Ron Paul the Phenomenon: Why them Libertarians and independents are just dangerous

Over on Delawareliberal there's been a spirited debate regarding The New Republic expose about the racist, homophobic rantings and ravings that occurred in Ron Paul's newsletter during the late 1980s-early 1990s. Now you can actually visit the NR website and view scans of the offending documents for yourself.

They are disturbing. Moreover, that they were out there has been fairly common knowledge for some time, and in large part explains the deafening silence of the gay Libertarian and Republican communities regarding Ron Paul's candidacy. Outright Libertarians, for example, has dealt with Paul by ignoring him in its blog, while condemning him in other forums:

“The LP offers an uncompromising stance on equal rights regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity—with sexual rights in the Libertarian platform for more than three decades,” says Rob Power, who chairs Outright Libertarians, a gay group within the party, and supports Phillies’s candidacy. “Paul’s ideology is socially conservative/traditionalist/federalist. It’s not really Libertarian because it still supports government control over individual lives—merely at the state, not federal, level. Paul is likable and principled, but his principles are biblical, not Libertarian or even Constitutionalist, because he ignores the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.”

Likewise the Stonewall Libertarians, whose candidate endorsement standards would be violated by the Congressman's very presence in the same room.

Waldo Lydecker's Journal faces the issue straight on: "Over at The New Republic, they've tracked down Ron Paul's political newsletters and found what WLJ has argued for some time: He's a nut."

Just a Girl in Short Shorts Talking About Whatever is more succinct, writing in "Fuck Ron Paul: the Betrayal":

Breaking up always sucks. It's even worse when your suspicions were confirmed by a pimply Guiliani supporter, who calls himself libertarian, rather than the neo-con he is , in the futile hope this might someday get him a date with a gay dude.

Jamie Kirchick is a wanker of the highest degree, who writes for the neoliberal prowar New Republic. On the eve of the New Hampshire primary he did a hit piece on Ron Paul.

Unfortunately he has the goods.

Since there are admittedly quite a number of homophobic Libertarians, the place of GLBTG people in the movement has always been difficult. For every one of us willing to link arms with them and fight for individual rights, there are people (like Ron Paul) who can't quite get over their distaste for the whole not-a-man-and-a-woman-in-the-missionary-position-thing. So the LP has sometimes been just as guilty of marginalizing (and/or taking for granted) its GLBTG adherents as, say, the Democrat wing of the Demopublicans.

This may be changing within the ranks of the LP. Candidate George Phillies has been firm in his rejection of Paul's views on gays (for which he has been criticized in many circles):

"Paul’s voting record [on GBLT issues] is likewise dubious. “Paul always calls himself a conservative. He never calls himself a Libertarian—and he is telling the truth,” says Libertarian presidential hopeful George Phillies (the party will choose its candidate at its national convention in May). “The main threat of his platform is not that it will be enacted—he is in sixth place in the polls. The main threat is that people will confuse his platform with decent Libertarian stands. Real Libertarians abhor homophobic bigotry—‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ blocking gay marriage, blocking gay adoptions.”

Still, the whole issue of Ron Paul--with all of Dr. No's quirky charm and unpleasant baggage--is less about Ron Paul the man, as I have argued before, than Paul as the latest manifestation of deeply rooted and widely spread voter discontent within the Demopublican political monopoly, both nationally and here at home in Delaware.

If you listen real closely, you'll discover that it's not necessarily Ron Paul that they're worried about; it's the witches' brew of strange bedfellows that revolves around the Libertarian handle. Go back to the brew-haha in Delawareliberal, and check out the characterization of Paul supporters (and by extension all independent malcontents:

Comment 9, by Dorian Gray:

You can cherry-pick nice catch phrase type positions Paul stands for (individual liberty, small government, THE CONSTITUTION). Bottom line is that if you compared the platform of someone like Paul to the platform of one of those “militia” groups in woods of Montana they’d be strikingly similar, I think.

Every election disenchanted “independents” latch onto a “libertarian” candidate. What is really is is a lunatic fringe (Perot, Forbes, Nader, Paul). They draw disillusioned liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats. No one is immune. Many people love calling themselves “independent” simply because they don’t what to be tied to the two parties.

(Full disclosure: I made the same embarrassing mistake as well. I voted for Perot in the general election in ’92 - along with a lot of other idiots. Didn’t he get like 19% of the popular vote?)

Comment 11, by Cassandra em:

Obama having the completely odious McGlurkin front his rallys earned Obama a deluge of opprobrium from online sources at least. No idea if the traditional media even picked it up.

But if we are playing a hand of who is playing footsie with the most odious groups, then Ron Paul is still holding a Royal Flush with the Stormfronters, the American National Socialist Workers Party, Council of Concerned Citizens, John Birch Society, and David Duke. There are more of these neo-Nazi, secessionist, white supremecist groups out there that Paul stays involved with and whose members are a big engine to his campaign.

So I guess your point, Tyler, is that all of the bigotry and dog-whistle politics is OK because Obama did it?

Comment 27 (in part), by liberalgeek:

If you aren’t interested in how R.P. interacted with these fringe groups, fine. It concerns me. Truth be told, I’ll never have a chance to cast a ballot for him, unless he gets even crazier and goes third party. But I am concerned that many people are not nearly as discerning about R.P.’s views and flaws as you.

There are cultists among you.

What I've taken this (perhaps tediously) long to pick out of all this is the general discomfort with the fringe elements of American society who keep trying to coalesce into some sort of political movement. In the Will Rogers sense ("I belong to no organized political party, I'm a Democrat") the variety of people who sign up to march under the banner of Libertarians, or Constitutionalists, or Reform is, by any standard, exceptionally wide.

