Some of you may remember my May 2007 diary Ron Paul, In His Own Words, in which I detailed some very unsavory racist writings from Paul's 1990s-era newsletters. The greatest hindrance to me at the time, and since then, has been that I had never actually seen a copy of the Ron Paul Political Report: the eight-page, typewritten newsletter was only mailed to a few thousand subscribers and never made it to LexisNexis or any other wide-circulation database, and the only traces available to us at the time were secondhand, from Paul fans who'd transcribed them and posted them on the Internet or other online locations.
But not anymore. "Angry White Man," an article in the latest issue of The New Republic, has just become the definitive guide to the racist writings of Ron Paul, with more than a dozen extremely damning scans from the newsletter itself, located by writer James Kirchick in the archives of the University of Kansas and the Wisconsin Historical Society.
You should really just go and read the whole thing, but here's a few highlights. Please note: these links all go to PDFs, which sucks, but what can you do.
A few of the many examples of Paul's racist, anti-gay writings:
June 1990:
The Pink House? What an outrage that, for the first time in our nation's history, the organized forces of perversion were feted in the White House.... I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities. They could also not be as promiscuous. Is it any coincidence that the AIDS epidemic developed after they came 'out of the closet,' and started hyper-promiscuous sodomy? I don't believe so, medically or morally.
October 1990:
A mob of black demonstrators, led by the "Rev." Al Sharpton, occupied and closed the Statue of Liberty recently, demanding that New York be renamed Martin Luther King City "to reclaim it for our people."
Hmmm. I hate to agree with the Rev. Al, but maybe a name change is in order. Welfaria? Zooville? Rapetown? Dirtburg? Lazyopolis?
But Al, the Statue of Liberty? Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.
November 1990:
[David] Duke's platform called for tax cuts, no quotas, no affirmative action, no welfare, and no busing.... To many voters, this seems like just plain good sense. Duke carried baggage from his apst, but the voters were willing to overlook that. And if he had been afforded the forgiveness an ex-communist gets, he might have won.
December 1990:
Many Americans belong to the Smithsonian Institution, which is charged with collecting artifacts that reflect the spirit of American history. But now homosexuals are being asked to contribute memorabilia of their struggle for "civil rights." The Smithsonian is planning an exhibit to advance the gay political agenda, which is uniformly statist.
December 1990:
[Martin Luther King, Jr.] was also a comsymp, if not an actual party member, and the man who replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration. King, the FBI files show, was not only a world-class adulterer, he also seduced underage girls and boys. The Rev. Ralph David Abernathy revealed before his death that King had made a pass at him many years before. And we are supposed to honor this "Christian minister" and lying socialist satyr with a holiday that puts him on a par with George Washington?
January 1991:
Martin Luther King: Socialist: St. Martin was a world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours ("non-violence" didn't apply in all spheres, I guess). He was a flagrant plagiarist with a phony doctorate. He replaced forced segregation in a few states with forced integration in all states. And he was a dedicated socialist. What a guy. He probably deserves two holidays.... In 1988 when I ran for president on the Libertarian Party ticket, I was berated for hours by LP members because I had refused to vote, while in Congress,f or a Martin Luther King national holiday. I didn't know then about his plagiarism, but the rest of King's crimes were clear. J. Edgar Hoover once called him "the most dangerous man in America." Who could have known the danger would continue after his death and threaten to strangle our culture?
January 1994:
[G]ays in San Francisco do not obey the dictates of good sense. They have stopped practicing "safe sex."... First, these men don't really see a reason to live past their fifties. They are not married, they have no children, and their lives are centered on new sexual partners. These conditions do not make one's older years the happiest. Second, because sex is the center of their lives, they want it to be as pleasurable as possible, which means unprotected sex. Third, they enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick.
There's more; much more. Over and over, we see a Ron Paul obsessed with homosexuality and with the big breaks he sees the government and society giving to black people. These sentiments--along with seething hatred of the federal government, open celebration of anti-government militias, and a warm embrace of bizarre conspiracy theories--are the rule, not the exception. Whether Paul wrote every word in his newsletters or not, it is inconceivable that the views expressed repeatedly here, which he published under his name in words he represented as being written by him for two decades or more, do not represent the views of Ron Paul himself.
UPDATE: I've been asked to post the Paul campaign's response to the TNR article, so... here it is, laughable though it may be. To paraphrase myself from the comments, the "I didn't write it" excuse was dubious enough back when people were quoting from a single issue. That he's sticking to it now that we're looking at dozens of issues spanning decades simply boggles the mind.