But hey, he's against the War, right?

One of the five pillars of the feverish, slavishly devoted Ron Paul supporters is that Ron Paul is the only genuine, straight-talking candidate out there. He's honest and votes his convictions, instead of voting whatever way the political winds are blowing. He's written so much about his political thinking that you can be sure you know what he'll do and why, and he does this because he's the only open, honest candidate.

Which makes me wonder: if he's so damned open and honest, why doesn't he release copies of his old newsletters?

Presumably because they're filled with stuff that would make David Duke green with envy that he didn't write it first.

Thomas E. Woods Jr. ... is a founder of the League of the South, a secessionist group, and the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, a pro-Confederate, revisionist tract published in 2004. Paul enthusiastically blurbed Woods's book, saying that it "heroically rescues real history from the politically correct memory hole." Thomas DiLorenzo, another senior faculty member and author of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, refers to the Civil War as the "War for Southern Independence" and attacks "Lincoln cultists"; Paul endorsed the book on MSNBC last month in a debate over whether the Civil War was necessary (Paul thinks it was not). In April 1995, the institute hosted a conference on secession at which Paul spoke; previewing the event, Rockwell wrote to supporters, "We'll explore what causes [secession] and how to promote it." Paul's newsletters have themselves repeatedly expressed sympathy for the general concept of secession. In 1992, for instance, the Survival Report argued that "the right of secession should be ingrained in a free society" and that "there is nothing wrong with loosely banding together small units of government. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, we too should consider it."

This furthers my views that Paul is not a libertarian, as people would have one believe, but rather a states' rights hyperfederalist. If the states are infringing on your rights, he really couldn't give a damn. The southern states want to keep slaves? Hey, it's not something the federal government should do anything about! Let 'em!

I also want to point out that Thomas Woods' book (along with Woods himself) were reviewed here. Not the sort of work or person I would expect anyone sane to be citing with approval.

Anywho. Given his apparent love for the Confederacy, what would you expect his views of blacks to be? ... Well, you'd be right:

Take, for instance, a special issue of the Ron Paul Political Report, published in June 1992, dedicated to explaining the Los Angeles riots of that year. "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began," read one typical passage. According to the newsletter, the looting was a natural byproduct of government indulging the black community with "'civil rights,' quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black tv shows, black tv anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda." It also denounced "the media" for believing that "America's number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks." To be fair, the newsletter did praise Asian merchants in Los Angeles, but only because they had the gumption to resist political correctness and fight back. Koreans were "the only people to act like real Americans," it explained, "mainly because they have not yet been assimilated into our rotten liberal culture, which admonishes whites faced by raging blacks to lie back and think of England."

Uh, yeah... it was the government that created "black tv shows" and "black tv anchors"? Right.

But I am endlessly amused by his denigration of "civil rights"--what, blacks think they have rights now? Not in Ron Paul's America! After all, they're not "real Americans" like the Koreans he mentions.

Hell, they're hardly human!

In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC's Adams Morgan neighborhood was titled, "Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo." "This is only the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s," the newsletter predicted. In an October 1992 item about urban crime, the newsletter's author--presumably Paul--wrote, "I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming."

Oh... and I've avoided talking about it on my blog, so some of my readers might be unaware, but Ron Paul has a large following among the racist, far, far right-wing organizations out there. He's been criticized for refusing to distance himself from them, for refusing to return money they've donated to his campaigns, and so on. Some leap to Paul's defense by claiming that it's not his problem that some loathsome individuals are supporting him--you'd probably find some truly sick people supporting any of the candidates.

The problem isn't necessarily that they support Paul. It's that he supports them:

[T]he newsletters had kind words for the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke. In a passage titled "The Duke's Victory," a newsletter celebrated Duke's 44 percent showing in the 1990 Louisiana Senate primary. "Duke lost the election," it said, "but he scared the blazes out of the Establishment." In 1991, a newsletter asked, "Is David Duke's new prominence, despite his losing the gubernatorial election, good for anti-big government forces?" The conclusion was that "our priority should be to take the anti-government, anti-tax, anti-crime, anti-welfare loafers, anti-race privilege, anti-foreign meddling message of Duke, and enclose it in a more consistent package of freedom." Duke is now returning the favor, telling me that, while he will not formally endorse any candidate, he has made information about Ron Paul available on his website.

Oh, and there's more! Paul also hates gay people.

In an item titled, "The Pink House?" the author of a newsletter--again, presumably Paul--complained about President George H.W. Bush's decision to sign a hate crimes bill and invite "the heads of homosexual lobbying groups to the White House for the ceremony," adding, "I miss the closet." "Homosexuals," it said, "not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities." When Marvin Liebman, a founder of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom and a longtime political activist, announced that he was gay in the pages of National Review, a Paul newsletter implored, "Bring Back the Closet!" Surprisingly, one item expressed ambivalence about the contentious issue of gays in the military, but ultimately concluded, "Homosexuals, if admitted, should be put in a special category and not allowed in close physical contact with heterosexuals."

The newsletters were particularly obsessed with AIDS, "a politically protected disease thanks to payola and the influence of the homosexual lobby," and used it as a rhetorical club to beat gay people in general. In 1990, one newsletter approvingly quoted "a well-known Libertarian editor" as saying, "The ACT-UP slogan, on stickers plastered all over Manhattan, is 'Silence = Death.' But shouldn't it be 'Sodomy = Death'?" Readers were warned to avoid blood transfusions because gays were trying to "poison the blood supply." "Am I the only one sick of hearing about the 'rights' of AIDS carriers?" a newsletter asked in 1990. That same year, citing a Christian-right fringe publication, an item suggested that "the AIDS patient" should not be allowed to eat in restaurants and that "AIDS can be transmitted by saliva," which is false. Paul's newsletters advertised a book, Surviving the AIDS Plague--also based upon the casual-transmission thesis--and defended "parents who worry about sending their healthy kids to school with AIDS victims." Commenting on a rise in AIDS infections, one newsletter said that "gays in San Francisco do not obey the dictates of good sense," adding: "[T]hese 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." Also, "they enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick."

I rather enjoy that: a man posing as a libertarian complaining about people insisting that they have personal rights. Nuh-uh, skippy; everyone knows that you don't have rights if you're black or gay.

The article also has a link to another article, which has PDFs up of several of articles from Paul's newsletters that it mentions.

Via Orcinus.

[Edit] Since the histrionic fanatic followers of Paul insist that none of what was written in Paul's newsletters can be used against him, I'm going to link to this page, which shreds most of their arguments.