In May 2007, I wrote for the first time about The Ron Paul Political Report, a radical and frequently racist newsletter the candidate had published during the 1980s and 1990s that catered to the survivalist/militia movements that were moderately popular on the right-wing fringe at the time. These newsletters gained some national attention the following year when The New Republic published an article quoting a number of the more unsavory passages from the newsletter at length. Now the writer of the TNR piece, James Kirchick, has written a new article for the current issue of The Weekly Standard revisiting the newsletters and the controversy they caused four years ago.
At the time, Paul—a member of Congress from 1979 to 1985 and the Libertarian Party candidate for president in 1988—was back home in Surfside, Texas managing what amounted to the Ron Paul brand. This included publishing the Ron Paul Political Report (renamed the Ron Paul Survival Report in 1993 to cater to the "militia" crowd) was one of the more prominent of these, a monthly publication that usually ran to about 8-12 pages and was mailed to about 7,000 subscribers around the world. A typical issue of the Report contained a combination of crackpot economic theory, investment advice (which, unsurprisingly, usually amounted to "buy gold"), and an extra-large helping of radical right-wing opinion, including hatred for racial, religious, sexual, and ethnic minorities.
Kirchick's 2008 article, which was more extensive than the current one, is not currently available online except to subscribers, so I refer you to my own diary at the time for a summary. Some of the rougher excerpts from the Ron Paul Political Report:
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. (June 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. (October 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 past, but the voters were willing to overlook that. And if he had been afforded the forgiveness an ex-communist gets, he might have won. (November 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? (December 1990)
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, for 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 1991)
[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. (January 1994)
Kirchick's new article, "The Company Ron Paul Keeps" (dare I believe this to be a shout-out?), is less comprehensive but offers additional examples of hate speech spewed at blacks, Jews, gays and lesbians, and just about anyone who wasn't pretty much exactly like Ron Paul. It also relates Paul's response when asked about the TNR article:
“The quotations in the New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed,” he said. “When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publicly taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.” In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer two days after the article appeared, Paul waved away accusations of racism by saying that he was “gaining ground with the blacks” and “getting more votes right now and more support from the blacks.”
Whether you believe this or not is up to you. I'll say this: The issues I have seen are full of articles written in the first person from the perspective of an author who is clearly representing himself as Ron Paul. The December 1990 issue signs off with a personal message from the author, "my wife Carol, and our children and grandchildren," wishing the readership a merry Christmas and happy New Year. ("May we start to confound the plans of the Trilateralists and other big-government types, making America freer and thus truer to her own heritage, in 1991.") An article in the 1992 issue speaks of a conversation the author had with "my youngest son" (this would presumably be Rand Paul's brother Robert), who was starting his fourth year in medical school. The cover story of the January 1992 issue talks about the author being urged to run for president that year (and his decision to endorse Pat Buchanan instead); the May 1995 issue discusses his plans to return to the House of Representatives the following year. These first person perspectives, published under Ron Paul's name, are sprinkled liberally throughout the articles that appear in every issue. Most of the articles appear without bylines; the few articles with bylines are credited to someone else, reinforcing the impression that the other ones come from Paul himself.
Plenty of people believe that Ron Paul did not write the most offensive articles. Personally, I'm inclined to agree with Reason magazine that many or most of them were probably penned by Lew Rockwell, Paul's associate and an editor of his newsletter. Ultimately, though, it doesn't really matter who wrote them. If Paul didn't write them but knew about them, he is guilty of knowingly allowing flagrantly racist and hateful material to be published under his name, in his voice, on his dime. If he didn't even know about them, as Paul now claims, then at best he was so detached from his own enterprise that, for a period of at least seven years, he couldn't even be bothered to thumb through a single issue of his own eight-page newsletter while a gang of racists hijacked it under his nose and transformed it into a white supremacist organ. Either way, the picture it paints of Paul is not a flattering one.
As we saw four years ago, there are people here who are more than happy to sing Ron Paul's praises, who see him not just as a potential disruptor of the Republican nominating process but as a viable choice for America. As long as there are, it will be my sad duty to remind everyone here of just who and what Ron Paul really is.