I refer you back to Shirley's November 20, 2007 post, "A Night to Remember," over at Delaware Curmudgeon, in which she dissects her invitation to the Christmas Republican gala:

Something that riles me about the status quo of the political parties is their somewhat patrician attitude. Am I too sensitive, or is this event perhaps not meant for the “common man” ? I’m sure they would say, “Pshaw, Curmudgeon ! Of course y’all are welcome ! We need all the support we can muster in this heyah parhts ! We need you'uns that be skeptical of us old guard heyah to c'mon dah-own !”

Somehow, I wouldn’t find that genuine. So you know, here is a picture of Baywood Greens. It certainly looks lovely. I can only hope there are paved roads going up to it, because I’m not sure how well the motorcycle would fare on the wooden docks:

Maybe I should bring some of my friends, staunch conservatives all, as seen in this picture [happily crazed bikers with long beards]

If we promise to shed our golf shoes at the door, we'd love to toss back a few and hobnob with the Republican elite in their humble meeting place.

Even more bluntly put is the commentary by Becky on Just A Girl in Short Shorts Talking About Whatever:

I have been hanging around libertarian types most of my adult life. So I realize the movement attracts more than its share of weirdos and misfits. Some are offensive, others just nuts. There are White Supremacists, 9-11 truthers, and apocalyptic survivalists.

And that is cool with me. The Libertarian tent is large enough to accommodate most everyone. It would be boring if only the urbane folks from the Cato Institute were welcome. I like all the liberty loving cranks.

One time I was together with some conservatives of the Idaho panhandle variety. They were all pretty libertarian, but were having some trouble with the idea of gay marriage . So I explained that libertarianism meant actually applying all the principles, not cherry picking, or mouthing the words, as Republicans are wont to do.

And what this all meant is they got to keep their AK-47's but there would be naked pot smoking lesbians frolicking on the shores of Lake Coeur d’Alene . The guys thought they could get down with that.

But what is not cool is if you believe that certain types of people are not entitled to equal footing in our society, and use libertarian principles primarily to promote an agenda of hate, prejudice and discrimination.

[By the way, I'm certain in my own quirky way that Becky's profile statement is critical to a full appreciation of her AK-47/naked lesbians anecdote:

Mom, recovering attorney, post-modern neo-feminist, enthusiastic regenerated dyke, unlikely punk, nice Catholic girl, passionate freedom-loving libertarian, thinking conservative, sappy romantic, spiritual redneck, softball enthusiast, shopaholic and unrepentant flirt. Though known as the sweet grrl with the slurpy silver tongue, my other passion and skill is mountain climbing. On July 4, 2007 I started the next phase of my life as a femme desert tomboy in Arizona, where the chick , once called "trailer trash with a brain" by an Intertard wit, will be able to wear unfashionable daisy dukes year round.

You really need to check out her blog.]

It really takes a Libertarian to recognize the possibility that bare-naked lesbians, bikers with long scraggly beards, reactionaries who signed up for militias, and guys at a Cato Institute cocktail party who all sound like Thurston Howell III could all be citizens of the same country AND not be a threat to each other or anybody else.

Diversity is a wonderful watchword for the Demopublicans, but they don't really mean it. Many of them are actually more interested in suppressing and regulating out of existence some of our more diverse little scrub sub-cultures than in learning how to live with them.

My Demopublican friends wonder how Ron Paul can keep appearing in public after the revelation of his old newsletters.

On the other hand, I tend to wonder how Janet Reno could remain Attorney General after incinerating dozens of women and children at Waco, Texas, because she got impatient. Yeah, I know, they were crazy cultist Branch Davidians; no real reason for her to apologize.

Three years ago I taught a course for the Department of Homeland Security in the Center for Domestic Preparedness at Anniston, Alabama. One of the most interesting evenings our students spent was with the guys who taught improvised ordnance (homemade bombs). They had one of their rooms mocked up like a fanatic's bomb-making factory, complete with graffiti on the walls. There was a Stormfront logo, a Hezbollah logo, and--interestingly enough--a Nation of Islam logo.

My colleague, Dr. Yohuru Williams of Fairfield University, pointed out tactfully to the cadre of three well-meaning police officers who ran the place that Farrakhan's group might have a radical social agenda, but that it had never advocated nor been implicated in terrorist activities. He wondered why they would be lumped in with the others.

"Well, we wanted to be diverse. We got your white extremists and your Muslim extremists. Needed to have some black extremists to go with them." (On a stack of Bibles I swear to God that was their verbatim answer.)

Three years later, despite having had their attention called to this fact, the wall remains unchanged.

The promise of this country was to be for everybody.

But everybody is an unloveable, unruly group of reprobates that doesn't make for a good diversity poster to hang in our schools.

The Ron Paul-Arnold Schwarzenegger-Jesse Ventura-Ross Perot phenomena is not about the colorful and often fatally flawed candidates who have been emerging with more and more regularity to challenge political correctness, the status quo, and the Demopublican monopoly. It is about the number of people--now in the millions--who are so disgusted with the electoral pretense of a meaningful difference between two groups of professional politicians bleeding us dry that they are willing to follow almost any hope, however slender, of breaking open the system.

What should scare the Demopublicans is not Ron Paul.

What should scare them is that we'll all get together, build a real Libertarian political party, start engaging in politics from the ground up, and find ourselves some real candidates instead of our current set of entertaining place-holders.