{"id":333,"date":"2011-12-29T21:05:33","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T02:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=333"},"modified":"2011-12-29T21:05:33","modified_gmt":"2011-12-30T02:05:33","slug":"ron-paul-republicans-and-the-race-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/12\/ron-paul-republicans-and-the-race-card.html","title":{"rendered":"Ron Paul, Republicans, and the Race Card"},"content":{"rendered":"

The stuff of establishment Republicans\u2019 worst nightmares is now coming to pass: they can no longer depict Ron Paul as a \u201cfringe\u201d candidate.\u00a0 Even they<\/em> have been compelled by events to acknowledge that the Texas Congressman could very well finish first place in theIowa caucus. \u00a0<\/p>\n

But it isn\u2019t just that Ron Paul may take Iowa.\u00a0 Throughout these primaries, in spite of receiving less media coverage than all of the other candidates, Paul has succeeded in maintaining, for the most part, a third place showing.\u00a0 Every \u201cfront runner\u201d except for the establishment\u2019s favorite\u2014Mitt Romney\u2014has come and gone.\u00a0 Paul rates more favorably nationally among Republican voters than Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman, and Rick Santorum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Paul, that is, can no longer be ignored.\u00a0 Republicans have thus taken to smearing him.<\/p>\n

And they have availed themselves of the most incendiary of charges to level against him.\u00a0 Paul, they insinuate, is a \u201cracist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Believe it or not, the sole basis of this accusation is a newsletter that Ron Paul published nearly 20 years ago.\u00a0 The controversial articles in question included derogatory remarks concerning patterns of voting, welfare dependency, and criminality among blacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those Republicans (and others) who now attack Paul are not his critics.\u00a0 Critics engage the ideas <\/em>of their opponents.\u00a0 Establishment Republicans, in glaring contrast, do not engage Paul at all.\u00a0 They are his nemeses, <\/em>not his critics. Their objective is nothing more or less than the assassination of his very character.\u00a0 That this latest strike against Paul is an exhibition, not of true moral outrage, but of the worst of gutter politics, can be seen by the following considerations. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, that Paul\u2019s enemies would construct their entire case against him on the basis of a decades-old newsletter should alone suffice to establish the speciousness of their charges.\u00a0 Paul has been in public life for many years. He has a voting record in Congress going back even further than the now notorious newsletter articles.\u00a0 He has authored several books and countless articles, and he has made just as many speeches and given just as many interviews.\u00a0 The man is the proverbial open book. If his adversaries really, truly believed that he was \u201cthe racist\u201d that they imply he is, then surely they should have ample material with which to supplement the newsletter articles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet outside these newsletters, they can select not a single syllable, much less a single vote that Paul cast while a Congressman, to substantiate their charge.\u00a0 And you know that if it was there, they would not have spared a second to seize upon it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Second, these articles from Ron Paul\u2019s newsletter are not just now coming to light. They have been in the public domain for years.\u00a0 <\/em>Conveniently, those who wax indignant over the material contained within them appear to do so only when Paul campaigns for the presidency\u2014that is, only when he poses a threat to \u201cpolitics as usual.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Third, Paul did not author the articles that his enemies are now resurrecting (once again).\u00a0 \u00a0He has consistently insisted upon this, and, moreover, no one contends otherwise.<\/p>\n

Fourth, admittedly, some of the language in which the newsletter\u2019s racially incorrect positions are framed is unduly crass.\u00a0 Yet inasmuch as the newsletter itself seeks to illuminate the destructive nature of the mindset that prevails among the black underclass, it speaks to an issue that concerns, and should <\/em>concern, everyone<\/em>\u2014Republican and Democrat, left and right.\u00a0 This is an issue, in other words, that figures as disparate as Thomas Sowell and Cornel West\u2014both black\u2014have addressed for decades.\u00a0 And insofar as Ron Paul\u2019s newsletter speaks to the self-<\/em>destructive voting habits of blacks generally, it speaks on behalf of Republicans everywhere who have been making this same point, even if not so bluntly, for a long time.<\/p>\n

