress was made without Ron Paul. Progress will continue to be made without Ron Paul. Blacks are not about to eat the meal from the garbage pail.

     


    Oh yes, blacks got Obama to champion their needs - that's brought a lot of jobs, economic success, racial equality and representation at the top these last 3 years.

    And Hillary and Bill were "racist" last time around.

    Enough of dog whistle politics and insta-labeling, how about look at the actual issues.


    Here we go again. Drug sentencing for cocaine has changed. Law changes are gradual. Look at the length of time between the beginning of the Civil rights movement up to the persistent problems of today. A steady battle with missteps and progress.

    Hillary Clinton is the Secretary of State under Obama. Blacks were  supportive of Clinton being Vice President after the Primaries were over. The Clintons moved on. Black voters moved on.

    The majority of Black voters look at the issues and make conclusions about who is more trustworthy. Ron Paul supporters disagree with the decision Black voters have made. Ron Paul supporters might spend their efforts in trying to get the majority of voters in the GOP nation-wide to support Ron Paul. Once Ron Paul competes in the Republican party Primary process and becomes the candidate, then he might be forced to explain the newsletters and accepting funds from supremacists to the minorities that he wants oh so much to help.

    No dog whistles are being blown, it is simply a matter of asking someone who wants to be President to explain his actions. If he cannot, then he does not deserve the position.

    But all of this is a mute [moot - d] point since Republican Ron Paul cannot win the Republican nomination. Lack of support from Black voters are not the hurdle Ron Paul faces.

     


    I don't see him as a viable candidate.

    Well, you certainly have that right...if by viable we are to infer electable.


    Look, there's no way that Paul is a friend to social justice.  Let's stipulate to that.

    It then comes down to ending the carnage abroad, and the mindless incarceration at home, and hoping for the best.


    There will be carnage caused as educational grants for college disappear.


    Unlike the pardons and the military withdrawals, not nearly within his sole discretion.


    You assert that a change in education funding intuitives for disadvantaged Americans would create as much carnage for those impacted as, say, a hellfire missile randomly launched into a family's living room by mistake? That's a messed up equivalence, IMO.

    You wouldn't forego a bit of financing if it would save human lives?


    I think we see the result of poor educational resources in our prison population an unemployment rates. We waste lives in the US all the time because we view educational resources as unimportant and teachers as workers who should be cheerful as thy are being underpaid.

    A better educated populace would cast more intelligent votes and not fall for the fear-mongering that leads to drones being deployed because the voting public does not object. Spend dollars on education and politicians who make weak arguments will have a rougher time. The elites would have a tougher time convincing the general public to vote against policies that would benefit the middle class.

     


    Where is this educated enlightened people you speak of?

    To get into Godwin territory, Germany in the 30's was well educated and had no problem being scared into adopting horrendous policies. The well-educated philosophical French in 1961 had no problem waging a brutal war of residual colonialism in Algeria with the result of some 1 million dead. The well-educated Americans had no problem being scared into a trumped up war in Iraq, with the well-educated Brits at their side.


    Note that the well-educated French don't allow Muslims to wear head scarves in school. Imagine your reaction if the government implemented some part of a dress code for blacks here.


    And I'm a bit taken aback by your comment on prison population due to education. Really? What is your thesis there? I can see 3 strikes directly incarcerating a million.

    I have a tough time figuring out how our prison population is worse educated than prison populations elsewhere or how that lack of education led to their imprisonment or whether it's the lack of education from the populace that leads to their imprisonment....? Don't understand, please explain.

    Mexico has 1/4 our incarceration rate - are they more educated? Iran has 1/2 ours, and they're considered repressive to the point of inviting invasion. But I didn't think slum-dwelling Iranians or those off in the mountains and deserts were particularly well educated.


    To pause the action a bit here...how much stronger is your argument than MrD if you're just "hoping for the best."

    When you listen to Paul, he makes it clear that all his points are interconnected. It's his view that you can't do one thing--e.g., stop the carnage abroad--and not do all the other things he wants to do, e.g., go on the gold standard.

    I'm not sure how he figures that, quite. But it is a REAL mistake to assume that he's going to be effectual on one issue and ineffectual on all the others. Even if he wins, he's not going to be up there all by his lonesome.

    I DO agree, however, that having him on dais discomfiting other debaters, or even Obama, would be a good thing. Having him win, I fear, would not be.

    Just to step out a bit...

    It's also worth thinking about the times when you might think it was a GOOD idea to intervene militarily. Bush, principally, has so damaged that idea that it might not be worth thinking about. But I think it's worth thinking about...when you think about Paul who does NOT object foreign wars on moral grounds, but on constitutional grounds.


     when you might think it was a GOOD idea to intervene militarily

    Never.  That's why I look forward to the emerging World Government, so ably forwarded by the recent constitutional fiaso vis-a-vis Lybia.


    Paul, I understand, says he would've been against intervention in WWII. That's about as "never" as you can get.


    True, but not in the hope that the wise and powerful overlords of the new world government would handle the unpleasantness over the Sudetenland...


    Okay, it's early for me and my mind should be working better, but...

    I don't understand what you're saying here.

    Leaving aside talk of the UN or world government...

    The major powers, particularly the US, did intervene to stop an evil. He would have been against this. I hope I'm not running up against Godwin's Law here. But I'm not sure I'm willing to accept a no-intervention-never position.

    As I recall, the left criticized Clinton pretty heavily for not intervening in Rwanda. In fact, it was said or hinted at the time that his lack of action on that front spoke of a kind of racism imbedded in our foreign policy.

    He may have been right not to intervene there. I honestly don't know. Given that those folks seemed bent on killing each other, I'm not sure we could've done anything except get ourselves killed. But maybe a coalition with the African Union and neighboring countries could've done something...maybe not.

    I don't know what Paul says about sanctions, but I wouldn't be surprised if he were against them. Where does that leave us and the world? With the US feeling good because, at least, we're not killing folks, even if folks are killing each other, and despite some hope that we might be able to stop or stem it?

    Should Jimmy Carter not have "intervened" with Israel and Egypt...Clinton not have intervened in Northern Ireland? I think Paul would say yes, they should not have.

    I can basically see the point in reining in our military...but exiting the UN and other peace-keeping, peace-making bodies and functions? Why? If one really cares about stopping the killing, this makes no sense to me.


    I meant my link to the libyan adventure to be ironic, in the context of a discussion of  guy who genuinely believes the black choppers are just over the horizon.

    I am for non intervention not because intervention is not needed (eg, Rwanda, as you mentioned) but because there cannot be legitimacy where it is under the direction of 'anything but the world government which will, in the long run, achieve the monopoly upon the use of force that our civil war ratified in the Federal Government.

    Thus, to parse Ron Paul's laudable declaration that he would eschew imperial projections of power in the context of a world government which obviates the issue was supposed to be funny


    When you listen to Paul, he makes it clear that all his points are interconnected. It's his view that you can't do one thing--e.g., stop the carnage abroad--and not do all the other things he wants to do, e.g., go on the gold standard.

    This is simply a false statement ... and doesn't even make sense. I've listened to Paul many times across a decent period of time. He has always been willing to work with anybody from either party advancing any of his goals. He always grabs on with both hands when an opportunity arises to advance an objective ... even if there isn't a path forward on the others.

     


    Sure, but that's not the goal. And the issues don't exist discretely.

    The goal is the over-arching goal, not one piece of it.

    He is pragmatic enough to form alliances that he thinks may get him closer to the overarching goal.

    I've listened to Paul, too...at least since he was a candidate on the Libertarian ticket.


    Ron Paul deserves it for saying he'd put US soldiers lives at at risk to capture and bring back home raghead terrorists in lawless lands like Yemen to protect their rights, while also saying, if those troops get back alive and are black, injun or mex, they got no right to complain 'bout being kicked out of restaurants, hotels, clubs or even bathrooms because of the color of their skin.

    That says a lot about Ron Paul and how good a President and Commander in Chief he would make.


    The Paul solution is to save one set of rights by giving up another set of rights.


    On social issues Ron Paul is the equivalent of Barry Goldwater. Both are/were willing to work with racists. When you talk about giving up a little freedom to gain a little security, just who is expected to give up freedoms for Ron Paul's security promise?


    You're on the right track here with your comments, but not recognizing enough. Liberal & progressive flirtations with Mr. Paul because his isolationism and civil right stances appeal is willfully ignoring the basis of his quite principled black and white philosophy: federal government has no business in social security-that's with small s's, including safety of the citizens. Personal "freedom" is the priority. Protect the nation's borders, that's all. If you want protection from international terrorists, or people selling baby cribs with lead paint, or senior citizens begging on the streets, or racist impulses, best to figure out how to do it locally or with your own know-how(or firearms or church vigilante group! wink), or by suing someone after the fact, I guess.

    I lean libertarian on many things, but I am also realistic enough to see one can't take the Ron Paul's or Barry Goldwater's piecemeal, it's just not who they are.

    Disagreeing with how you want the Federal government to approach the problems of international terrorism, or KKK-like or IRA-like or Mafia-like groups for that matter, does not mean you agree with Ron Paul who would believe that like everyone else, they are free to be whatever they want to be until they break specific laws. His kind does not believe in federal pre-emptive anything.

    --Juan Cole on the 2005 London subway bombings:

    Legislators in democratic societies who are thinking about how to respond to this problem should give serious thought to RICO-like laws that could be used to curb religious cults, which typically isolate members, indoctrinate them, manipulate them, and sometimes coerce them. Cults avoid scrutiny by harassing critics and whistleblowers, often in ways that police find it difficult to respond to. The enormous problems modern societies have had with groups like Christian Identity, the Koreishites, Aum Shinrikyo, and now al-Qaeda, suggests that current legal frameworks are inadequate to address this problem.

     


    Oh that pesky First Amendment...(btw I think the anti-gang injunctions mustered up by beleaguered urban  police forces grope at the solutions suggested by Cole.  Not that I am particularly comfortable with that doctrine as applied, but I wouldn't argue for the post facto remedies only, so what the fuck do I know?)


    I think Rep Paul believes that anti-discrimination battles are left to the overall desires of the community. If the community does not uphold your rights, you are S.O.L.


    I reiterate my stipulation that Ron Paul is no friend of social justice.

    That's the shit sandwich one selects by adopting a one (or three) issue candidate (for me--he's  a multi-issue candidate in certain wilder parts of Idaho, like where they are all sovereigns)

    I recognize that I have been driven smooth mad by the pile of bodies and the broken lives in jail.

     

     

     


    Ron Paul is a blowhard crackpot, and his acolytes are useless, self centered narcissists who by and large reflexively vote Republican, regardless of the damage done by the GOP.

    The biggest blow to our 'freedoms' was perpetrated by the Republicans, when George W. Bush lied the country into the war on Iraq. What can be more dishonorable, corrupt and iniquitous than sending Americans to their deaths in a useless, unjust war for lies, and Rovian calculations of partisan advantage.

    Ron Paul voted against the Iraq Use of Force Resolution. Big deal. So did most liberal Democrats, in fact, the legislation failed in the House on the Democratic side. The difference is liberals were in the streets and on the news pages warning against war, and trying to stop it.

    Ron Paul himself never led or appeared at even one demonstration against the war. There was, in fact, no libertarians, or CATO Institute scholars organized and in the streets to try to prevent the assault on our liberty.


    Trenchant analysis. Ron Paul's actual vote against the war doesn't matter. Why? Because he failed to head out and protest in the streets with a bunch of dipshit Democrats who weren't really mad about the war so much as mad about the fact that it was the Republicans who would get to handle all the killing instead of their team.


    Ronulan alert! A likely George W. Bush voter?

    'Dipshits' try to stop a war, while Ronulans fret about pain ray weapons!


    This is because he's not against war on a moral basis.

    His first principle is the Constitution and his second principle is Austrian economics.

    Everything flows from that. He doesn't deal with these issues piecemeal.

    If, in fact, he didn't appear in protest against the war, it's because war or no war is not the issue for him.


    I reiterate my stipulation that Ron Paul is no friend of social justice.

    Anyone who's no friend of social justice is a friend of mine-:)


    This seems to be a problem with people who've just started listening to Paul. They think he's got these discrete positions on the issues of the day--but he doesn't.

    He's been saying the same thing for DECADES and he's very, very clear how he comes to all his positions. They all spring from the same well with some contradictions.

    Even if we bring all the troops and drones home, it won't be home any more. Maybe we'll get what we once marched for: Bring The War Home! We might even have some body bags to show for it. Hopefully, only adults.


    The funny thing here is the attempt to cast yourself as if you are someone who has been listening to Paul for decades. Seriously? You expect anyone to believe that?


    I'm not casting myself as anything.

    I'm telling you what I've done.

    If you, or anyone else, doesn't believe...I can't help it.


    If you are asserting that you have been following Ron Paul's work and writings for decades and have studied his message in detail ... I'll call it straight: I think you are lying.

     


    Think whatever you want.


    This in and of itself is not a reason to criticize him.

    The idea it is proper for one group to lose rights in order to secure rights for another group is the intellectual premise that underlies the Civil Rights Act. In that case, the assertion is that it is proper for individual freedom in one's business affairs is to be limited/dictated by government in the interest of a broader social goal.


    The idea it is proper for one group to lose rights in order to secure rights for another group is the intellectual premise that underlies the Civil Rights Act.

    No, it is not. You don't have the right to oppress another human being or group thereof.


    You don't have the right to oppress another human being or group thereof.

    As far as your statement is applied to the issues addressed in the Civil Rights Act, this is only true because of the Civil Rights Act. Otherwise, the courts would have ruled against the practices as having violated people's rights and the Civil Rights Act would have been unnecessary. Kind of circular reasoning there, no?

    There is indeed a long-held right in America for people to select who the choose to do business with. The principal is kind of integral to how we approach commerce.

    The Civil Rights act does indeed take away a long-held commercial right by forcing individuals to engage in commercial transactions that they might not choose to freely engage in. You simply feel the balance of equities makes it proper. Exactly like Ron Paul feels his formula balancing various rights and equities in a different way is more proper.

    You would be better off arguing why your balance is better than Paul's rather than trying to criticize the structure of an approach which is structurally identical to one you strongly support.


    The idea that, Whites were satisfied by merely refusing to serve Blacks is ridiculous. Paul says that government imposed slavery and segregation caused racial hatred in Whites.

    Blacks did create their own economic models including professional societies, and institutions of higher learning. The were economic enclaves in Tulsa and Rosewood. The response of the White population to those enclaves was to destroy the communities.

    The Paul experiment has been tried in the past and does not bear repeating. The Pauls are the only ones who believe that a White family traveling down the highway and turning off an exit to find a place to eat and relieve themselves would pack their full-bladdered children back into the van to avoid using a restaurant that discriminated against Blacks, Gays, Muslims, etc. The public would be just a docile as the public outcries have been against the war.

    The solution to the ills of war is not going to be found in segregation.


    I never advanced any idea other than that the Civil Rights Act took rights away from some people in order to give them to others. Which, it does.

    Now, *this* has the rudiments of perfectly sound argument for why you think the freedoms limited were properly justified by the wider objectives achieved within society. But it is still a case of limiting rights to achieve a wider objective in society (now generally agreed by society to be basic rights - but honestly a product of statute in no small part because for whatever reason, having a boatload of racist-ass court rulings on the books still doesn't seem to bother anyone).

