I don't agree with all of Cenk's conclusions here, but it is interesting anyway.

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Tuesday, December 27th, 2011 11:51am PST - promote requested by original submitter Boise_Lib.

The strange thing is this doesn't surprise me. I always have felt that Ron Paul is sly and he is not giving the whole truth of what he actually thinks. Sure, we should get rid of the Fed and have a government with less power; but he wants to do it with complete deregulation to make an even freer system for the corporations. Our corporations are the reason the government is so fucked and he essentially wants what we have now, but even worse. The corporations would turn us into a racist, homophobic, Fascist State overnight without our pseudo democracy.

This shit wreaks of a smear campaign and I dislike smear campaigns.

Every candidate has to face his or her skeletons once they reach a certain level of prominence. I know many want to believe this is a conspiracy to silence Ron Paul, and that Ron Paul is incapable of doing anything wrong, but this is a legitimate issue. Profiting off a newsletter full of racist rhetoric does not speak well of a person seeking the highest office in the country. I think it's complete bullshit when he says he had no idea what was written in those newsletters. Are we really to believe that no friend, family member or newsletter subscriber ever said, "Oh hey, Ronnie, there was some disturbing racist stuff in your last newsletter. Did you really write that?"?

>> ^Boise_Lib:

I don't agree with all of Cenk's conclusions here, but it is interesting anyway.


Specifically when Cenk jumps to the conclusion that Dr. Paul had to have written the run-away line because of something similar he said much later.

I think it is very likely that he knew about the newsletters--but very hard to conclusively prove.

I wonder do the newsletter subscribers consider Obama totally criminal or merely semi-criminal?

Still swiftboating and muddying the waters? Still not talking about Murray Rothbard's role in this all?





Well lets look at some actual facts:
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In early 2008, this article revealed that "a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists—including some still close to Paul" had identified Rockwell as the "chief ghostwriter" of the Ron Paul newsletters published from "roughly 1989 to 1994."

Financial records from 1985 and 2001 show that Rockwell, Paul's congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982, was a vice president of Ron Paul & Associates, the corporation that published the Ron Paul Political Report and the Ron Paul Survival Report. The company was dissolved in 2001. During the period when the most incendiary items appeared—roughly 1989 to 1994—Rockwell and the prominent libertarian theorist Murray Rothbard championed an open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a coalition with populist "paleoconservatives," producing a flurry of articles and manifestos whose racially charged talking points and vocabulary mirrored the controversial Paul newsletters recently unearthed by The New Republic. To this day Rockwell remains a friend and advisor to Paul—accompanying him to major media appearances; promoting his candidacy on the LewRockwell.com blog; publishing his books; and peddling an array of the avuncular Texas congressman's recent writings and audio recordings.

Rockwell has denied responsibility for the newsletters' contents to The New Republic's Jamie Kirchick. Rockwell twice declined to discuss the matter with reason, maintaining this week that he had "nothing to say." He has characterized discussion of the newsletters as "hysterical smears aimed at political enemies" of The New Republic. Paul himself called the controversy "old news" and "ancient history" when we reached him last week, and he has not responded to further request for comment.

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You don't think Murray Rothbard, is worth looking at?

"Equality is not in the natural order of things, and the crusade to make everyone equal in every respect (except before the law) is certain to have disastrous consequences." - Murray Rothbard
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he also wrote film reviews under a pen name (anonymously) .. so he was no stranger to trying to protect himself while expressing what he truly thought..

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch5.html
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2010/07/murray-rothbard-lew-rockwell-and.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/still-states-greatest-enemy.html

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In 1993, Rothbard wrote about Malcolm X and discussed the possibility of a separate state for blacks, but concluded that it would "require massive "foreign aid" from the U.S.A.". He also described black nationalism as "a phony nationalism" that was "beginning to look like a drive for an aggravated form of coerced parasitism over the white population."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard218.html

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I am seriously disappointed that people here can connect the dots to Dr. Paul yet Rothbard is clearly innocent.

