Reducing Ron to Racism

Well said.

Taki's Magazine
Verbatim Post

Brian Anderson

While interviewing Ron Paul a few days ago, CNN’s chief political analyst Gloria Borger avoided discussing his policies and instead dredged up the already exhausted newsletter scandal.

On multiple occasions, Paul has stated that he: (1) doesn’t know who the author was, (2) takes full responsibility for the newsletters being published under his name, and (3) denounces their content. Yet Gloria wouldn’t let up with her antics.

“Goodbye,” Paul said, then calmly walked away. Although initial news reports gave the impression that Borger’s badgering caused him to stomp out of the interview, this wasn’t the case.

“Obama apologists can feel free to hold up that race card when the debates get tougher, but libertarians can hold it up longer.”

Sean Hannity and other right-leaning pundits have asked Paul equally stupid questions over the years, so it isn’t only left-wing news outlets.

One of Paul’s most popular stances is his strong rejection of the War on Drugs, which had been a non-issue until he came into the mix. Substance prohibition in American history has frequently been entwined with anti-minority ideology. In the early 1900s, marijuana was denounced as a drug that polluted the white race and turned Mexicans into murderous lunatics. The same thing was carried out against Chinese immigrants and blacks through anti-opium and anti-cocaine legislation, respectively.

Anti-drug laws still disproportionately affect minorities. A 2009 Human Rights Watch study concluded that “an estimated 67 percent of convicted felony drug defendants are sentenced to jail or prison.” Relative to population, “blacks are 10.1 times more likely than whites to be sent to prison for drug offenses.”

The Root, a black-oriented website, referred to ending drug prohibition as the “most meaningfully pro-black policy today.” The NAACP accepts this thesis and passed a resolution earlier this year to end the War on Drugs.

Nelson Linder, president of the Austin NAACP, speaks favorably of Ron Paul’s campaign, especially his foreign-policy stance. Which other candidate expresses stricter antiwar sentiments than Ron Paul? The Texan congressman has consistently opposed US imperialism from the beginning of his career—there’s a book detailing these speeches. He even went where few politicians would in supporting WikiLeaks.

If he was racist, why would he continue to speak out against the outrageous number of civilian deaths resulting from these wars in the Middle East? And why is he one of the only candidates who sternly opposes the TSA’s racial profiling here at home?

Capital punishment disproportionately affects blacks. After the practice was reinstated in 1976—it had been suspended for four years due to the Furman v. Georgia ruling—University of Iowa law professor David C. Baldus published a study on the pre-suspension environment. He discovered in examining over 2,000 homicide cases in Georgia that capital punishment was more often applied to black defendants, especially when the victim was white.

The ACLU concurs. “If you’re rich, you get away with it. If you’re poor and you’re from the inner city, you’re more likely to be prosecuted and convicted,” Paul has stated. Ron Paul disagrees with capital punishment for that very reason.

The current president has extended these policies, as well as the Middle East wars, without much protest from the standard news outlets. He overrides state laws to enforce the harmful drug war. And he set a record on the border front, deporting nearly 400,000 illegal immigrants in the last fiscal year.

Nowhere on Ron Paul’s campaign website does the word “deport” exist. In fact, one of his immigration reforms includes streamlining the entry process for foreigners.

Assuming Paul gets the GOP nod, we’ll be left with a choice between the candidate who takes $500 from a racist and uses it to stop the wars or the one who takes millions from big banks and uses it to escalate them.

Obama apologists can feel free to hold up that race card when the debates get tougher, but libertarians can hold it up longer.