    Although you don't characterize Paul's position honestly at all.


    The disagreement does center on which set of "rights" are challenged. I have no problem being on the side of Martin Luther King Jr. Paul and Goldwater side with the White supremacists. My conscience is clear.

     


    And how does your conscience do with a Robert Mugabe, who decides blacks need ever more compensation for failings of the past and confiscates everything in sight?

    How does your conscience adapt to a Winnie Mandela, who took the seeds of righteous revolution and turned them into a vindictive bank account?

    The pendulum doesn't stop at center; it keeps swinging. The laws the feds used to enforce Civil Rights are the ones they used to incarcerate over a million African-Americans in an ever-expanded War on Drugs - one that Citizen Obama continues to push with his and Holder's raids on medical marijuana et al.

     

     


    I not quite sure which laws used to enforce Civil Rights have turned around to be used to incarcerate African Americans. 

    In the end, one can say that any broad social rationale regarding the rights of a group of individuals, even if the group is inclusive of everyone, can be manipulated to justify actions that cannot be considered just or appropriate.  Consequently, one can extend the logic to say that society should never attempt to re-balance systematic injustices because of the potential for abuse. 

    Affirmative Action is seen by many as the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction- that the suffering of whites outweighs the benefit to minorities. 

    What is key is that the oppression that is being addressed in these laws* and regulations is systematic, and specifically institutionalized.  The system is designed to perpetuate itself and resist efforts to weaken or eliminate it.  Some are more effective than others in achieving these objectives, but usually without direct intervention from society at large, the addressing of the particular oppression is unlikely to be successful, or successful only after a very long time.

    *There is no law which doesn't deny some rights of some or all people.  It just boils down to whether one believes the exercise of that right is appropriate for society and the common good outweighs the right of the individual.  My right to life is outweighed in principle with your pursuit of happiness to kill me, although there are special circumstances that some believe create an exception to this rule.


    Interstate Commerce is the battering ram for all sorts of federal intrusion - sorry, thought this would be obvious.


    This would be true if the federal government first used the Civil Rights Act to push the Interstate Commerce law to justify its actions.  The way you phrased it, it made it seem like had they not developed the justification for its right to enforce Civil Rights, there would not be the justification now used to go after things like medical marijuana.  Your beef it seems is really with the rationale behind the Interstate Commerce justification, and that is a whole other ball of wax.


    Robert Mugabe and Winnie Mandela used the US legal system and government to enforce their actions. Robert Mugabe  = Winnie Mandela = Martin Luther King Jr?

     


    Civil Rights leaders of the 60's. 

    Should I set up a glossary of terms?


    No glossary needed.  A compass on where you are headed with the references to the Clintons and lumping in the violence of Mugabe and Mandela in Africa with the US situation under discussion here may be in order.


    And also. To crib a question Lowry asked McWhorter in that video Lulu linked ... how long are we going to punish the South for past segregationist regimes?

    You speak as if the circumstances today are as they were in 1960. There's no way in hell things would go back to that even if the imaginary election of Ron Paul would somehow cause our legislature to repeal the Civil Rights Act .... which is fucking impossible. I don't doubt that screwed up stuff would happen; but there's no way the South could or world choose to re-segregate after the fashion of the pre-civil-rights era. In today's day and age no state can afford to take that kind of a direct PR hit. And again. Federal legislature would have to act ... and if the legislature *was* really inclined to do so, there isn't much the President could do to stop it anyhow.

    It's like Destor hyperbolizing about assured economic chaos in the unlikely event of a Ron Paul election ... and then having to admit that, well, Ron Paul wouldn't really be able to do jack/shit to implement a gold standard ... and the chaos part was nigh-on impossible; but he still thinks it's a really, really bad idea (which, it is) and doesn't want to vote for Ron Paul as a result (which is fine).

    On the other hand,  Paul would have the singular executive authority to follow through with the vast majority of his objectives vis a vis the conduct of our wars, putting the breaks on the horrible impacts of Regan's drug policies, actually ending torture, rolling back the police state a bit, and even releasing nonviolent "offenders" sitting in federal cells due to the politically-motivated drug arrests of administrations past.

    The solution to the ills of war isn't going to be found in demanding a person who would eliminate those ills say everything you want to hear, either.

    [Update: It should be noted; I didn't ignore your point about the reaction to economic self-empowerment. To my knowledge every significant attempt at establishing alternative economic and social-service models when people feel poorly served by the systems of society has been destroyed in one way or another. In recent decades, the means has become far less violent; but it remains highly subversive in the eyes of the powerful to try and move beyond the restrictions imposed by the economic and social systems of the status quo. Nothing to do with Ron Paul, really, just noting that the alternative economic approaches were likely seen by the powers at the time as far more dangerous than the idea of desegregated commerce ... so I'm not surprised the communities were attacked.]


    Rep. Paul has been a coward when it comes to answering who in fact wrote those racist newsletters. Paul also has no problem keeping funds supplied by White supremacists. I find little reason to trust Rep Paul to be a champion of my Civil Rights. The fact is that Paul will not win his party's nomination. He would also fail as a third party candidate.

    Did I separate out the South in talking about discrimination? Among the stuff that has happened since the Civil Rights era has been the denial of service to a group of African-American Harvard law students. I recently sat in a Cracker Barrel in South Carolina and noted pictures of individual Blacks and Black families hanging on the wall. The reason these photographs now appear is because Cracker Barrel faced legal action for failing to serve Blacks on multiple occassions in the past. The company is making amends by serving Blacks, making them feel comfortable in the establishments and hiring more Blacks. This was an excellent outcome.

    If you go to the link above that I provided to jollyroger, you will find the Paul does state that he considers racial distrust as being created by the "government" actions of slavery and segregation.

    How did I mis-characterize Paul's position. People will vote for the candidate of their choice and feel that their rights are supported or suppressed by a given candidate, welcome to the United States of America.


    The Harvard law students were in Massachusetts when they re denied service.


    Look up 

    Ron Paul 2012: Why he Deserves Black America’s Vote by Hao Li


    Wow! It's in large letters, that makes a very, very important article. Somebody name Hao Li Ron Paul promises to change federal drug laws. That exciting article cost me minutes of my life I can't get back. Thanks.


    Paul has an interesting ability to argue that all problems government seeks to solve are actually caused by government and that government only worsens the problems when it tries to solve them.

    That is a provocative statement, but I don't see how he proves it without recourse to ideology as opposed to empirical evidence.

    I'm not sure it is correct to say that slavery was caused by government. It is true to say that government came to protect slavery. But that was because the government was controlled by the slave owners.

    We keep falling into this false opposition between the government and the people. Yes, there is an opposition, but it's also true that government often reflects the people and their wishes.

    The other thing that's just weird about this is that it was STATE government that played a leading role in all this. And yet Paul, and conservatives in general, often punt questions to the state level as if state government were somehow immune to the problems of government in general and, because they're "closer" to the people, they are more responsive or fair or good or something. In case of slavery and Jim Crow, however, they were far worse than the federal government.

    Paul considers abortion to be murder. Therefore, he says, the states should decide whether to allow it. How does THAT work? Perhaps this is his way of accepting that abortion is controversial and compromising with pro-choice folks. You get some states and we get other states. But if you ACTUALLY believe something is murder, it makes no sense to "solve" the problem by leaving it to the states to decide. Yes, slavery is a venal sin, so we'll let the states decide what to do about it.


    I think the punting to the state level is just one step toward the desired long-term outcome - the individual as sovereign.  As such there will be alliances and coalitions in order to battle with other coalitions and alliances, but in each case the decision to join this or that alliance is left to the individual.  It is at its heart the strongest shall survive.  In matters of economics, it is those who have the greatest power to manipulate the playing field to their advantage.  Sometimes things like PR forces such individuals (or collection of individuals) to decide against their desires in order to achieve objective (such as profits) that meet other desires.  Just as on the society or communal level where we balance one right with another (and what are rights but the ability to achieve a desire), in Paul's world it is just for the individual to balance one desire with another (ultimately I think he would leave it to the individual's conscience to seek it; and the doctor's willing to perform it - being a business decision in part).

    Once the power rests with the states it can be punted to the local level (the state being a government after all).  And then at the local level it can be punted into the abyss (the local being a government after all).  Paul probably realizes once on punts, one affirms punting in principle.  It then becomes just a matter of who is punting and where, not whether one should punt the responsibility of ensuring rights at all. 


    Why don't you read something of what Paul says, rather than putting ridiculous interpretations in his mouth.

    Try Wikipedia, Political positions of Ron Paul

     


    I'm sorry but I am always going to assume anyone who advocates state rights over the federal government to the extent Paul does, who uses the rhetoric that government is the problem, and generally promote libertarian ideological points is someone who sees the individual as prime source of sovereignty.  Right now it politically expedient to push power down from the federal to the state level.  But as Peter pointed out there is really no clear justification on a number of issues why the state government has any more right to restrict the behavior of individuals than does the federal government. 

    On the wiki site it states Paul "asserts private property rights in relation to environmental protection and pollution prevention."  This alone indicates to me the underlying nature of Paul's position.  Private rights trumps the common good, or even the rights of other individuals downstream so to speak.  Go read my blog about get-off-my-damn-property politics, and then get back to me. 

    You can talk all you want about what position he took there or some words of speech here, but he is, if anything, a private rights proponent, and thus a very very dangerous person to have in a position of power.

    But here's another one: "He is also opposed to federal government influenza inoculation programs."  What possible legitimate justification can one have to claim the federal government shouldn't get involved in order to ensure the whole country has equal access to this care. Of course if one doesn't see such things as priorities, one would feel differently, that is until the illnesses from those other areas starting jumping boundaries and borders. 

    So while he believes the states should decide whether to regulate or deregulate drugs, there is nothing stopping one country within the state wanting to regulate or deregulate drugs?  Why should the state have the authority to tell the people of the county what drugs they want to use?  You speak of slippery slopes from attempts to redress wrongs committed, but seem to be unwilling to acknowledge there are slippery slopes in every matter.  It is really just a case of which slope one wants to flirt with.


    Wait a minute, are you really suggesting that you can't trust a politician to tell you what he really believes? Tell me it isn't so!


    There's a principle you ignore, which is that the government closer to you has a better match to your values and needs. People in Montana or Alaska have quite different requirements than those in New York or Florida. 

    There are some efficiencies in aggregating 50 states, and there are some losses.

    You also ignore tort law as his method of enforcement - but isn't that part of what the government uses to enforce these laws, only presumably suits would be carried out at state level or occasionally at individual. Could Alaska not sue Exxon Valdez just as easily as the US government? Would Louisiana have had better relief from BP than the US got? 

    In October, a Louisiana district court denied the State of Louisiana’s request to remand its lawsuit against BP to state court. Following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Louisiana filed suit against BP for violations of Louisiana state laws, particularly for harms to Louisiana wildlife as a result of the oil spill. Louisiana originally filed suit in state court, but BP later filed a motion to move the case to federal court. Louisiana challenged the removal; however, the district court found that removal was merited on the basis of subject matter jurisdiction and diversity jurisdiction.

     

    The State of Louisiana has filed its most extensive complaint yet against the parties to theDeepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and Gulf of Mexico oil spill that occurred one year ago today.

    The amended complaint, filed as part of the consolidated litigation in federal court before U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, expands earlier actions filed by the state.

    BP gets out easy if they get a joint settlement rather than dealing with 4 states, the fed and numerous cities.

    Remember last year when some states were trying to investigate mortgage fraud, while the federal government via the DoJ was trying to settle at a ridiculously low price?


    There's a principle you ignore, which is that the government closer to you has a better match to your values and needs. People in Montana or Alaska have quite different requirements than those in New York or Florida. 

    There are some efficiencies in aggregating 50 states, and there are some losses.

    I agree with the efficiency argument, but efficiency has nothing to do with abortion or gay marriage.


    Moreover, the Pauls of the world will only talk about the losses as justification for stripping the federal government down to its bare bones.  In the process it ends up denying the fundamental right of the federal government to intervene in matters. 

    One can go all day pointing out this example or that example to prove one's side of the dispute in this matter.

    The relationship between the states and the federal government should be a give and take, an adversarial and cooperative relationship, just as it should between counties and states, and local cities and counties, and local cities and the federal government.  Ideally we elect officials who see it this way, and that the various departments and agencies up and down the scale are composed of people who also see it this way.  Of course, they are all human, and even if we take out the corruption et al., we still have territoriality and host of other petty and not so petty barriers to efficiency. 

    If one follows the logic, then the counties should be provided more authority than states.  I can tell you in most states there is a wide variety of values and needs from county to county.  Eastern Washington State is always threatening to break away from western Washington, because the population of western Washington skews the state government in favor of those liberals up and down the I-5 corridor.

    So where does it end?


    Well, Europe has managed to implement democracy based on small states, including the broken up Czech & Slovak & Slovenian republics within a larger framework, while Scotland and Catalonia have a bit more autonomy these days. In general, EU states have their own languages, quite distinct laws, but some united underpinnings for human rights, trade, and public services and a court of justice that hears complaints.

    A difference being that the power in the EU is still held by the individual states, so any significant change has to get all 25 members to sign on.

    In terms of the US feds and the states, the last 3 years have seen a whole lot of expenses passed down to the states and not a lot of benefits. So perhaps it ends when the original idea of states' rights is gone, and a "state" is just a boundary on a map with federal control, kind of like an occupation zone.


    He doesn't think federal government should override local medical decisions, that's how it works.

    Whether one agrees with or disagrees with Ron Paul, it's really easy to get a summary of what his positions are and what they mean. And it's better to hear what he says, rather than say the scandalously fraudulently sickening TPM headline presuming Paul's supporting the death of gays (when the article itself makes it quite clear Ron Paul is quite supportive of the basic rights of gays)


    Don't see anyone here saying Paul wants the death of gays.  No one here as far as I know writes the headlines for TPM.  You have a beef with them, go to TPM and vent. 

    The key here is that Paul probably supports the basic rights of gays, but he doesn't believe the federal government should do anything in situations where those rights are being denied.  And if a state adopts a constitutional amendment stating gays have no rights as a result of the sexual orientation, then what.  He can be all the supportive he want, but that isn't going to change anything when the tyranny of the majority gets on a roll.  And he knows that I assume. Any you know that I assume.  And I assume most of Paul's supporters know that, too.  And that is what is the real frightening thing about it all.


    Sorry, if I don't take the Chicken Little view of Ron Paul dicta, I'm a pathetic fellow traveller, is that it?

    Believe it or not, states are able to handle most of their own issues, and it's not like the federal government is always well more enlightened than states. (how many issues has California led the way on? New Jersey gave women the right to vote in 1790 - the federal government got around to it in what, 1920?)


    States do get things right.  So do some cities or counties or regions of the country.  A lot of people can lead the way on certain issues.  Or go the extra step beyond what the federal government is willing to do. 

    The question is how does one handle that state or school district or adoption agency that decides to go down a path which is anathema to the basic values of our society, such as we are created equal.  Not one response can be applied to every situation.  But what Paul seems to be advocating (in the subtext if nowhere else) is a blanket barrier to the federal government acting when the federal government is getting it right and the state or school district or adoption agency isn't. 

