Hello, Phil:
Here's the problem.
Black Americans aren't going to elect a benevolent
racist who would "help them" through eliminating the
income tax, etc. if they believe that Ron Paul holds
racist views. As president, he's going to be making
thousands of decisions -- many of which may hinge on
race as a factor. If African Americans don't believe
they're going to get a fair shake from his "liberty
agenda" -- and, indeed, that he's willing to give the
police state the benefit of the doubt when they arrest
black Americans and charge them with crimes -- he's
not going to get black support. This is holding true
in Paul's abysmal numbers with the black community.
Similarly, the overwhelming majority of gay Americans
aren't going to elect or support a homophobe for
office, regardless of the general benefits that his
policies may offer them -- for similar reasons. When
it comes down to it, Ron Paul supports policies that
keep gay people as second class citizens.
Lo and behold, there's 20% of the population that Ron
Paul has already written off.
Now, let's add in women (many of whom believe their
uteruses are their own property, and not that of the
state -- i.e. diametrically opposed to Ron Paul's
position), Latino Americans (who chafe under Paul's
immigration strategy), and add them to the African
American and gay communities and suddenly Paul's
campaign is excluding 80%+ of California, and 60%+ of
the national population.
The reality is simple -- Ron Paul's campaign is a
campaign of mostly older white straight guys. It
doesn't have much support amongst the young, or the
various other minorities who put together represent a
supermajority. Nothing about the campaign represents
liberty for a majority of the people who are
targeted/excluded by Paul's agenda, and the excuses
for his behavior (i.e. "wouldn't people he doesn't
like still benefit from this?") are similar to the
typical Democratic and Republican lines that I spend
quite a bit of time criticizing.
That's why he's running as a Republican candidate, and
not a Libertarian one. Despite the spin-job phoney
poll being cited repeatedly, I firmly believe that a
majority of Libertarian Party supporters would not
support his campaign. He's unfairly trading on the
"libertarian" brand to advance a socially
conservative, fiscally conservative agenda that has
serious flaws and appeals to statism. To the degree
that he's attracting "new" people to "libertarianism,"
he is attracting people who want a wall on the Mexican
border, constitutional amendments to declare a woman's
uterus property of the state, and laws that
permanently marginalize gay American citizens.
If we're going to grow the "libertarian" base like
that, why don't we come out for single-payer
socialized medicine while we're at it?!?
Cheers,
Brian
--- Philip Berg <philip@...> wrote:
It's not the man , it's the ideas. He says that
repeatedly. Will gettting rid of the welfare state
be good for the black community, getting rid of the
income tax?, Ending inflation and eliminating the
Federal Reserve? These measures may hurt the Black
upper class and the Black middle calss that is
ensconced in the beast's apparatus, at least in the
short term
but isn't independence worth it?
Or you can go with Bush's compassionate
conservatism. I remember when Bush came to Baltimore
in 1999, and did the usual white politician Ghetto
tour ala Humphry, Mondale etc. , looked around and
stated, We need to do something about this. Well I
don't need to tell you how much good 50 years of
Government spending tens of billions "doing
something" in Baltimore has done.
Ron Paul is the first candidate in my lifetime who
will never go to Baltimore and suggest more
government as the solution.
PS. I just got off the phone with Chrisiine Smith.
She wants us to look at her revamped website.
Libertarianfor president.com
Christine is from the social liberal side of the
party. Ron Paul is from the social conservative
side. I have always thought that this was one of the
strengths of the party. That it could show the way
for America to end the culture war and move forward
together towards greater freedom. Unifying both
sides in a common respect for liberty is our great
strength. As such it requires each to tolerate
certain deeply held beliefs of the other side.
Christine will be a nice balance to Paul to show
both faces of the liberty movement.
From: eric dupree
To: lpsf-discuss@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2007 12:15 AM
Subject: Re: [lpsf-discuss] Re: [ca-liberty]
Something for all the Ron Paul supporters to read
Jim Brownfield,
they are Paul's words PERIOD. It doesn't matter if
he wrote them and he can't say in didn't authorize
them. The mere fact the author is associated with
him...
What he can do is show what he's done in regards
to other black issues or causes and bring forward
black people who can speak well of him so that a
single negative opinion won't be blown out of
proportion. To quote Janet Jackson "what have you
done for me lately".
So far I haven't heard any black (Texasan?) say
anything about him and that can be the kiss of
death.
LP's do well not appearing racial. Then something
like this comes up...litmus test? It's not just the
opinions you have, but also the people you have
around you.
It's like Andrew Cohen of the Bayview video saga,
after he and I had lunch I determined he is not a
racist, he a humorist. His (in my opinion) best
friend (who happens to be black) sat in at the lunch
and as a cultural anthropolgist I rendered an
opinion to the community that's Andrew is alright.
My point, had I known about the Paul newsletter I
would have met with him and reported back as I have
done since Starchild encouraged me to learn more
about the LP's who have treated me well.
Lynette Shaw was kicked out of her home and raised
by black people. That impressed us in regards to the
LP's.
I told everyone I felt Olivier was anti
imirgration not anti Mexican.
So now I ask only because Paul has caused a racial
issue, 'what ELSE has he to say about us?'
From: Starchild
To: "Brian Miller"
Subject: [lpsf-discuss] Re: [ca-liberty]
Something for all the Ron Paul supporters to read
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 20:01:40 -0700
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, eve! n 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,
<<< starchild >>>
So let me get this straight.
Suppose I pubilshed the "Brian R. Miller
Newsletter on
Politics."
The byline was written by me.
The article in question contained a racist
rant.
You condemn me, years later, for what I wrote
-- and I
say "oh, I didn't write that, it was a ghost
writer."
I further attack your integrity for "damaging
the
freedom movement."
Meanwhile:
1) No official apology was ever issued for the
racist
article. In fact, I never comment on it until
you
confront me in my bid for office. Despite the
fact
that the article was the *primary* article in
*my*
newsletter.
2) The columnist who wrote the article,
according the
article I googled from your response text,
continued
to write articles for Paul's newsletter for
months
afterwards, if Paul's tepid renunciation of
other
crazy racist rants as "ghostwritten" is to be
believed
=== message truncated ===