[ca-liberty] Something for all the Ron Paul supporters to read

Brian,

  It seems to me there is another possibility besides Ron Paul not being concerned with the material put out in his name, that being he realized "well, it's out now, and while regrettable, I can't do anything about it." Publicly apologizing for it, renouncing it, etc., would merely have drawn more attention to it, kind of as attempting to censor objectionable art, films, etc., typically merely results in getting them a wider audience than they otherwise would have had. I do think he ought to have put a note in the newsletter communicating his disavowal of the piece to his readers, although maybe he did that -- it's not fully clear what you mean to me when you say he issued "no official apology."

  I can also readily imagine a scenario where Ron Paul gave the piece his blessing based on a general understanding of the theme, without reading it carefully enough to realize until later that it crossed a line from true and valid observations (their seemed to be a lot of racial animosity from blacks in the L.A. riots, young black men commit a disproportionate amount of street crime, black "leaders" like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton encourage racism, etc.) into unfair and unsupportable racist generalizations ("...what blacks have done to cities across America," "our country is being destroyed by a group of actual and potential terrorists -- and they can be identified by the color of their skin," etc.) If Ron had given the article the green light in general terms, he may have felt it would be unfair for him to discipline an author who honestly thought he was writing with Ron Paul's approval, even if Ron actually did not end up agreeing with the final content.

  To the author's partial credit, he does at least make clear toward the end of the article that he does not believe all blacks are automatically to blame based on their skin color ("about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty, and the end of welfare and affirmative action.") But I think there are still parts of the essay that do generalize based on skin color and are racist. It's true that people of many other ethnicities regularly say and write similar things about persons of European descent and are not held accountable, but that still does not make it right. I'm glad Ron Paul has disavowed the article, even if he did not display enough public contrition to please you.

Love & Liberty,
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