    Of course that means there will be times when the government oversteps its bounds, or has the wrong view on the matter, or is just plain incompetent in implementing its strategies to meet its objectives.  But in the end, in a democracy, if one still has faith in that, one needs to believe the federal government, as collection from everyone in the nation, acts as the collective conscious politically speaking.  Its role is to ensure the nation as a whole moves along similar paths, to manifest that in legislation and regulations, through departments and agencies.

    We can give up on that, give up on the notion there is this thing as an American Nation, just accept we a loose collection of entities (whether it is the states or regions or individuals or organization) who have their own self-interest and should be free from interference from those outside the group defined by the group.


    He would be supportive of the state's right to discriminate.

    That's what Paul's We The People bill states, as far as I can see.

    If a state wants to be a "sun down" state, that's okey dokey by Paul.


    You and KG seem to think that we who take a harsh view toward Paul have never heard him speak and have never read anything he's written. Why is that?

    Here, from his Web site, Paul for President, is what he says on abortion:

    * Immediately saving lives by effectively repealing Roe v. Wade and preventing activist judges from interfering with state decisions on life by removing abortion from federal court jurisdiction through legislation modeled after his “We the People Act.”

    * Defining life as beginning at conception by passing a “Sanctity of Life Act.”

    Its not about "overriding local medical decisions." It's overriding local POLITICAL decisions. Here's We The People wherein he would allow for the prohibition of abortion if a state chose to... and would allow for discrimination based on sex and sexual orientation if a state chose to...

    The Supreme Court of the United States and each Federal court--

        • (1) shall not adjudicate--
          • (A) any claim involving the laws, regulations, or policies of any State or unit of local government relating to the free exercise or establishment of religion;
          • (B) any claim based upon the right of privacy, including any such claim related to any issue of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or
          • (C) any claim based upon equal protection of the laws to the extent such claim is based upon the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation; and
        • (2) shall not rely on any judicial decision involving any issue referred to in paragraph (1).

      There really is no reason to remove an issue from the federal sphere and place it in the state's sphere unless you prefer what the states--at least in a number of cases--are going to say.

      Even though KG thinks I haven't listened to Paul or read what he's said--despite the fact that he's been saying basically the same thing for a long, long, long time and says so every chance he gets--he's against abortion. Period.

      Roe stands in the way of outlawing abortion. Get rid of Roe, and you have a shot at outlawing it at least in a good number of states.

      In terms of what I think...and this is just me...I don't see why certain issues should be decided at the state level. We are one country. We really aren't a collection of sovereign entities which, every year, renew our decision some centuries ago to join together. That issue was decided during the Civil War, as I understand it.

      There is no good reason why a person's marriage should be kosher in one state and not in another. There is no good reason why a woman who decides to have an abortion should have to travel thousands of miles to find a state where she can get what she wants. In that sense, it's pretty clear that moving these decisions to the states is really a prelude to eventually banning these things altogether.


      There's no good reason why every state should be like the next one.

      If one state aspires to trailer parks and hunting, and another wants cafés and opera, and another supports big sports franchises and oil wells, great, we have 3 venues. Certainly there can be some basic rules and regulations to underpin the 3, but what's the fear about differentiation? Liberals just assume that states' rights is code for racial bigotry, which is a huge largely flawed assumption. If I say "self-determination", especially if I'm East Timor or Chiapas or  Cyrenaica or Chechnya or Scotland, someone will cheer. As soon as it's a southern state, sweatballs break out. People are weird.

       

       


      No one is talking about trailer parks or opera - which is another subtle way of saying them liberals want everyone to only go to art house films and drive Volvos (or Subaru Outbacks). No one (here at least) is fearing the kind of differentiation you trying to claim we are. 

      I have made no mention of the South (although I know some will bring this region of the country up when the topic turns to this).  For me the topic is much broader.  But even within the issue of racism and discrimination, one key issue is Affirmative Action and the institutional barriers it is attempting to address, which is definitely not a Southern issue, but a national one. 

      Self-determination is fine thing, but it cannot, if we agree to live within communities, be the sole driving guide to our behavior.  Self-determination can used to justified many things which goes against our fundamentals values and beliefs (not that what those are isn't a source of heated debate).  

      Certainly there can be some basic rules and regulations to underpin the 3, but what's the fear about differentiation?

      So the question becomes what constitutes basic rules and regulations - and not whether someone wants trailer parks and the fear of liberals about that. 

      What Paul seems to be advocating in the general wave of rhetoric that washing over people in the flood of information of our times is to deny there should be basic rules.  Of course he will propose that rule or this rule.  But the general principle, the general mode of operation, is that the rules and regulations that underpin all "3" should be stripped down to the least possible level. It is like those who opposed large taxes, where the basic principle to fight any increases and "most" taxes are bad, has led to those to oppose any tax out of principle.


      He dislikes large government and likes local control.

      Is that difficult to understand?

      I didn't have too much against big government when it did more than eavesdrop on emails & phone calls, funnel money to Wall Street and send drones after Muslims. But unlike Norquist, I'm beginning to think we should invest in a huge bathtub and drown it all at once.


      It does do more than that.


      He dislikes large government and likes local control.

      The last time I looked we were the United States of America.  Not the Loosely Held Together Autonomous States of America.  Do you think the coal mining states right now would put in better environmental protection laws and regulations if the federal government got out the business of regulating the industry? Even though the federal government would not stop them from implementing tougher laws and regulations (for the most part - one can come up with extreme examples which would be eventually over-ruled by the supreme court).

      But here is the question:  how large is too large?  Is California state government too large?

      There is a lot of things I dislike about what the federal government specifically doing, but I see the notion of drowning it entirely because of those specifics as just plain naive at best. 

      Obama said it best (he may have been quoting someone): Is it not about big government or small government, but the right size of government.  Debating that and dealing with that is messy and probably never be fully solved, definitely not to everyone's liking.  But as long as we are the United States, as long as we claim there is this nation called Americans, it is a long, messy debate and effort we will have to endure.

       


      Curious, because they were the United States of America even as 13 recent colonies with very strong ideas of states' rights, so maybe "United" meant something other than coitus profundus.

      Do you think the Founding Fathers would have favored unified rules for growing tobacco across all states?

      California might be too large if a significant segment decides to break away. Or they might not be large enough and will annex Nevada. It's all up to the people who live there whether they feel like they're being served properly.

      Belgium is tiny, but they can't seem to live together well, even being unable to form a government for 18 months when they finally got one in December.


      Good grief. Even I wanted to make every state the same, I couldn't. And I don't. But your point is utterly beside the point Paul is making.

      That said, it's not a huge, largely flawed assumption. It's an assumption that would apply very well to the greatest portion of our history as a country.

      IOW, it was true for longer than it hasn't been true, and it may still be true.

      In any event, the points Paul is making have to do with abortion and gay marriage and equal rights.


      The Department of Justice is a major player in addressing the abuse of civil rights and liberties (including things like investigation police departments who are abusing their power) in this country, which would fall under the direction of a Paul administration.  It is just a matter of which cases are taken on to investigate, but how much support that investigation is provided.  One can "be looking into the situation" but only send a low level investigators who sort of look around and then claim to have not found anything substantial. 

      One could make the case either way that Paul's Department of Justice on balance would be more protective of people's civil liberties.  My guess is that his approach would be the Fed shouldn't be involved at all and would take measures (from his appointments on down) to dismantle the department and leave it as a shell of organization.  Any efforts to address corruption and abuses in the business sector, law enforcement and government itself would fall on the state and local governments, most of whom have no budget for such a responsibility.  Ultimately the responsibility would fall on the individual citizens, meaning only those with the financial means for the most part could seek redress to abuses of power.


      Why would you just guess or make shit up?

      And it might be excusable if the DoJ was doing a good job, but right now it can't even protect people from illegal mortgage foreclosure despite clear laws on the books.

      If the DoJ got less involved in busting medical marijuna dispensaries and more involved in enforcing rights to privacy, I think that would be a good change.

      Has there been any serious federal support for rights in the last years? Right wing kooks knocked off an abortion doctor, and the net result is the kook goes to jail and the abortion clinic closes. Those folks will take that attrition every day of the week.

      Really, sky-is-falling interpretation gets us nowhere - the system is already screwed up. There are certainly limits to how much worse Ron Paul would make it if he didn't improve it.

       


      The current evaluation with the DOJ is irrelevant to a point - I am not making the assertion it doing a perfect job.  The game of political elections for us spectators (i.e. voters) is trying to tease out possible future outcomes based on a variety of different sources of information.  Paul has clearly shown through his words and actions he doesn't see much of a role of the federal government in people's lives. 

      The big debate here and elsewhere in this regard is whether the positives of that view about the federal government (e.g. the stopping of raids on medical marijuana sites, is one some but not all would agree is a positive) outweighs the negatives.  Of course, as a politician, Paul isn't going to go too far in articulating some of the more controversial elements, but his stance of Civil Rights and business owners pretty much sums part of where one can see the Paul DOJ heading. The outcome of that weighing on a personal scale is thus subjective.

      From my view point, whatever wrongs the current DOJ is doing, it pales against the potential Paul DOJ.  Just reviewing Paul's positions on Wiki as you asked only this position stronger for me.


      On the other hand,  Paul would have the singular executive authority to follow through with the vast majority of his objectives vis a vis the conduct of our wars, putting the breaks on the horrible impacts of Regan's drug policies, actually ending torture, rolling back the police state a bit, and even releasing nonviolent "offenders" sitting in federal cells due to the politically-motivated drug arrests of administrations past.

      This is a strong argument. He has a lot of latitude in these matters.

      But it is a bit odd to vote for a guy--and I'm not saying you are -- because one agrees with two out of 10 positions. To trust that he's going to carry through with the two and get nowhere with the ten.

      This strikes me as a bad or at least questionable bargain.


      But the courts were NOT ruling against the practices. That's the point. Those practices had been in existence forever and the courts hadn't ruled against them.

      In fact, I'd argue, the local courts were part of the problem.

      Where rights "come from" is a whole discussion. Many would argue that they are "inalienable," and a function of our being human (or if you prefer God's creatures).

      That is, they can be denied in practice, but you can't will them out of existence.

      The Civil Rights Act dealt with much more than whom one chooses to business with. School segregation and restrictive voting practices. Segregation at the workplace where, by definition, the employer had agreed to hire and do business with blacks, but insisted they use separate facilities.

      As a small businessperson, I DO choose with whom I do business. And, I suspose, I could chose to discriminate against some group without anyone knowing. I'm sure that still goes on in all directions.

      But I do think there's a big difference when, by definition, you open your place of business TO THE PUBLIC. That's a broad, non-discriminatory orientation. Yes, you can throw people out if they're violent or otherwise obnoxious or try to steal or don't pay. These go to the heart of one's ability to do business.

      But I don't think you can argue rationally that you can exclude someone because of the color of his skin or sexual orientation or... These present no harm to your ability to do business, even though you may turn off some people who share your prejudices. And so you may lose business.

      But as soon as you declare that you're serving the public, you have to serve the public as long as the person is capable of doing business with you. 

       


      This is an excellent point about the courts' inaction.  One needs to keep in mind most judges in this country are elected to their position, which means they beholden the majority, and increasingly so their large donors who make it possible to run their campaigns.  This is why Sandra Day O'Connor was so enraged by the Citizens United decision - the impact of the special interests on the impartiality of judges.  One area is the right to a safe work place, such as mining.  Owners of mining companies have been able to continue their practices in good part because the judges who hear the cases against them at the lower levels than federal court tend to rule in the favor of the owners, who happen to be big donors to the judges' campaigns.

      There is a slippery slope in just about everything we do as a collective society.  Once one decides that it is up to the specific parties within a community to decide whose rights trump the other's is the moment one hands the power of those already with the power to not only perpetuate that power, but also to expand it.  This is especially true if those in power are able to buy off the judicial (not to mention law enforcement) sector, thus codifying and further institutionalizing the power to decide whose rights wins out on a individual rather than communal level.


      My good friend Mark Yannone, now deceased, was my first introduction to libertarianism and Ron Paul.

      One of the things he constantly said that always mystified me was: "Well, problem X can be solved through the courts." Meaning, the harmed party can always sue.

      I'm not a lawyer, but don't you need a body of law promulgated and enforced by government in order to sue and win?

      If corporation X is polluting my drinking water, but there's no law against him doing that, what chance do I have in court?

      I guess I can show harm done--I can no longer drink the water coming from my tap-- but if X is within his rights to be doing what he's doing, how do I sue him?


      In case you didn't notice, the US is by and large not enforcing the laws, and hasn't been for 11 years.

      According to Obama, no jailable offenses were committed in the 2008-2009 trillion dollar meltdown. Except for Bernie Madoff. (And Martha Stewart for her unsettling $40K insider trading - the horror, the horror)


      Hmmm...

      This seems to amount to: "We're not enforcing the laws, so let's vote for someone who wants to get rid of the laws."

      This makes no sense to it. It's like someone whose car brakes fail so, instead of fixing the brakes because it's a good idea to have them, decides to just get rid of them.


      That is what it seems to amount to me, too.

      One of the brilliant moves (from their point of view) made by the Bush administration was appointing people like Brownie.  His incompetence in running FEMA even more so than it had been run in the past (it was actually getting better under Clinton's appointee) enabled the everyone from the libertarians to Rush to say "see we told you government doesn't work. Get rid of things like FEMA."


      Exactly right.


      Well, if Louisiana has better laws to sue oil spills by (as they seem to want to keep it in state juridiction), why does Louisiana need the federal law? You keep driving by the point and missing all the parking spaces.

      If our federal laws are so fickle and manipulated that neither Bush nor Obama can find a handle to do their jobs, why do we need them?

      I'm not completely convinced, but I'm amazed you're so sure the guys at the federal level really earn their paycheck and you can't think of any other alternative.


      I am amazed that you don't see the point that Louisiana didn't have better laws about oil spills when there was nothing to stop them from doing so.  Sending it back to the states means one is left with no recourse from that particular geographical place in our country. 

      The federal government and state governments act as another check and balance in the overall system of our country.  Sometimes the state(s) get it right, sometimes the feds, and sometimes both.

      I am not advocating (and I don't see anyone else advocating) that the federal government become supreme in all matters.  And there are elections to help steer it one way or another.  But it can and should play a role in checking the states power (or inaction in the case of states like Louisiana), just as the states can act as check to the federal government.  The power play may take a few years to play out, such as with the medical marijuana, and it can be messy.  But the alternative would be worse.

      It would seem that this "send it back to the states" has an utopia feel to it - see how messy and not-perfect the federal government is, take away their powers and everything will get better.  I'm not saying you believe "everything will get better," but the imperfection of the federal government, which is the same thing as the state governments in many significant ways but only bigger, as the justification for sending it back to the states. 

      But if the government at the federal level can't get it right, the same dynamic would apply at the state level.  The only difference is that the population that is voting in the legislators and the executive is smaller and more homogenous than the nation as a whole.  Therefore there is more likelihood that a dominant majority can arrive at a consensus between themselves (and thereby ignore the minority opinions).


      The point is to keep a federal-state balance--NOT to dismantle the federal in favor of the state solution a la Paul, the Republican Party, conservatives in general.


      Yes, that's what the Citizens United ruling stated, that you can't discriminate or stop them as long as they have the money.