Fifth, even if we reject as factually inaccurate <\/em>the ideas articulated in Paul\u2019s newsletter, does this mean that we must reject them as morally reprehensible?\u00a0 <\/em>Let us bear in mind that while, as Richard Weaver famously said, ideas have consequences, ideas themselves should be the focus primarily of intellectual, <\/em>not moral, <\/em>analysis.\u00a0 Every idea has the potential to be enlisted in the service of either<\/em> good or<\/em> evil.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After all, it is for the sake of the ideal of human equality that communists impoverished, starved, and slaughtered tens of millions of human beings.\u00a0 Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, was a slave holder who believed that blacks were innately inferior to whites.\u00a0 Yet Jefferson, along with his contemporaries who thought similarly on racial issues, personally opposed the unequal treatment to which blacks were subjected and crafted a set of institutional arrangements that promised them a far better life inAmericathan they could ever have hoped to enjoy in any other part of the globe. Abraham Lincoln similarly was a virulent \u201cracist\u201d by our standards.\u00a0 He steadfastly opposed civil equality for blacks and whites.\u00a0 But Lincoln personally opposed slavery, and the war that he launched, whatever else can (and has) been said about it, had the effect of abolishing slavery in America.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

What, we must ask, has Ron Paul ever did or said in his many years in public life that can so much as remotely be construed as \u201cracist?\u201d\u00a0 The answer is not a single thing.\u00a0 In fact, Ron Paul\u2019s voting record in Congress, as well as his many writings, attest beyond the shadow of a doubt that he is equality\u2019s most impassioned and consistent champion.\u00a0 None of the other presidential candidates\u2014including President Obama\u2014can credibly lay claim to this distinction.\u00a0 Paul is equality\u2019s greatest champion because he is liberty\u2019s greatest champion, and he recognizes that where there is no equality before the law there is no liberty.<\/p>\n

Finally, Paul declares that he neither knew of these articles at the time that they were published nor does he endorse the positions that they contain.\u00a0 This is not so hard to believe when it is considered that during the same passage of time that the articles were published, Paul argued against \u201cthe War on Drugs\u201d on the grounds that it was \u201cracist.\u201d\u00a0 Actually, Paul argued\u2014and still argues\u2014that this so-called \u201cwar\u201d is \u201cracist\u201d in origin.\u00a0 <\/em>Of all places, it is to the left-leaning Huffington Post <\/em>that we owe thanks for revealing this.\u00a0 The writer of the column, a Mr. Ryan Grim, even goes so far as to argue that Paul\u2019s analysis is correct.<\/p>\n

I agree with neither Ron Paul nor Ryan Grim on this score.\u00a0 But the point here is that it is a peculiar sort of \u201cracist\u201d who labors for decades defying the zeitgeist vis-\u00e0-vis \u201cthe War on Drugs\u201d for the sake of insuring that blacks and whites receive parity of treatment.\u00a0 Furthermore, Ron Paul would have to be schizophrenic if he were to simultaneously sponsor \u201cracist\u201d material while arguing that \u201cthe War on Drugs\u201d is immoral because it is \u201cracist.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

There is one other consideration of which we would be well served to take stock.\u00a0 In spite of Ron Paul\u2019s Republican enemies\u2019 best efforts to convince the rest of us that he is \u201cracist,\u201d non-whites support Paul in greater numbers than they support any other Republican candidate.\u00a0 This, at any rate, is the finding of a recent CNN\/ORC poll\u2014hardly a libertarian or Paul-friendly source.\u00a0 According to this poll, in a general election race against President Obama, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and Mitt Romney would receive 15%, 17%, 18%, and 20% of the non-white vote, respectively.\u00a0 Ron Paul, though, would take home 25% of this same vote.<\/p>\n

It should be clear that Paul\u2019s enemies\u2014his Republican enemies particularly\u2014are grasping at straws to not just discredit the good doctor, but to ruin him.<\/p>\n

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n

originally published at The New\u00a0American\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The stuff of establishment Republicans\u2019 worst nightmares is now coming to pass: they can no longer depict Ron Paul as a \u201cfringe\u201d candidate.\u00a0 Even they have been compelled by events to acknowledge that the Texas Congressman could very well finish first place in theIowa caucus. \u00a0 But it isn\u2019t just that Ron Paul may take…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nRon Paul, Republicans, and the Race Card<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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