Topic: Ron Paul
Another article on those newsletters? Why? For honest people to ignore the ongoing discussion of Ron Paul's old newsletters, would mean leaving it to only the dishonestby George Dance
(Libertarian)
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Not another article on Ron Paul's newsletters! Why? Surely there's been enough written about them, in the three weeks since Jamie Kirchick's "Angry White Man" graced the pages of The New Republic. Don't we have all the facts by now? Isn't it time to move on?
Paul thinks so, as do many of his supporters. Even some of his critics are coming around to that viewpoint: like Dave Weigel of Reason magazine, hitherto hot on the story, who has recently blogged that:
The Ron Paul campaign has captured much of the libertarian imagination and the controversies about his newsletters have alienated various sides of the libertarian thinksophere. We need to get over ourselves. The arguments over who wrote what in 1989 or 1990 are less important than whether the Senate retroactively legalizes and forgives international surveillance.
Nevertheless, this story will not be going away soon. For one thing, it's the only scandal that anyone has been able to pin on Ron Paul over a 30-year political career. For another, it's a sufficient scandal to destroy any politician's career. It's fair to predict that, to the extent that the Paul campaign grows, the newsletter story will grow right along with it.
Indeed we have heard more than enough about those newsletters in the past three weeks; and indeed many if not most relevant facts are available on the web by now. Unfortunately, those facts lie buried, if not completely hidden, under a flood of rumor, gossip, opinion, misinformation, and disinformation. For honest people to ignore the ongoing discussion, would mean leaving it to only the dishonest; which can only compound that latter problem. Hence this series of occasional columns, with the goal of separating fact from fiction in the newsletter saga.
I should begin by declaring my own biases.As I see it, the campaign against Paul relies on the following argument, proving this conclusion from these premises:
P1. Ron Paul wrote the inflammatory quotes from his newsletters ("the Quotes").
P2. Only a racist, anti-semite, and homophobe could have written those quotes.
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C1. Ron Paul is a racist, anti-semite, and homophobe.
That Paul has long denied P1 has only led some Paul-bashers to advance a further argument:
P1. Ron Paul wrote the Quotes.
P3. Ron Paul has denied writing the quotes.
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C2. Ron Paul is a liar hiding a secret agenda.
For reasons I have explained elsewhere, I consider C2 more threatening to the campaign than C1. Some media, pundits, and voters have been suitably shocked - liberals and liberaltarians have issued denunciations - but there has been little effect on the campaign's supporters. Nor will there be, as long as they believe Paul when he says he's not the author. Convince them to doubt his honesty and integrity, though, and his campaign will be mortally wounded.
In my opinion, neither P1 nor P2 have been proved. The evidence for P1 is tenuous at best, while the arguments for P2 often rely on omitting context, and even whole sections of the text, to give a thoroughly distorted picture.
Take, for instance, this article from the Daily Kos from last December, weeks before Kirchick's first opus appeared. Here's its most damning paragraph:
Indeed, it is shocking to consider the uniformity of opinion among blacks in this country. Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty, and the end of welfare and affirmative action.... Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the "criminal justice system," I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.
What awful logic: Because 95% of "blacks" don't "support the free market," they must all be criminals! That certainly sounds like someone trying to rationalize a preconceived assumption by grasping at straws. Obviously the writer must be a bigot.
Obviously, but maybe not in fact. For notice, first, the ellipsis after "action", which indicates that some text has been removed. Notice, too, the change in subject - from "blacks in this country" to "blacks in that city" - which makes no real sense: why assume that only DC blacks are criminals. That indicates that the omitted text may have some importance.
Fortunately, in this case the original article has been archived, both on Usenet and at the Nizkor Project, a site devoted to Holocaust denial (!); which makes it fairly easy to give the original as below [with the Kos-omitted text indicated in boldface]:
Indeed, it is shocking to consider the uniformity of opinion among blacks in this country. Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5%of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market,individual liberty, and the end of welfare and affirmative action. [I know many who fall into this group personally and they deserve credit--not as representatives of a racial group, but as decent people. They are, however, outnumbered. Of black males in Washington, D.C, between the ages of 18 and 35, 42% are charged with a crime or are serving a sentence, reports the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives. The Center also reports that 70% of all black men in Washington are arrested before they reach the age of 35, and 85% are arrested at some point in their lives.] Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the "criminal justice system," I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.
This gives a different picture indeed. The writer's logic is still faulty - in particular, the equation of 'arrested' with 'criminal' - but at least it's clear that he is not just rationalizing a prejudiced opinion. Instead, he is citing statistics, giving their source, and extrapolating from them; to reach a conclusion which may be wrong, but is not obviously racist. In the interest of the getting the story, Kos cuts all of that. .
Kos even cuts, as irrelevant, the writer's statement that he finds at least some black Americans to be "decent people"!
As I hope to show in future installments, most if not all of the Paul-basher's evidence is of the same dubious quality.
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2008 George Dance, all rights reserved.
Published: Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Last modified: Wednesday, January 30, 2008
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