      Of course not having the money might strike someone as being a discriminatory hurdle, but we won't worry about that little detail - who would exploit that loophole?


      Not quite sure what your point is with that last statement.  Of course it is a form of political discrimination if one agrees to the notion that money influences elections, and, consequently, the behavior of the elected official, be they legislators, judges, or sheriffs, or dog catchers, and one agrees to the principle of democracy as one citizen one vote.  Someone who is able to utilize an economic advantage to tilt the political field in their favor (which then has consequences on whose rights are protected or supported) is exercising an unfair political advantage and it would be in the interest of democracy that the government intervene to ensure a more level playing field.


      That current US law codifies that we can discriminate financially, but no other way (unless the person is Muslim, in which case we can invoke state secrets act)

      I should be able to insulate myself from Texans, as a matter of good taste, but current US jurisprudence prevents that common sensical notion.

      Presumably refusing to serve moonies, teabaggers and neo-nazis is also out - all I can do is jack up the price and hope they don't show up.


      I should be able to insulate myself from Texans, as a matter of good taste,...

      Hey just one minute here, I don't live there anymore but I still consider myself to be a Texan and that comment is-uh, it's-uh, well... Well its pretty spot on. I'm guessin' DD will be along with an endorsement. I'm still laughing.


      Just a Colorado bias. Wonder how you survived there with a sense of humor and all.


      I guess it is more that I not quite sure what your stance is on that point.  Are you ultimately wanting the Feds to get better at intervening in all forms of unjust discrimination or get out of the business of intervening all together.

      No one is arguing that the current legislation and its implementation have been or are perfect.  The Civil Rights Act of 1964, for instance, one piece of legislation.  We are still dealing with how to apply it to our society today.  The question is whether we should move to reform the government so it is more aligned with certain principles of equality, civil rights etc., i.e. the federal government has a significant role in these matters or stop them from entering this arena of society in the first place. 


      It's sort of interesting how Paul has opened this heretofore unsuspected vein of tolerance for intolerance in erstwhile liberals.

      Folks who were formerly against discrimination (presumably) now think that allowing discrimination or not punishing it or only punishing it at the state level but not at the federal level are striking a blow for freedom and liberty.


      It's called public policy. You can win a battle and lose a war. We've been down this road with the Civil War - a policy that killed 600,000 and left blacks still heavily discriminated against for the next century obviously had its downsides.

      We've been down this road with busing - which left kids commuting up to 3 hours a day without curing many of the inequalities in facilities and overall education.

      So you can take a high-minded position, but if it doesn't actually cure inequality and oppression as well as another tack, what have you got? Rubber biscuit.


       I mentioned that can of worms known as the Civil War just below (for different reasons), and not to get into that debate, but the way you phrase it, you seem to be saying since the War didn't fix discrimination, the Federal Government shouldn't have forced the issue on ending slavery in the South. 

      And ultimately you seem to be saying that since there are cases of public policy that demonstrate it can be misguided or not completely successful or utter failure, we should just give up on public policy altogether, as if we should only try to address racism and discrimination only when we discover the cure-all overnight public policy approach.

      Undoing systematic and institutionalized oppression and power abuse can never be so simple.  We will try and fail or make baby steps.  We need to keep trying.


      I'm saying it's one of the bloodiest omelettes ever made, and if all of our well-meaning efforts produce this much carnage and ineffective result, we should consider taking a step back and seeing if there are say any better approaches.

      Mao thought he was helping the peasants, and he only killed 30 million of them or so, so maybe he did...


      Hindsight is 20/20.  And maybe the Southern states should have not resisted and all that carnage could have been avoided. And maybe...but really if you're going to compare the Civil War with the Cultural Revolution, simply because both had good intentions, then I guess we've arrived at that point that we should equate Ron Paul with Chairman Mao. 

      We should always be stepping back and evaluating our attempts at improving our communities whether it is the federal government or a ragtag grassroots organization. There is almost always a better approach.  Usually, however, those better approaches cannot be seen until we get in there and do something - you know, learning from our failures.

      The problem with Ron Paul and his libertarian followers is it seems the only lesson they have learned is that federal government is bad, and its role in improving the quality of life of everybody (and the planet) should be eliminated.


      So now it's how our federal government is improving quality of life of everybody and the planet.

      Dream on. The Peace Corps went down a long time ago, the Marshall Plan was a 40's thing.

      Most of what our federal government does abroad is pushes weapons, drug programs and a minutia of other financial aid, tied in with a whole lot of hawking big business products (say John Deere tractors and Boeing jets), plus of course keeping control of our oil sources.


      Yes there is dark side to the federal government, and there is much to criticize about our foreign policy (although I assume you are one of the few who care less if gasoline prices went up to $9 a gallon and the subsequent impact on the economy - which is not an endorsement of every action taken to secure a stable oil flow).  

      We could go on and on about what is wrong.  But there have been and are things the federal government has done that improves the quality of life, or at least keeps it from getting worse. Maybe you need to go back and review the conditions of America that provided the catalyst for the Johnson's Great Society.  The states where this was happening either didn't care or were in general too poor themselves to address it. 

      I guess you all against federal disaster relief funds.  Or is that an exception?  I guess you would prefer what little we have in a way of federal inspection of imports should be done away with (and if some toothpaste product poisons you - well you took that risk, no big deal).

      I suppose you believe that there would still be old growth forests in the Northwest?

      This list goes on. 

      The federal government is neither purely good nor purely evil.  It is imperfect, sometimes with disastrous results, including the deaths and suffering of people.  Yet one of the little wrinkles the anti-federal approach fails to take into account is that is the states and the communities within who one of the prime drivers of the military-industrial complex because of the economic benefit derived from it.  They have no problem building and profiting from those weapons sold abroad.  So here is a question: who are you to tell them in their self-determination that they can't bombs and tanks and such and sell them abroad? 


      Forget Johnson. Go back to FDR. Half the country was shitting in outhouses, literally, before the TVA. Odd how folks who suddenly are big on states rights ALSO wish that Obama was more FDR-like. If ever there was a big government guy that Ron Paul didn't like, it was Franklin and his followers.


      We're 43 years since LBJ, Grandpa.

      What have the feds done *LATELY*.

      If we had FDR, I wouldn't be wasting my time.


      And the joke goes, "let's not turn a rape into a murder", if you want to get into the "shouldn't have resisted" vein.


      federal government is bad

      That's a pretty good summary of Paul's views. Covers a lot of ground. Not clear why it's bad, though, or what's better. Except whatever it is the states do.


      The Civil War ended slavery.

      That strikes me as a pretty good result.


      If you're not one of 600,000 dead, or those whose descendants lived in abject poverty the next century or those who suffered the continued racism over the same period or one who thought there might be a way for the supposed "united" states could be moderately united.

      But sure, slavery ended, as it did around tht time in all the rest of the world but without a blood conflagration claiming 600,000. So we got a war thrown in for free! Psych!


      You're assuming, as does Paul I think, that the South would have given up their slaves freely or for a price. In fact, slavery was written into our Constitution and the southern states were intent on SPREADING slavery during the years leading up to the war.

      It was the South who left to protect slavery; it wasn't the North who started the war. It could be argued that the North should have just left them go and, eventually, slavery would have died out. Maybe. Except that the South's economy depended almost exclusively on slavery. So...


      I'm not assuming any such thing, but have debated this one into the ground several times.

      The only issue here was that a bloody war wasn't the only option, but the creative thinkers weren't out in force.


      "...the creative thinkers weren't out in force..."

      Especially in the South.  Too bad for them.


      Your compassion for those slaughtered in battle, North & South, is noted.


      As is yours for the millions of African-Americans who would have remained enslaved absent that slaughter.


      how Paul has opened this heretofore unsuspected vein of tolerance for intolerance in erstwhile liberals.

      to this extent at least Paul has served a valuable role, even if it was not intentional.  We obviously we need to be having this dialogue within the liberal "camp." One would have not considered this a pressing need before, at least from my view.  Kind of like how I was surprised to discover the Civil War was still a hotly debated issue in some circles (not to open that can of worms here).

      At the same time, when I step back and think about it, I shouldn't be too surprised.  I have believed for some time now that there has been a strong libertarian thread running through the American collective consciousness.  Its influence on people's perspectives has and will continue to have positive impact on politics and society (from my perspective of what is positive), but it definitely has its dark side.  The urge to strike a blow for freedom and liberty can take one down some less than admirable paths.


      Sounds ominous. Batman V? Gotham erupts? The Dark Night Rises?


      Things are bad enough.  But having the private property rights folk in charge scares the bejeezus out of me.  So, yes, it is ominous.


      What's interesting is that all these things PP and others mention were just as true in 2008...and in 2004...and in 2000...and in 1996...as they are now. And Paul's been talking about them for all this time.

      But now, suddenly, these issues are "critical." Gotta free the junkies now. And we're utterly willing to throw in the towel on almost all the principles we prized before because, I guess, Obama disappointed some people.

      But this worm turns in a lot of different directions. Most of Paul's support comes from the right, some of it even from the fringe right. A lot of those people don't want to tear down empire. They're worried about Iran getting the bomb. The next terrorist attack on our soil, and they'll be grabbing for their guns. They'll be grabbing their guns anyway. So what will Paul do once he has to decide?

      Disappoint his core base on the right who didn't think he meant THAT?

      Or disappoint his newly come latelies from the left who didn't think he really meant THIS?

      Just stop the drones and I'll give you whatever you want...


      I don't think Paul believes the bullshit, so is less likely to go in for a war as curing all our problems, or even thinking it will easily hold down an enemy.

      A guy who's been saying the same things for decades - why do you think he's looking to flip-flop now? Iran is extremely unlikely to get a nuclear program. Our drone programs are counterproductive. Does Paul need more war votes, is that it? Don't make sense.


      You might be right in the first paragraph. We can hope. I assume we all thought that was true of Obama.

      I don't think he's "looking" to flip-flop. I think things change when you get into office and when you have a diverse constituency to appeal to.

      Paul needs a lot of support from the right--in part because MOST of what he believes--and here I'll refer you to what he says on his Web site--is straight ahead conservatism. (And he voices some fringe stuff too, like the UN is going to take yo' mamma and yo' land.)

      And a lot of the folks on the right also represent war votes.


      That is correct. You have to serve those people if you own an establishment open to the public.

      Don't know if your second sentence is tongue in cheek, but it does speak to an important point: the atomization of the country under the libertarian view.

      Atomization is happening anyway, but this would codify it as a desirable outcome.


      Actually, you can put a "No Texans Allowed" sign up without fear.  Texans are not a protected class, nor are neo nazis or teabaggers.  Moonies, however are.

      As they say on Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the other...


      Yeah, well I'm pretty sure Big Bird fits in somewhere under an LBTG issue, though some Texans don't.


      I can't really speak to how Texans see the LBTG issues but I know them to be more socialistic and more inclusive and more open to various sexual proclivities than most people know or believe. At least in the rural areas, where the unofficial State Song is sung as, "This lamb is your lamb, this lamb is my lamb..."

       


      "Doesn't that bother you, LULU?" "Nna-a-a-aaahhhhhh"


      No, not really. I mean,  I'm a live and let live kind of guy and that stuff doesn't bother me. It was those weirdos that sang, "If I had a Heifer I'd have 'er in the morning, I'd have 'er in the evening, all over this land", now that's just wrong.


      It was supposed to be a goat / sheep sound, dont' think I transcribed well - get a bit nervous with all these Texans looking at me.


      I got the Ba-a-a-a and I understand your nervousness when a backwoodsy Texan gets that look in his eye. Like I said, I grew up there and at our class reunion they always play,' "Something in the Way She Moo's Me." Gotta be careful drinking with those guys.


      Can go for their older songs, like "Got to get you into my wife", "Sheep said, sheep said" or "And this bird can sing". Or even "Chicken' all over". 


      Chicken??? a CHICKEN??  My God, have you, at long last, no sense of decency...


      Weasels rip my flesh.

      As for the hamsters...


      That current US law codifies that we can discriminate financially,

      No, what the law prior to CU attempted to do was to balance out the inherent advantages the rich have over the poor. Or rather, balance out the disadvantages the less well off come with. This is not a case of "reverse discrimination." The rich natively have more power than the poor except in terms of numbers.

      And if Paul has his way, it will be just fine for the states to pass anti-sharia laws (or worse) because, down here, wherever here is, Muslims just don't fit in. They pray too often, and that interferes with business.

      If Muslims want to live in America, they should move to Connecticut. Some states tolerate 'em; some don't. Who says ALL the states need to tolerate Muslims? Where does the Constitution say anything about Muslims? It doesn't. Were there any Muslims among the Framers? I don't think so.

      And where the Constitution is silent, the power reverts to the states.


      You continually ignore Paul's focus on personal freedom. Why's that?

      Because it's easier to frame it as Paul attacking minorities the way you do it.

      Where's that dog whistle?


      In Paul's back pocket, I believe.


      I don't ignore it.

      What he ignores are the existing power imbalances among people and groups of people. (Or he blames them on government actions...government creates the problem it tries to solve.)

      For example, he ignores the millions of dollars corporations have to influence elections, regulations, laws--not to mention our environment.

      He simply stipulates that GE is an "individual actor" on the stage much as I am an individual actor. Two equals. Therefore, we shouldn't restrain GE in any way or try to balance things out.

      Minorities are just as powerful as majorities using the same reasoning.


      Most of his campaign fundraising comes from individuals.

      How do you square that with what you think his Citizens United position is?


      The corporations don't need Paul to get the benefits of CU.

      Romney is just as in favor of it as Paul.


      Matt Taibbi just put up a piece at Rolling Stone talking about Montana voting anti-CU legislation limiting corporate political donations.

      How about those states rights? As Taibbi notes, neither Obama or Romney is going to upset this corporate slush fund.


      Thanks for the tip.

      I feel you have this backwards.

      It's not that I, or people like me, are trying to get rid of the states doing things on their own. We have 50 different state governments. They can and do and should do many things on their own.

      Some things they do are BETTER than what the government does.

      But there are some things that shouldn't be decided at the state level. So it's Paul's and conservatives' overwhelming push to move many key issues to the state level that I find objectionable.

      They engage--somewhat dishonestly in my opinion--in magical thinking about how government is always "bad" except when it's state government. That makes NO sense.


      Nor is Paul. He LIKES CU. It's freedom talking. He thinks GE and your local green grocer are equal players in the political sphere.


      As I recall, Paul is in FAVOR of CU.

      But I agree with Trope, it's very hard to figure out what you're saying here.


      If you're unhappy with the limited scope of Obamacare, would are you going to think of Paul's idea that those with pre-existing illness should not be covered.

      At a campaign stop in this small city of about 7,000 (Washington, Iowa), Paul told breast cancer survivor Danielle Lin that insurance companies should not be required to offer coverage to people who are already sick.

      "It's sort of like me living on the Gulf Coast, not buying insurance until I see the hurricane," said Paul, whose Galveston-based district was devastated by a hurricane in 2008. "Insurance is supposed to measure risk."

      The response left Lin in tears. While her insurance covered her treatment, she said, several of her friends were not so fortunate.

      "I watched three friends die because they didn't have insurance," said Lin, a registered Democrat who is looking for a Republican candidate to support this time.

      "Nobody can afford private insurance, nobody can. And they're dead."

      In his book, "Liberty Defined", Ron Paul describes his plan to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid. Blacks voters have little reason to give up what they have gained for the pain that they would experience under Ron Paul, the man who seeks the votes of racists.


      In a Ron Paul administration, we can anticipate the end of FEMA since the organization is merely a front for a plan to round up US citizens during the apocalypse.


      Ron Paul, the liar, didn't write the newsletters and signed but didn't write a fundraising letter that warned of a coming race war. What a load of crap.

      I'll let Ta-Nehishi Coates do the takedown from his column today.


      Some notable excerpts:

      Ostensibly this is all coincidence, or if it isn't, it should be excused because Ron Paul is a lone voice speaking on the important issues that plague our nation.

      And:

      It must be argued that a man who could not manage a newsletter should be promoted to managing a nuclear arsenal. Failing that, it must be asserted that a man who once claimed that black people were knowingly injecting white people with HIV, who fund-raised by predicting a race-war, who handsomely profited from it all, should lead the free world.

      As for those still wanting to give Paul the benefit of the doubt, I'd like to reiterate, that these little articles that happened to get past his attention in his newsletter did so over a period of at least five years. I could imagine it happening once or twice (and even then, I'd have at least an askew eyebrow), but over five years? I don't think so.


      Yeah right, but we have a president who didn't know what his preacher was saying for about 15 years or so.

      You can drag all of this out, not terribly important in the end.


      Well, FWIW here's the marketing letter. Ron Paul wasn't just promoting a newsletter, he was pumping two books, a hotline, and a couple newsletters ... while prepping to return to congress I think, if VA's article is accurate.

      To say it's fundraising off of predicting a race war is rather over-stating it though. He's fundraising off of telling people how to survive the "new money" thing.

      Besides, considering the riots of 1992 which happened in LA, Atlanta, Las Vegas, San Francisco along with several other places ... would it be insane to envision a situation going not that much farther? Hell, the gun fights between Koreans and rioters in LA are pretty legendary - that was certainly a case of violent racial fragmentation (which the community invested no small amount of effort to try and heal). We really need to read the "race war" article to see what the hell it said to even judge what it is exactly.


      Easy for you to say - I'm puzzling over "KGB-level security" - care to explain yourself, Mr. 999? What did you know and when did you know it?

      Yes, you pegged it - there was a race war that took place in the streets of LA in '92 - as a culmination of a whole lot of racial violence over the preceding decade (was Dennis Hopper racist for making the film "Colors" in '88?). Is it racist to watch CNN and see South LA burning and use that for a money bomb?

      I'm sure there are trigger words for many, but who here wants to deny that the Israeli lobby "plays Congress like a cheap harmonica"?

      I would contend there was a federal-homosexual conspiracy, to turn a predominately gay-and-needle user problem into a general public scare. I'm sure I'll get crap for that position, but the number of kids scared witless into "use condoms or die" is pretty disturbing.

      And in 8 pages of ranting, world-is-coming-to-an-end-hide-your-money letter that seems likely boiler-plate from other mass mailings, I have little doubt that Ron Paul wasn't paying that much attention, and the scare paragraph on page 7 does seem like someone in his org decided to up the scare level a few more dB.

      Reality seems to have a bias, but I can't figure out quite what that bias means.

       


      Is it racist to watch CNN and see South LA burning and use that for a money bomb?

      Actually, it is. In fact, it's worse. It's preying on and confirming the racist attitudes and fears of your readers to make money.

      It's hard to see how sitting in a pew and listening to incendiary sermons is fomenting anything in anyone else--and it quite obviously didn't turn Obama into an anti-white racist.


      First off. IMO PP's "used for a money-bomb" characterization doesn't accurately describe the nature of the phrase's use in the context of that marketing letter. It wasn't structurally integral to the case being made to purchase Ron Paul's products at all.

      But there is a bigger question. Is it racist to say "The way we are treating the African American community and creating divisions in America is driving conditions to the point where if things don't change it will likely foment a race war." or something to that effect?

      I propose no.

      So the question becomes, would it be racist to interpet the events of LA as vindication of that view?

      Again, I propose no.

      So, is it racist to say "hey, we were kind of right about that."

      I still say. No.

      And after the Riots, didn't an AWFUL LOT of resources (human and financial) go into addressing many of the issues that had led up to the boiling point ... significantly changing the situation from the 1992-3 era when the article predicting the race war was written and it's "correctness" promoted in this marketing letter, and the 2012 reality under which these things are being judged?

      This certainly seems to have been the case, from my point of observation.

      So, can you even *really* assert whatever it was that was published in Ron Paul's newsletter was actually wrong? Or did it simply observe something you think white people aren't supposed to talk about? (And we don't even know that the verbiage was ... because the dickwads promoting this don't even know the actual content of this so-called racist "race war" article in the first place)


      Valid questions arise about Ron Paul because he started out defending the newsletters and  then stating that he did not write the newsletters. The excuse was that it was too difficult to explain the newsletters during a political campaign. Paul also has the baggage of accepting contributions from White Supremacists. It seems reasonable to question whether he is being truthful now since he hasn't been in the past.


      I believe the technical term to describe the good doctor vis a vis the newsletters is

      "lying sack o'shit"

      He gets the sack o'shit pass, however, for at least feeling obliged to tell the lie, albeit a contrite try at the truth with rehabilitation would'a been better.

       And, the  pardons will get him into heaven if he delivers.


      Paul is a liar, but you know that he's telling the truth now?


      Well, it profits him to tell the lie about the newsletters...how does it profit him to promise wildly unpopular pardons?  I figure he means it--after all, he could decry drug prohibition without promising pardons (albeit it's hypocritical, but wtf, he's running for office, hypocrisy is his portion)


      I'll have to give the letter a closer read to be fair to it.

      But I would have to say that I saw none of this...

      "The way we are treating the African American community and creating divisions in America is driving conditions to the point where if things don't change it will likely foment a race war." or something to that effect?

      ...in that letter and I know the field quite well.

      It was an attempt to touch and confirm white fear of rioting blacks.

      Was the violence against Rodney King even mentioned?


      My point re: "money bomb" was that this was a (very long) sales letter, not a position paper or op-ed in the Washington Post (or Washington Times as might be, though Fred Hiatt drifts closer every day).

      The rudest most racist & callous thing in the letters I thought was his comment about the riots stopping when blacks had to go pick up their welfare checks. 

      The Reginald Denny beating (along with a number of Asians and Hispanics) highlighted the race war aspect of it, though both Denny and Rodney King were the epitome of forgiveness in this case (as was the black truck driver who drove Denny to safety). The defendants in the Denny case were all losers, and just highlights the surreal differences in lives and expectations, as well as the powder keg waiting to happen. Significant improvements came afterwards, though obviously poverty and hopelessness weren't erased.

      But like all these things, they get distilled into 1 correct answer, depending on which tribe you're with.

      The refreshing thing about Ron Paul right now is he's giving answers that don't all fit the scripts of the corporate masters - he may sync up on "states' rights" but then he pisses them off by talking against foreign wars, trying to killl our weapons bonanza. Even now, our "family conservatives" are meeting in Texas to find a "consensus candidate", i.e. not Romney, not Paul. They don't seem to understand primary timelines, that it's too late for another loser to enter the race, unless it's maybe someone fabulously wealthy, but they've tried that as well.

       


      First off. IMO PP's "used for a money-bomb" characterization doesn't accurately describe the nature of the phrase's use in the context of that marketing letter. It wasn't structurally integral to the case being made to purchase Ron Paul's products at all.

      You have to understand how these letters work on readers to understand how certain elements are "structurally integral" to selling his books.

      One of the first thing the writer establishes is the idea that the he shares the reader's world view on a number of things, especially hot button issues.

      Does this directly sell his books? Not in a conventional or logical sense, but in an emotional sense, it does. Very much so. It's a way of entering into the conversation the reader is already having in his head and getting him to nod along as he reads.

      In fact, when you look at letters that "work" vs those that don't, it's often the emotional empathetic feel that's missing from those that don't.

      They may well have all the good reasons you should buy the book, but they don't move the reader to act. They don't get his juices flowing.

      Proving that you see the world the way he does--and affirming that view--is maybe the essential ingredient in sales success.


      Am I to take that to mean you don't believe either is true, or that you believe both are true? This bit sounds like the former, but then you seem to follow up with stuff suggesting you actually believe Ron Paul didn't know about this stuff.


      Lessee, for Obama I would guess he was going to church for totally suckup purposes (standard for politicians), and picked the best one for his constituency, which changed over time. Yes, I think Obama was present for some over-the-top speeches, no I don't think it's his responsibility to rein in Rev. Wright, but then again, when you're writing about how this man has inspired you so much, don't get surprised when people ask deeper questions.

      Do I care? No, I don't care if he attended seances attended with Crowleyan macgick. I just care if he helps to fix the economy and stops trampling on the constitution that no one seems to protect anymore.

      Ron Paul, well, I'm pretty amazed that people are making so much out of those 2 lines in his 8 page book ad. No, I don't think Paul paid much attention, and if he did, probably didn't see why it should raise so much fuss, and aside from the federal-homosexual conspiracy that should somehow be explained, I agree with KGB that post-92, we did see a race war in the streets, so what exactly is the issue? Again, this was standard over-the-top book hawking, not a sober NYTimes op-ed piece, and yes, I bet someone other than Ron Paul put the most incindiary lines in there just to up the sales pitch another notch.


      I'm referring to the 5 year collection of racist, sexist, and anti-homosexual writings, not just "those 2 lines in his 8 page book ad". As I've said repeatedly, if you want me to believe those 2 lines (or some other 2 lines) got past him, I can't say it's impossible to believe. But if you want me to believe that 5 years worth of stuff got past him, and that it has no reflection on what he truly believes, or at least wanted people to think he believes? No, I'm not that naïve.

      It's not these two lines or those 2 lines (many of which were pre-92, for what it's worth), it's the pattern they form over a very large period of time.

      For what it's worth, I completely agree with your impression of Obama. Yeah, he probably went to that church in the first place for political purposes. It's easy to believe he missed any one of the particular sermons in question. It's difficult to believe he missed all of them. None of those sermons, to the best of my knowledge, come close to most of the stuff that Paul is getting dinged about, however.

      I bet someone other than Ron Paul put the most incindiary lines in there just to up the sales pitch another notch.

      Every single one of them, or just 5 or 6 of them? There's been more than a dozen separate lapses mentioned around here. (TPM had a top ten list that was recently linked to.)


      What's interesting about the Paul fervor is how recent it is. If this were really about Paul's issues, well, he's been the saying the same things for decades.

      Former Obama supporters (presumably) are now hitching their wagon to someone who (they hope) will bring hope and change, but previously rejected as a nut.

      And in supporting Paul, they accentuate critiques of Obama they once ignored, and dismiss critiques of Paul they will later accentuate, when he, too, disappoints.

      This has led to some surprising statements in support of the New Great White Hope. That Lincoln was a war monger, for example, and the Civil War could've been avoided if only some "creative thinkers" had shown up. That we shouldn't have entered WWII.

      That government's attempt to do good--which, presumably they supported a few months ago--has now, per the Libertarian line, only yielded bad. All those programs since LBJ, heck going back to FDR even, have just yielded bad results. They didn't think so a few months ago, but now they've seen the light.

      In fact, you can't support Paul without seeing this light, because Paul is against virtually everything government has done for Americans since FDR. He says so outright. It's all unconstitutional, and that's pretty bad in his book.

      A dismissal of Paul's views on the gold standard--a central post of his view--turns on the assumption that he'll never get to implement it, so let's humor Gramps and let him play with his coin collection.

      What they forget in regards to the later point is that, IF Paul wins, it will mean a major sea change has occurred in the public mood regarding things like money. How else will Paul get elected? He can't do it with just his foreign policy (the only thing new his supporters actually like). And that means he may well have a sympathetic Congress, willing to pass his program. So a gold standard is not really a far-fetched idea IF you game out a Paul ascent to the WH.

      Or maybe, later, they'll forget that Paul even ran on the gold standard (just as they forget that Obama ran as a bi-partisan) and cry, "I didn't think he was serious about THAT."

      StormFront endorses Paul? Well, what about Ayers? Yes, they dismissed that association in 2008, but maybe there was something to it. Then again, better to dismiss Ayers AND StormFront now. Don't want to be seen endorsing Nazis. Accentuate the positive: As the true bipartisan, Paul will work with everyone.

      I, personally, feel that Paul is very sincere and thoughtful and credible. I just dislike what he's sincere and thoughtful and credible about. He's not ambitious; he truly wants to do what he feels is right for the country. I feel the same way about Obama.

      But it's pretty clear that culturally-politically Paul emerges from the lunatic right fringe. He's matured and adopted reasonably respectable views, such as the Austrian school. But every so often his crazy "past" peeks out, much as it did for Dr. Strangelove. These letters are good examples of this. So are his sudden eruptions about the UN coming to take your land and your money. Could fluoride be next?

      (BTW, he'd be a LOT more credible on the anti-war front if he weren't also against our involvement in the UN and other peacekeeping-peacemaking efforts. There's a false note there. I hear the non-answer, "Yeah, well, just how successful has the UN been?" But that is a non-answer answer. After all, staying out of WWII didn't prevent Pearl Harbor, nor did it stop the Nazis from taking over Western Europe. And entering those conflicts did bring them to an end.

      Nor is Paul likes trade an answer. It's a bit tough to conduct trade without regard to geopolitical events. Like China buying up all the oil in Africa. Or the Strait of Hormuz being closed down. Or Keystone polluting pristine lands. Ours is a supremely interconnected world. Ours is a voracious economy. Paul sometimes seems to think we're still a nation of yeoman farmers trying to sell our cotton to Britain, so something.)

      If he were TRULY beyond the letters and the attitudes they express, then he could easily say, "Yes, I once believed that, but I've matured and now I don't." Instead, it's "I didn't read them," "I didn't write them," "There weren't that many of them," "I don't know who wrote them," "Maybe they were written by Lew or a different Ron Paul," and "Why are you bothering me? This interview ends now."

      Ah, talking about passing the buck...

      But if he's that oblivious to what goes out under HIS NAME in a NEWSLETTER, and he can't take the heat of basic questioning, is he really chief executive material?


      Great analysis.


      I ghost write for newsletters, and I can assure you the "authors" care VERY MUCH what goes out under their signature or name.

      But Paul was so consumed with the issue of "personal responsibility," he didn't bother to read his newsletters and he can't be bothered to assume responsibility for them now.

      Maybe Paul's idea of freedom is, "If you're free, you never have to say you're sorry."


      Yeah, maybe Obama truly didn't know his home support program wasn't being used very much, or that robo-signing illegal mortgage defaults was going on at a furious pace, or that his DoJ's attempt to settle all mortgage fraud together would bring a settlement of 1/10th that of the individual suits on behalf of the wronged.

      If you folks would ever focus on something real, that actually hurts people and puts them out on the streets and costs them money, maybe I could take you serious.

      But instead it's blah blah blah about purely academic nonsense all the time. You're obsessing on 20 lines of stupid words while ignoring theft in the billions and trillions. Should I give a shit? Ron Paul is the only candidate that's mentioned that judicial injustice puts a million more black men behind bars for doing the exact same thing that whites and Hispanics do. Doesn't that trump a line or two of "blacks cashing their welfare checks"? Barry just phones in his requests for black support these days, he can't even be bothered to find an actual policy to push.


      Yeah, maybe Obama truly didn't know his home support program wasn't being used very much, or that robo-signing illegal mortgage defaults was going on at a furious pace, or that his DoJ's attempt to settle all mortgage fraud together would bring a settlement of 1/10th that of the individual suits on behalf of the wronged.

      He did acknowledge those things. And he didn't say, "It wasn't my plan. I had nothing to do with it. And it isn't serious." This is what Paul is saying.

      Point is, we ONLY have Paul's words to go on because the man hasn't done much in the way of actually governing or getting his ideas enacted and tested in the real world.

      So, in fact, support for Paul is ALL academic and based only what he says he will do or wants to do and, mostly importantly, what its impact on real people will be.

      At least Obama got himself elected and got some of his ideas enacted.

      Paul's not alone in his spinning academic projections. The whole libertarian dream and Austrian dream is based on a lot of untested, academic stuff, as far as I can see.

      And to the degree that it WAS tested back in the 19th century, things weren't so hot for a lot of regular people.


       

      Point is, we ONLY have Paul's words to go on because the man hasn't done much in the way of actually governing or getting his ideas enacted and tested in the real world.

      So, in fact, support for Paul is ALL academic and based only what he says he will do or wants to do and, mostly importantly, what its impact on real people will be.

      Exactly. If you're going to dismiss academic concerns regarding Ron Paul, then you necessarily have to dismiss all of Ron Paul. Picking and choosing, cafeteria-style, which pieces of Ron Paul are academic and which aren't seems like selective perception, at best.


      Ron Paul has been in Congress, and has worked with Alan Grayson on issues they agree on.

      It's not theoretical or academic - Paul works towards legislation, some you might like, some you're sure not to like.


      Hmmm.

      Nothing that goes near to eliminating five agencies and all that regulation or implementing the full program he promises. And the impact of that program is academic as well, which is to say, speculative and unproven.


      Well, the guy who runs TPM is highly eclectic in his choices, and mostly he's a sellout who gave up decent news reporting long ago.

      Case in point - one of the top 10 lines is Ron Paul's response to car-jacking, a pretty disturbing development. So yes, if you have to drop an asshole in self-defense trying to take your car and bank account, carry an unregistered gun and dispose of it quick. However, oddly a few paragraphs down, there's Paul talking about Gov. Weld "letting gays force their way onto other people's property", which is much more deserving for the ranks of a bizarre top 10 quote.

      Another example that I'm sure gives liberals shudders is " Is it any wonder the AIDS epidemic started after they ‘came out of the closet,’ and started hyper-promiscuous sodomy?" But if you look up Gaëtan Dugas on Wikipedia along with several other AIDS pioneers, you see Paul's comment is fairly accurate for what happened. And he's not original - Larry Kramer described the phenomenon on in his 1978 novel, "Faggots", and Kramer was on the ground in 1981 creating the Gay Men's Health Crisis trying to understand this new disease that was developing and how best to deal with it.

      Another example is simply that we're supposed to shun Bobby Fischer the master chess player because he's a neurotic anti-semitic fruitcake - as if most people who spend their life playing thousands of chess games aren't a bit bizarre (though few as bad as Bobby).

      The comments about Martin Luther King and underage boys are over the top, but it wasn't that long ago that it was completely unacceptable to insinuate that St. Martin was promiscuous.

      One of the issues on the left is supposedly we're very tolerant, yet we turn as pale as a church lady on hearing any kind of un-PC talk - which is always only because of the hypocrisy, mind you, our ears aren't burning for any other reason....

      Anyway, I worry more about trillions of dollars slipping out of the Fed into banks and private hands than I do all these gossipy pieces of intolerance on both sides. I expect my politicians to be assholes, and funny, I'm almost never disappointed.

       


      The Left is not intolerant as much as they question the intent of the speaker and are trying to put the words in context. Embracing a xenophobic chess player may not be the wise thing to do. An attack that links MLK to young boys is rightly criticized. Mentioning MLK's infidelity would be questioned because it would be seen as an attack on the Civil Rights movement by diverting attention away from the main cause.In that sense, the behavior of he Left is not bizarre. Ron Paul defenders appear willing to dismiss many issues as unimportant because they believe Paul's line that he will bring troops serving in foreign lands home and end the drug war.

       


      The Left is intolerant if it's their tribe and tolerant if it's our own.

      You miss the point - MLK's promiscuousness is as much an issue as any other leader's weaknesses (it either is an issue or isn't - for everyone - depending on your tolerance)

      MLK's "sodomizing young boys" AFAIK is a complete fiction, dog whistle smear that should be condemned.

      From my view, a chess player is judged on his chess, a football player is judged on his football, etc. While dog fighting is mean and dumb, I don't think it has anything to do with on the field. Paranoid comments about Jewish world conspiracies (not the ones about the Israeli lobby owning Congress) have no effect on my opinions of Bobby Fisher's chess, or my interest in seeing him if I gave a damn about chess. Whether Lindsay Lohan gets thrown in jail again or gets rescued by Hugh Hefner has nothing to do with whether I watch her movies with my kids. This I presumed was being "tolerant", not arbitrary condemnation and bitter judgement of everyone's piccadilloes.

      And I think bringing troops home from war as much much more important than a few words about race wars that likely will have no effect other than sell a book or 2.

       

       


      I don't like Wagner's music even if he was a Nazi. Wait, did I get that wrong?


      You reject the reasons people list for questioning Ron Paul, isn't that showing the same intolerance?


      Another example that I'm sure gives liberals shudders is " Is it any wonder the AIDS epidemic started after they ‘came out of the closet,’ and started hyper-promiscuous sodomy?" But if you look up Gaëtan Dugas on Wikipedia along with several other AIDS pioneers, you see Paul's comment is fairly accurate for what happened. And he's not original - Larry Kramer described the phenomenon on in his 1978 novel, "Faggots", and Kramer was on the ground in 1981 creating the Gay Men's Health Crisis trying to understand this new disease that was developing and how best to deal with it.

      But what is the import of what Paul and Kramer are saying. The import of what Paul is saying is that they should go back into the closest--it's healthier for them. That isn't what Kramer is or was saying at all.

      The point is, if people are having a lot of sex, sexually transmitted diseases are more likely to spread. But that isn't what Paul is saying.


      Well, it's exactly what he's saying, including his being a doctor reference.

      But you have to over-interpret everything he says, layering your own spin on it to take it 3 or 4 more leaps down the road.


      There's no question a professional copywriter wrote that letter.

      Point is, Paul, or someone he deputized, signed off on it. And it's likely Paul gave the writer input before he started writing.


      That's totally reasonable. And I think the bulk of the copy Ron Paul would have basically approved of. And I can even see him saying "and add a bit about our successes".

      It's even reasonable to say that lack of caution should raise concerns for his attention to detail as president. That *is* a far cry from HE'S A DAMN RACIST AND THIS STUFF PROVES IT!!! Which is my personal point of issue.

      I do have to wonder if twenty years and a bunch of grief throughout any number of political campaigns was not likely sufficient for him to have learned the lesson of vetting the things done under his heading.


      Personally, I have a hard time calling someone "a racist."

      To me, the term applies to what's in a person's heart, and I can't see inside unless, maybe, I know him personally.

      "Racist" conjures up someone whose heart is filled with hate and prejudice, and Paul doesn't strike me as that. Then again, I can't see inside him.

      It's much easier for me to judge actions and words--even if the anterior intention is unknowable.

      I can say "that's a racist thought," or "that's a racist action" with much less trouble.

      I'm appalled by the context of Paul's remarks as VA shows them, but I'm much more worried about his policies and their impact on people and the country.

      Having worked in the newsletter biz for a while, I know where this stuff is coming from and what it's trying to do to the reader. It's very manipulative.

      To simplify, the newsletter industry started from a white, survivalist, paranoid, anti-government, conspiracy theory-ridden, militia-sympathetic mindset...and has gotten more sophisticated from there. But in the early days, it was hard core.


      So, for example...

      Being Jewish, I run into "anti-Semtic" remarks from time to time.

      But often they're coming from someone who doesn't natively hate Jews. His mind is just filled with a lot of the garbage swimming through the culture, if I can put it that way. Call it ignorance.

      So, I say the remark was anti-Semitic, but the person is not. Some people don't make that distinction, but I do. You have to take the measure of the person talking.

      A lot of the stuff VA shows is vile and isn't a line or two tossed off. So it's hard to know. I don't know what's in Paul's heart. I'm troubled that he can't put the controversy to bed by copping to went out under his name.

      Then again, he doesn't strike me as a hate-filled guy.

      But some people--not to get dramatic about it--have so compartmentalized their lives, they don't evince the emotion you would normally expect from someone whose name was put to that purpose.


        Lots of analyzing  happening about Ron Paul. Everyone on the entire political continuum likes some aspect of his political positioning quite a bit. Most find some other stance not so good, or bad, or completely unacceptable.  Most Republicans cannot stand his foreign policy philosophy. Most *liberals*, who accept the charges, think he is disqualified by being a racist. Those are the two main positions on which he is attacked. His position on foreign policy, at least as it relates to war, will gain him support on one side and lose some on the other. Maybe a wash. On the race issue there is an affect I have not seen commented on. While it certainly hurts him among many on the left, I think there is much less damage to him based on that issue on the right.
       Here finally is the unspoken part. There are a great many people, almost all on the right, I think, who, if they believe that there is evidence that he is a racist would not just weigh the evidence and judge how damning it is but would consider it a plus. Probably more than are offended by racism. They occupy a category that will never show up on a poll. On the *right* a perception of racism might well be a net plus.


      I think you are correct that accusations of racism likely accumulate as a net plus on the right, just as accusations of socialism likely accumulate as a net plus on the left. I'm not sure that means they view being a true racist positively any more than support for social security or a public health care option means one views true socialism positively.

      Particularly in the instance of Ron Paul - where there is a lot of genuine mischaracterization behind many of the attacks - it totally feeds in to the narrative of dishonest persecution leveled at conservatives by those who can't or don't want to debate the message. Which is a major theme pounded home in their messaging. Same thing with how many Republicans believe Cain was the victim of an unfair media smear - they don't necessarily really support sexual harassment deep down inside.


      I'm referring to the 5 year collection of racist, sexist, and anti-homosexual writings, not just "those 2 lines in his 8 page book ad".

      Thing is. You haven't actually put five years of racist, sexist, la la on the table. You've put a bunch of disjointed out of context-quotes plucked from lord-knows-what juxtaposition in time.

      We've got to look at what we have to work with in the concrete. In order to buy the argument you are making, one has to accept the honesty and accuracy of those providing these quotes. Which means establishing a baseline of credibility.

      These two (one?) lines combined with the document they reside in are the basis for people saying "He SIGNED it!11!1! There's NO Way he didn't know!", so it becomes a more significant point of analysis than most. We also have the source document the reports have been based on, so it provides an unquestionably significant point from which to draw a baseline of credibility. By looking at those two lines in the context of the entire document they are written in and assessing the characterizations those making the case against Paul have made about them. In my opinion, neither the two lines nor the marketing piece are anywhere near what those screaming about them on the blogs are trying to purport they are.

      And this seems to be the case in several instances which you and I have discussed ... and *in those instances* you seem to at least acknowledge a valid "that isn't even necessarily racist" interpretation.

      On the other hand, I'm finding that for the most part the basic responses by Ron Paul have essentially borne up well under scrutiny. Where it's possible to asses context *has* been providing nuance that changes the meanings of the phrases from how they are being used. It is *totally* credible that a guy writing books while two monthly newsletters are produced and working on a political career wouldn't read every blurb in both newsletters. So far he's coming out far more credible than his detractors at this point.

      Considering people are obviously making up piles of horseshit around every specific piece of writing being being complained about that you and I have discussed. I don't think your assertion that the out of context quotes are necessarily offensive in context, regardless who wrote them, is guaranteed accurate. I'm sure some are ... and I'm sure someday someone will publish one in it's entirety so we can see. But at this point there certainly is not enough on the table from credible observers to say there is a established pattern of beyond-the-pale writing spanning 5 years.

      From the few of these newsletter things I've read, they seem a lot like blog entries. Spin on news reports and various observations with sprinkled in money advice (which seemed to be Paul's role - the guy who understood how to save your money). So, say Ghengis or A-Man decided to run for something - what level of responsibility do they have for everything that has ever been posted by ... oh, let's say .... DickDay .... that stuff when he's at his most ranty? Does running Dagblog disqualify someone from office?


       Does running Dagblog disqualify someone from office?

      In any sane political system, you betcha!


      Well, let's start with Ron Paul's own count:

      I was not aware of the details until many years later. These were sentences that were put in, eight or 10 sentences. It wasn't a reflection of my views at all. It got in the letter and I thought it was terrible.

      Presumably he's not guilty of exaggerating that count.

      OK, you want context that you seem to have missed from the indirect previous links. Here's some direct context:

      1. Context around "missing the closet". (June '90)
      2. Context around order being restored when blacks picked up their welfare checks. (June '92 - here's page 1 and page 7 from that same newsletter)
      3. Slandering another free-marketer for "letting gays force their way onto other people's property" in "Weld's Rise and Fall". (October '92, which also contains advice for disposing of guns you might find yourself using on youths)
      4. A small article titled "The Disappearing White Majority" written in January of '93
      5. A throw away sentence in an article titled "The New York Bombing" where a "Jewish friend" speculates about the possibility of Mossad being involved. (April '93)
      6. Fun militia talk. (Janurary '95, where he also talks about other fun conspiracy stuff)

      I can provide more if you like, or you can just visit The New Republic's even larger collection.


      Referenced some elsewhere, but #4,5,6 are ho-hum. 

      You do realize Mossad is responsible for moped assassinations, coming up behind cars or poisoning people in the ear? That it's a truly bad-ass organization that did the most publicized kidnapping to put Eichmann on trial, Israeli forces raid on Entebbe, and this kind of stuff?

       


      Yeah, the Mossad one is the most ho-hum of the list, but #4? Did you actually look at the context?

      Also, The New Republic listed 29 separate documents (32 references), but sometimes if you look at the document you'll find other questionable material they didn't mention. As Peter Schwartz says, the context only makes it look worse.


      Gee, the context makes it feel worse than it seemed when there was no context.

      This is all White Man survivalist stuff. No wonder StormFront likes this guy.

      Should be an easier way to close military bases abroad and wind down some wars.


      But wait, there's more! In addition to the 29-32 references in Dec' 2011 New Republic article, there are some additional ones in The Weekly Standard (yeah, I know). Here are some snippets:

      1. a 1990 issue warned of “The Coming Race War"
      2. an article the following year about disturbances in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C., was entitled “Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo.”
      3. The man who would later proclaim King a “hero” attacked Ronald Reagan for signing legislation creating the federal holiday in his name, complaining, “We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.”
      4. One newsletter reported on the heretofore unknown phenomenon of “Needlin’,” in which “gangs of black girls between the ages of 12 and 14” roamed the streets of New York and injected white women with possibly HIV-infected syringes.
      5. Another newsletter warned that “the AIDS patient” should not be allowed to eat in restaurants because “AIDS can be transmitted by saliva,” a strange claim for a physician to make.

      And, as a bonus, here's Ron Paul in 1995 taking credit for his newsletter (on camera, scroll to the bottom of the article).

      Here's another listing of context and an older article about Ron Paul discussing his racist past (also from The New Republic).

      For those keeping count, that's about 3 dozen offensive and/or crazy statements, many of them quite undeniably racist, that he supposedly wasn't aware of, even though he took credit for them in 1995.

      If you want to say you don't care how crazy he is because you're only interested in his anti-war position, that's your prerogative,  but then the logical thing would be to stop trying to claim that he's not crazy.


      Pretty convincing and damning.


      I chose one at random. "The disappearing White Majority."

      Elaborate. What is your issue with the piece itself? Don't just dump a bunch of links and expect somehow that makes your case.

       


      Dude. Did you read it? You want me to elaborate?

      1. The title. That in itself is a dog whistle.
      2. He describes himself as worried about the trend.
      3. He says that it will necessarily ("inevitably") lead to more welfare.
      4. He complains that whites don't have a "cultural autonomy", that there we're not allowed to have "white schools, white clubs, or white neighbor hoods[sic]".
      5. Speaking of the need to save our children.
      6. Pretty much every damn sentence of every damn paragraph in that article!

       


      Have you ever taken the time to think objectively about your demographic shift?

      1 out of 10 Hawaiians is now Hispanic.

      Hispanic population increased from 35.3 million to 50.5 million in the last decade. The white non-Hispanic population grew by 5.3 million in the same period.

      Underage population fell for Black, American Indian and non-Hispanic white, while it grew by 5 million for Hispanics.

      Texas' adult population (i.e. voting) is now 1/3 Hispanic. 42% in New Mexico, 25% in Arizona, 22% in Nevada, 21% in Florida, even almost 7% in North Carolina and Virginia.

      Hispanic groups are not shy about asking for political attention as an ethnic group.

      So what does this mean for abortion, among highly Catholic Hispanics? Yep, Democratic candidates are going to have to shift to anti-abortion or lose.

      Welfare & other economic handouts? With Hispanic population having 4% higher unemployment than white non-Hispanics, candidates are tempted to promise more to a Hispanic constituency. ( while Black unemployment is much worse, Obama doesn't have to offer anything to gain their support, so there will be little change there from the Administration's view)

      What other conservative influences are coming in this trend? what other cultural changes? how is the education level among the rising Hispanic population? how are the political attitudes among this rising demographics?

      And while it's too late, were whites not allowed to even think about having  a single language country? (I got a degree in Spanish literature to be able to communicate with neighbors and appreciate the culture, but that didn't mean I wanted another officially Spanish speaking state in the Americas. )

       


      Yes, I have taken the time to think objectively about our demographic shift. I've had conversations with my father who doesn't understand why I'm not worried about it. I found it racist of my father to be worried about it. (As Peter says elsewhere, I also make the distinction between racist acts and racist people, not that it matters too much. It's the actions we need to worry about.) When you talk about highly Catholic Hispanics and abortion, is that they're Hispanic that's the issue or that they're highly Catholic? Assuming you'd say "highly Catholic", is that really the problem or that the "highly Catholic" people (regardless of race) tend to vote pro-life?

      No, it's not wrong to wonder about demographic trends, or to get ahead of them. It is troubling to worry about "the disappearing white majority", and even more so when one complains that it will lead to increased dependency on welfare (demonstrating ignorance at best) and wonders why we can't have white schools or neighborhoods.

      I can't believe you're actually defending (indirectly) those thoughts.


      Ignorance, huh? Look up "Center for Immigration Studies: Study Finds High Welfare Use by Immigrants", a 2011 study put up by Hispanic Ohio.

      ​No, I don't care about what religion they are - I care about the effect on abortion rights and other specific policies - so if it's Anabaptist or Catholic, makes me no nevermind. I'd rather they kept their religion out of the voting booth.


      Yes, ignorance. It doesn't take much thought to see the flaw in the logic. Yes, there is high welfare use in immigration and minority communities. Increasing their number does not lead to an increase use of welfare. The bottom 25% are disproportionately minority or immigrants. If we have more minorities and immigrants, the bottom 25% will still only occupy 25% of the population, even if they are still disproportionately minority or immigrant.


      Huh? We're getting the poorest of the poor from Mexico. The middle & upper classes stay home in general. Mexico has 113 million people, so if we get more immigrants, we're not going to run out of poor Mexicans - total immigration was 10 million over a decade, and as I noted elsewhere, immigration is dropping a bit, while the Mexican-American birthrate has gone up - another recipe for poverty and increased welfare use.

      I don't know where your 25% figure comes from, but no, there's not an upper limit to poverty in a country aside from 100%.


      No, we're not getting the poorest of the poor from Mexico. I'm not sure where you're getting that from. The poorest of the poor are unable to make it. They can't afford to pay the people they need to pay to make it happen.

      The 25% was just a number, trying to illustrate a complex concept in a simple manner. The point is that people don't stay poor, and that's certainly true of Mexican immigrants. Second generation Mexican Americans tend to be better off than their parents. If there's no upward mobility for the poor, then that's the problem, not the immigrants themselves. To imply otherwise, well…


      Okay, you got me. We're getting the guys just above the poorest of the poor. 

      Who then get jobs doing yard work and wire back money to the poorest of the poor.

      Median net worth of foreign-born Mexican-Americans is $6276.

      The US-born Mexican-Americans (i.e. 2nd generation) make about 50% more than foreign-born Mexican-born Americans, but Black and non-Hispanic white families make 15% and 50% more respectively than US-borns.

      You can get a better idea from a 2004 paper for the German Labor board, called "The Wealth of Mexican Americans" by Deborah A. Cobb-Clark and Vincent Hildebrand

      As for " If there's no upward mobility for the poor, then that's the problem, not the immigrants themselves. To imply otherwise, well…"

      ​Uh, it's not the lack of education and trainability with the immigrants? Is it our fault as a society for not creating upward mobility for a huge wave of poor Mexicans? (which probably parallels the lack of upward mobility for auto workers, computer programmers and a swath of other common professions over the last 20 years with our stagnating wages)


      Yes, the lack of education is a problem. And, it's one we can address as a society. What do you mean lack of trainability? I'm guessing (hoping?) that doesn't mean what it sounds like.

      Also, note that I'm talking about what's actually happening, not hypotheticals. As you say, second generation Mexican-Americans are better educated and earn more than their parents. And, part of the reason that minorities earn less than non-minorities is because humans have a tendency to favor people who are "like them". As the number of minorities increase, so do their opportunities. They're not poor because of their genetics or their culture, after all. We do agree on that, right?


      Yes, they're poor because of their culture - look at Mexico, look at most of Latin America.


      I don't understand how anyone here can read this article and not see it as a vile, racist piece of shit. The last two paragraphs are the most insidious.

      Do people think that white supremacist websites still throw around the N-word and talk about lynching? They write stuff exactly like this. David Duke loves to explain that he isn't against Jews and blacks; he's just pro-European-American.


      This was an insidious change that's been written about.

      At one point, racists realized that it wasn't cool to be openly racist. That way, they'd only be marginalized and written-off as haters.

      So they accentuated the "positive" by being "pro-European-American," as you say. But also by using "states rights" as an alternative avenue for pursuing their agenda, which had the additional benefit of being kinda sorta rooted in the Constitution.

      All kinds of "reverse discrimination" charges are, for the most part, part of this strategy.


      Yeah. I read a great book about it once. The author calls the phenomenon persecution politics.


      I don't know. I heard there was some twisted logic in that book. wink

      (It's nice that there's only one non-five-star review.)


      Okay, okay-:) Which reminds me: How come Dagblog doesn't have the requirement that all users must own a copy of this book, have read it, and keep it next to one's computer while commenting in the ToS?

      I think you're missing a trick there...


      Hmmm. I see that you're the "progressive Glen Beck" and a "died in the wool progressive..." I'm sure I'm VERY late to this party. And truth be told, I've died in the wool a couple of times myself.


      It's there in the fine print. Our lawyers will be in touch with you shortly. I hope that you can offer them evidence of your compliance with the ToS.


      I see that I can get a paper copy, albeit used, for $.99. However, I'm going to buy it as a Nook Book-:)


      So I can't be pro-European American without being a David Duke fan or at least have his name brought up automatically in reference?

      I like Asian-Americans, but I'd rather they assimilated through the US and leave little corners of Chinatowns in LA, SF & NY, rather than have all of the US feel like Guangzhou. Racist that I am.

       


      1) In what way would you be "pro-European American"? What specifically do you have in mind that's not racist? If you're talking about celebrating Oktoberfest, St. Patrick's day, etc., than that's not what's usually referred to as being "pro-European American". Specifics, please.

      2) Are you suggesting that "all of the US" currently feels "like Guangzhou" or was that just some hypothetical?

      2a) If the former, WTF?

      2b) If the latter, WTF? Why would you make such a hypothetical?


      pro-European American

      Ya gotta understand, that Europeans, having two millenia or so of stealing everything on the globe that wasn't nailed down, and trying to fence in the stuff they couldn't move, are a little nervous now that information tech is permitting their prey to compare notes, and stuff.  They need some affirmative action on the do unto others thing.  (also, for dancing--there is nothing scarier than a straight white boy trying to dance)


      So, say Ghengis or A-Man decided to run for something - what level of responsibility do they have for everything that has ever been posted by ... oh, let's say .... DickDay .... that stuff when he's at his most ranty? Does running Dagblog disqualify someone from office?

      1) That's not apples-to-apples. A newsletter is different from a group blog. We explicitly do not endorse the views presented by other writers. By contrast, Ron Paul's newsletter--with his name emblazoned on the top and no bylines--implies his endorsement of the views contained in it. How would you feel if your newsletter with your real name at the top presented views that you did not agree with? I certainly wouldn't tolerate it, and if racist ideas were peddled in my name, I'd fire the damn writer and issue an immediate retraction.

      2) Even without endorsing the views presented here, we do maintain editorial standards. No racism, for example.

      3) I've got an exploratory committee working on 2016.


      By contrast, Ron Paul's newsletter--with his name emblazoned on the top and no bylines--implies his endorsement of the views contained in it.

      As opposed to avatr-commentary under your heading graphic driving eyes to a big advertisement for a book on the sidebar on every bit of content? Did you disavow? Repudiate?

      I 'prolly shouldn't have opened this line of discussion all things considered .. and *really* wish I'd used the author of this thread as a specific example instead of the one the popped in to my head at 2am. I do agree that there are some differences ... but not that damn many. In a lot of ways, it's mostly just the progression of technology ... while Ron Paul's operation put a stamp on it because that's how the paper world worked. The point wasn't to get a-man even more uptight about things. More to point out that embracing this approach doesn't really ultimately suit anyone's purposes and just narrows the scope of society's participants for trivially stupid reasons.


      I have the toad lickers, the ayahuasca tea partiers and the DMT smokers sewed up....

       

      I have campaign literature:

      Honest Rog, Friend of the Working Girl

      Vote for Rog, "He'll put vice back on the steets where it'll be easier for you to find."


      2) Even without endorsing the views presented here, we do maintain editorial standards. No racism, for example.

      And what about this? I didn't even go back because I didn't want to get mad. And now my hands are shaking.

      Oh wait let me revise it just for you, "two dipshit extremist white guys in Montana who would love to take up arms against the federal government, who love them some Ron Paul" is that better?

      Hmmm. Who else loves him some Ron Paul? Who else happens to be white? Who else happens to live not an hour away from these "dipshit extremist white guys in Montana?". And the author of this comment damn well knows it. I was driven from the conversation ... and it's actually a local topic I'm interested in ... notice, I participated up to this point and then never went back ... I left because of the insult.

      AND YOU TOS WARNED ME? For speaking out for myself? Are. You  Kidding.  Me? Not the person who said that to me after I politely protested using skin color as a pejorative?

      What? Oh, whe didn't mean YOU. You're one of the good ones. Where have I heard that before.

      Does saying so get me banned? Did I say something that should be deleted from your blog? Fine then. I'll see if I have a login tomorrow.


      Whether this is a case of racist language in the sense that people mean when something is referred to as racist (as opposed to it simply referring to a race) is on that fine line in my opinion.  The reason being that there is a number of the militant groups who also have white supremacy leaning (if not outright agenda).  In many liberal eyes, once you start talking about militias, you are basically dealing with racists (just as for many a Republican is a racist until proven innocent).  In this sense the fact they are white is relevant to the description - the individuals themselves make being white (or not white) an issue.  What is wrong then is not that it is racist, but that it makes the assumption that since they are in some ways of a militia mindset, they are assumed guilty of leaning to the white supremacy mindset.

      It would be the similar to talking about the white guys and gals hanging out the US/Mexico border looking for those trying to sneak across.  It isn't racist because the subtext is that there a racist element to why they are on the border and therefore their "race" is relevant to the discussion.

      But that is just my opinion.


      Can you bring me up to speed on what kgb is talking about?


      Let's not go there, please. This is not a discussion direction that will end well.

      Thanks,

      g


      It can't be racist because it's talking about white people.

      Which is why Ron Paul is racist for wanting to talk about white groups, which can't exist unless you break them down into German oompa bands, Italian pasta society or Irish clover festivals. If you want to have a Hispanic or Black students organization, have at it. A Jewish study group? No problem. Gender studies (meaning female) - good job. Just don't try to unite whites. Unless you're throwing them all under a bus, say all white Southerners or those proverbial backcountry madmen from Idaho and Montana, or those evil suited white men in Washington or on Wall Street.

      As KGB notes, most of the "criticisms" of the Ron Paul links are just a point to the links and a group nod that "that's racist", "that's survivalist", "that's loony", etc. with no further intellectual inquiry. That's not to say every Ron Paul stance is defendable, but did no one here take basic debate and know how to make a relevant point based on evidence and logic? Try reading Daily Howler, where Somerby continually notes how quickly liberals fall into a knee-jerk "that's racist" if they don't understand something (or don't care to). Everything can look racist if you want it to.


      Yes, it's wrong to stereotype white people.

      However, if you really don't understand the difference between an Hispanic or Black student organization and a White student organization, then… Here's one difference, I've been in student organizations that were white student organizations, even though there was no intention for them to be so.

      Some people seem to be of the opinion that all of that truly nasty racist stuff is ancient history. As one extreme counter-example, the Tuskegee syphilis experiments didn't end until the 1970s.

      As for most of the "criticisms" of the Ron Paul links just being "a group nod that 'that's racist', 'that's survivalist', 'that's loony', etc. with no further intellectual inquiry", you might as well be saying "a group nod that 2+2=4 with no further intellectual inquiry". A lot of that material is blatantly racist, such as "The disappearing White Majority" as a prime example, which I discuss in more depth above. (I'm amazed that it's not blatantly obvious to everyone. Maybe my expectations are too high.)


      What the hell? We talk about whites being able to bond and promote "white causes" say the way Hispanics promote Hispanic causes, and you throw back Tuskeegee syphilis experiments at me? You're loony.

      There's a "Hispanic Coalition" in Schenectady, New York, believe it or not, where Hispanic population growth was 80% in the last decade. US Hispanic fertility rate is almost 3%, while it's below 2% in Mexico (other US ethnic groups are about 2% or lower). Yes, the good news is Mexican immigration decreased slightly, but the bad news is Mexican-American birthrate increased by 50%.

      As Oregon's Hispanic head of Affirmative Action noted over the 60% increase in Hispanic population: ""Obviously Oregon is becoming more and more diverse everyday,"

      ​Right. there are 180 or so nationalities on the planet. But a huge influx of primarily Mexicans (not Argentinians, Colombians or Panamanians) is considered "more diverse".

      ​We're locked in a rut of language, and can't even confront this big issue openly because we have all our attitudes pre-packaged.

      ​why can't our immigration policy support a diverse growth in fact? How about more Russians, Indonesians, Angolans, Macedonians, Turks, Azeris, Moroccans? Why does "diverse" just mean more Mexicans? In any case, whatever we say, the Hispanic population will likely be 30% by 2050 (though I'm not sure they calculated in the lates baby boom, as they had the same prediction before 2008)


      I'm not sure why you think I "threw" the Tuskegee syphilis experiments at you. That you feel that way is interesting. (Please don't take that the wrong way, but it is interesting that you apparently took it as an attack.) My point is that we have a very recent history of treating blacks like second class citizens (you didn't just mention Hispanics, if you'll recall), whereas we don't have such a history of treating whites that way. There were similar experiments on Hispanics, by the way.

      As for your Mexican question, you are literally begging the question. Diverse does not just mean more Mexicans, and I have no idea where you got such a bizarre premise from. However, it is true that for Oregon an increase in the Hispanic population means an increase in diversity. That's not the only way to increase diversity, but it does increase diversity. To claim otherwise, under the justification that increasing the number of Indonesians would increase diversity is like saying that bullets can't kill me because a knives can kill me.

      As you say, what the hell?


      Try it this way - what did Tuskeegee syphilis tests have to do with what I wrote? Why did you add it?

      No, an increase in Mexican population is not an "increase in diversity" - it's just shifting the majority from one group to another, and Mexicans are getting way over-represented in US demographics. Mexicans - not Cubans, Dominicans, Guatemalans, Puerto Ricans, Argentinians, Chilenos, Peruvians, Catalonians, Castellanos, Galicians, etc. It is a non-diverse trend just moving us to being North Mexico.

      Hey, non-Hispanic whites are now a minority in California, so by your argument, adding more whites "increases diversity".

      And then we have the problem that many liberals automatically think "diverse" equals "good", and almost certainly no one's going to debate that subject with a cool head.

       


      what did Tuskeegee syphilis tests have to do with what I wrote?

      It had to do with you apparently not understanding the difference between black student groups and white student groups. Not understanding that suggested a profound lack of historical knowledge, so I tried to fill in some for you. If you're already familiar with those tests, then I'm even more baffled that you don't understand. I'm reminded of a recent comment you just wrote about "shit disturbers and provocateurs", because I'm having a really hard time believing that you really don't understand this.

      Yes, increasing whites in a non-white area is also an increase in diversity. Where I grew up (metro Atlanta), we had programs that did exactly that. I agree that we could use other streams of diversity. It's not a zero-sum game.

      As for diversity being good, I think it is. That doesn't mean it "equals" good, but I do think it's a good thing. Being in culturally diverse environments helps people to understand why there's a difference between black (or Asian or Hispanic) student groups and white student groups.


      Kgb, I didn't see the comment. As I've said many times, we don't read every comment, but you are welcome to notify us if you feel that a comment is abusive, and we will address your concern.

      With respect to that particular comment, there's no context here, but I would likely moderate the "white guys" reference and give a warning. As for the comment referring to you, unless you and a buddy have moved across the border and plan to take up arms against the government, I just don't see it as a personal reference. But if you want to email me with a link, I'd be happy to review it more closely.

      As for your own warning, it had nothing to do with defending yourself but for personally insulting another blogger. I think that we've been pretty clear about what the line is and why we've drawn it, but again, feel free to email me if it's not clear to you.


      Yes, so if a black person doesn't plan on moving into the hood and becoming a welfare king crack addict, he shouldn't worry about say Ron Paul's slur against blacks in South Central who only stopped rioting because they needed their welfare checks. (and this certainly wasn't a Ron Paul creation - it was a joke going around at the time)


      You are giving the Rush Limbaugh defense. Rush didn't initiate the "Magic Negro" line, but he used the line for his purposes. Ron Paul didn't initiate the "welfare check" line, but used it for fund raising. There are a plethora of words and phrases that can be used, when you state something either put it in context or make a correction.

      If Ron Paul has no problem with Stormfront then he should make the statement clearly. Obama had to address issues with Jeremiah Wright and people clinging to their guns, Ron Paul has to deal with his issues as well. Paul is campaigning to be President of the United States, if he can't stand this heat, he will cower before Congress and foreign powers. Barack Obama had to produce a birth certificate, for goodness sake.

      Paul is asking women to give up reproductive rights, citizens to give up any hope of single payer and students to give up educational grants in the hope that Paul will bring home the troops. Paul's veracity is a major issue given what is at risk of being sacrificed.

      It's interesting that you find so much offense directed at Whites as a group, but don't consider that Blacks as a group might be offended by the welfare check line being used in Paul's publication.

       


      You don't understand I was using the Rush Limbaugh defense facetiously, do you?

      Of course blacks as a group would be insulted to all be labeled as crack-smoking, rioting welfare addicts.

      And mine was in response to Genghis' "As for the comment referring to you, unless you and a buddy have moved across the border and plan to take up arms against the government, I just don't see it as a personal reference."

      ​It's insulting as a label, even if or maybe *because* it doesn't apply to me personally. Are all whites just exploitive racist survivalists sucking off the world's resources?


      One of the reasons that we tend to be like oil and water is that you are offended by the connection between Whites and Supremacists but will flatly state "Obama was elected because of I have a Black friend or linking Mugabe, Winnie and MLK Jr. You are not naive enough to know that those words are not going to raise eyebrows. I think that you enjoy provoking people, but have a thin skin when something is perceived as directed towards you.

      No, I did not read your mind to understand that you were joking with the Limbaugh defense. I can't read Paul's mind either. Paul is not facing anything different then other Presidential candidates has faced. Santorum will face questions about his faith.

      Paul will not be the GOP nominee. White Republicans will be responsible for Paul's failure. Blacks and Latinos will play a minimal role. Few Liberals are willing to give up reproductive rights, education grants and medical care for promises of peace from a man who has not been fully truthful about something as simple as newsletters.


      Kgb, I didn't see the comment. As I've said many times, we don't read every comment, but you are welcome to notify us if you feel that a comment is abusive, and we will address your concern

      http://dagblog.com/link/montanans-launch-recall-baucus-and-tester-over-n...

      Ghengis. You were obviously on the thread. You chose to TOS warn me over the exchange instead of T-Mac. Are you saying you did that without even reading what she said to me?

      Let's say the topic is the New Black Panthers who have started a recall in their locality - who are known to carry weapons and are known for speaking ... aggressively.

      "two ignorant gang-banger black dudes in the Ghetto who would love to take up arms against the white people, who love them some Al Sharpton" is that better?

      Everything I wrote was accurate. Those two are responsible for the idea and the push to make it happen. That is entirely accurate. It remains to be seen whether or not Compton will fall for it.

      How much context would something like that need? Black would indeed  be accurate. I guess it's all good. And I guess if someone lives in West LA, they shouldn't feel a bit like it's directed at them.

      I don't really feel this is a private matter to hide behind an email. I feel you owe me a public apology for embarrassing me in public instead of standing up for me. That added a deep insult - in front of everyone.


      Thank you for the reminder. In the context, I read the comment as stereotyping and frankly deplorable but not racist. I do see your point, and I can see why you feel that it's racist, but I don't regard a white person referring to ignorant white guys as equivalent to your example.

      As for the warning against you, it was on Quinn's recommendation that we barred people from public accusations of racism against other bloggers after the ugly Civil War blog some time ago. I think it was a sensible recommendation, we have used it in the past to moderate other such accusations, and I stand by it.

      For what it's worth, I enjoy discussions with you and value your participation at dagblog, which I find intelligent and unconventional. I would strongly prefer not to moderate any of your comments, and I certainly wouldn't want to suspend you.


      I think there's a difference between calling someone a racist (including overt imagery of plantations et al), vs. pointing out some phrasing or point is racist.

      Presumably what I've been discussing the last few days is about racist phrasing and whether particular policy stances are racist. So far I don't think anyone's specifically called me a racist for trying to defend a broader line of thinking, though there are points where it's been a bit uncomfortable.

      But some people know well enough their analogies are quite personal - we typically call them shit disturbers and provocateurs, as they hide behind a certain detached elitism and just stir the pot feigning obliviousness.


      That's too fine a distinction for us to adjudicate. Moreover, I think that if someone called you a racist, overt imagery or not, you would expect us to moderate the comment. If so, you would be right.

      PS I would like to think that one reason that this discussion hasn't degenerated into accusations of racism against your or others is because we started taking a hard line against it. There's no way to know, but in any case, I'm glad that we've been able to have this discussion without that.


      If I'm discussing racial quotas in immigration or comments on ethnic stereotypes for welfare, riots & related phenomenon, it's that that surprising that someone might call someone a racist, or imply it clearly.

      If I'm discussing basic human freedoms and conditions around the world and someone pops out with a pretty ad hoc racist accusation in very ugly terms, then I'm much more expecting intervention.

       


      There shades and contextual differences of course, but we don't have time or energy to parse that much or explain the intricacies to people. It's a simple rule, easily explained and enforced: don't accuse of other dagbloggers of racism.


      Let's set the record straight though Genghis, I didn't ask any one to moderate anything. I just commented back to kgb, after he called me a racist. So yeah, Genghis, someone was called a racist, me, and I didn't say shit to you.  Did I offend some very delicate sensibilities. Oh well, I guess they will have to toughen up.

      I feel so flattered though, people dragging with them from thread to thread a personal anger about some flippant comment I made Oath Keepers, who are in fact white supremacists (= racists) who want to overthrow a democratically elected government and they see this as the first step. Who takes that personally? Seriously? Wow.

      Gee Genghis, I thought these meta discussions about other bloggers were taboo. Yet you seem to encouraging this meta discussion about me. I think it kind of sucks.


      Hey, T-Mac, since we are not infrequently butting heads, and unencumbered by actually having read your oath keepers comment, I wish firmly to enroll myself on the side of thinking they are delusional, self-important, posturing assholes, who are attempting to fill a huge inner void where confidence would live, if they had any.

      And racists, also.  Just my 2 cents.


      You are right, tmac. Every once in a while, I indulge in meta, thinking it will be productive, but it always gets nasty.

      This thread has gone on long enough. I'm shutting it down now.


        I quit  commenting before I got pissed in that same thread because I felt the TOS were being violated in spirit if not in strict fact, but I was not thinking of KGB. As you say, he responds with intelligence and rational arguments. 

       I could pick up there where I left off and argue in the same way that I was responded to and it would get ugly pretty quick I'm guessing.  I could respond in the way my responder did  and it would be your uunenviable task to finally through a flag. KGB was treated to a penalty like a guy in a football game that hits back. It shouldn't be that way but often is. 


      I hear you, but we can't effectively moderate violations of the spirit. They're too vague and too subject to bias from the moderators. There are already enough disagreements over moderation decisions without going into the realm of the subtext.

      Perhaps more importantly, it's all too easy to misinterpret comments, especially from someone you dislike or distrust. Believe it or not, what you interpret as a subtle character attack may not actually be intended that way. It has certainly happened to me before on both ends.

      In any case, I think that you made the right call. Simply refusing to deign an insulting comment with a response is generally the best way to avoid wasting time, energy, and ToS warnings.


      Please explain how kgb got "hit" by someone making fun of two members of Oath Keepers (a quasi-militia group with, to be charitable, fringe minority views on government and the constitution), men who don't even live in kgb's home state?

      What kgb did was the equivalent of a "flop" in basketball.  When no foul was called, he cried to the refs, who were right to ignore it.  He's the Danny Ainge of dagblog.

       


      Your interjection is unhelpful and unwelcome. Please stay out of it.


      And how was "Anonymous LULU's" "interjection" "helpful?"  Or was it "welcome" under some obscure provision of the TOS that less-favored participants aren't privy to?


      he attended seances attended with Crowleyan macgick. 

      Now you're talkin'... Israel Regardie for Secretary of State...at last, Archangels in America


      Ron Paul third in Iowa.

      There is no reason to be concerned about Ron Paul becoming the GOP Presidential nominee. The  Republicans themselves are dealing with th problem. Hollow appeals to Blacks and Latinos to support Paul are unimportant. Republican voters will be rejecting Rep. Paul and his Ayn Rand philosophy. There may be some Independents who will be voting in Republican Primaries to lend their support to Paul, but at the end of the day, the majority of Republican Primary voters will not be voting for Ron Paul. Even if Ron Paul miraculously won the GOP nomination (a passable idea for an alternate history science fiction novel), Obama would demolish Paul in the general election.

      Blacks and Latinos can stand back and laugh at Paul's explanations. Paul's "Some other guys did the writing" defense is weak. Paul is no Martin Luther King Jr. He is not the savior of minority communities. "The Blacks" will look elsewhere.


      Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jon Chait do an excellent review on the Libertarian view on race comes under suspicion. One comment on Coates' column note that Paul's attack on the "War on Drugs" comes across as the new "I have a Black friend".

      http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/01/the-banality-of-raci...

      http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/01/how-ron-pauls-libertarianism-suppor...


      Obama got elected on "I have a Black friend". Deal with it.


      Can you back this claim up with any evidence? 


      Incorrect, sir. The choice was between Barack Obama and Joe Biden versus John McCain and Sarah Palin. The country made the rational decision. The country would select Obama over Ron Paul in a heartbeat. Surely you're not implying that Obama was elected for reasons other than being the best option?


      Define "best option". He was young, tall, good looking. Exotic - had been partially raised in Indonesia. He had spoken out against the Iraq War, which made it sound like he was a peace candidate. He was black but from a white family, which arguably made him more acceptable to some in breaking the color line in a historic first. He had very little legislative experience, and no executive or business experience. He put together a very good ground organization. He spoke out against Bush-era detention and tax cuts for the rich, which made it sound like he would reverse these.

      People voted for him for a lot of reasons - identity politics, researched issues, arbitrary reasons, specific policies, Bush/Clinton/GOP fatigue, to be with the kool kidz, cause Michelle looked good, etc....


      Sigh.....

      He was the best option meaning that a number of folks gabbing about the Clintons, the activists Robert Mugabe, Winnie Mandela and Marin Lther King Jr, Koreans shooting at Blacks, Blacks rejecting Clintons, Barry, that poverty has not disappeared, etc. pulled the lever for Obama.

      If Obama wasn't the best option, then these people were irrational.


      Surely, you are not gonna try and sell us on the idea that Obama had an easier road to election on account of passing as black? Damn, I should'a kept it up back in college, today I'd be a supreme court judge, or maybe I could'a broke into chippendale's...


      Instead you wore falsies and got a job as a pole dancer - ain't life ironic?


      Ta-da dum.  Everyone's a comic in the catskills.

      We have, actually, had occasion to deal with the pole before...


      Yes I know, but I'd failed to assimilate that you were a mail stripper.

      Like in reduced post-age.

      I hope she liked/licked your stamps.


      Surely such puns are a ToS violation.


      The T of S only bar "special delivery" jokes...


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