He just happened to die in 1995... and we've heard nothing about newsletter content as inflammatory as when he was involved, since.

Get real people. It wasn't Ron Paul. The secret is in the grave at this point.

@vaire2ube
Okay, Dr. Paul didn't write them and had no knowledge about someone writing racist crap under his name for 5 years--No Knowledge!?!

5 YEARS!?!!!

At best that shows extremely bad judgment--at worst he's lying.
Not someone I'd want as Commander-in-Chief.

That is a false EITHER/OR. There are quite a few other scenarios equally as likely as Dr. Paul trying to trick his way into the presidency.... none of which preclude him directly from being qualified for the office of president (see: george w. bush)... except for MAYBE the ONE scenario being pushed.

I find that suspicious.

There could be much more to this story than some people care to know, indeed.

>> ^vaire2ube:

That is a false EITHER/OR. There are quite a few other scenarios equally as likely as Dr. Paul trying to trick his way into the presidency.
There could be much more to this story than some people care to know, indeed.


Please enlighten me.
Tell me the scenario which you believe to be the correct one.

What is false about it either being He Knew--or He Didn't Know? Had to be one or the other.

He did know, He didn't know, He had bad eyes at the time, He kinda knew, He kinda knew--but didn't care?

Sure. There were multiple copies, or Dr. Paul was shown some and not others and every other one was a fuck up... and no one complained to the right people at the time to reach Dr. Paul directly about the issue, in time for him to do something... except when he does find out, he does the incredible thing of ACTUALLY taking responsibility for NOT KNOWING and saying he should have. Wow, that must mean he can't make decisions, because information was actively held from him.

Dr. Paul has the brains and dedication to become a physician, and the drive to become a statesmen.

Somewhere in all that, he didnt have time to personally prevent everyone in the world from trying to smear him or take actions that would impact him negatively. Maybe he was really busy, in a way that most politicians are NOT. How would we even know what kind of schedule he had to maintain?.

Someone did it in a way THEY KNEW would ensure their anonymity (because Ron Paul did not write the racist articles), perhaps by their position of trust in the company, or with tacit approval by one or more people attempting to subvert a cause for their own.

written misinformation is surely not all it takes to win you over, even in the face of other reasonable facts. keep looking.

We could believe that elaborate story, or simply believe that the leader of (what was then) a fringe movement tried to appeal to racists to bolster his base of support.

>> ^vaire2ube:

Dr. Paul has the brains and dedication to become a physician, and the drive to become a statesmen.


He has the brains to become a physician, and the intelectual dishonesty to refuse evolution as scientific fact. I wouldn't let a doctor like that prescribe me aspirins.

He also states that his personal beliefs are his alone and not to be forced onto others. I am taught by professors at a state university where I have been told point blank that they have religious beliefs, yet they still teach Science. The two are not incompatible or exclusive. I suggest this article by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow about the subject. I assume you will accept Dr Hawking's conclusions. PDF


I'm voting for Obama because he is the man right now, but I'm finding it surprisingly easy to play devils advocate for Ron Paul.

I don't find Ron Paul's rhetoric or discourse frightening or crazy.

Obama says he is a Christian, which by default means he denies evolution de facto, and I am a biological sciences major.... and you know why I don't care? Because Obama believes in everyones rights, and doesn't deny science where science is the leader.

Why is it so hard to conceive that an active conspiracy to hide the newsletters from Paul was successful, when the outcome would be exactly the same as the one we're debating? The one where NO ONE has heard Ron Paul ever, EVER say anything like the things in the newsletters?

Ever. Not even HEARD him say it.

Look how the fucking GOP candidates cant go ONE DAY without saying something so incendiary... they cant possibly believe such things ... and expect more than 48% of the vote...

Bluntly put: If Ron Paul was a racist, it would probably HELP his campaign the way the world is. Consider that.

there's a big difference between believing in some religious myth, and quite another to reject reality and scientific FACTS because you are part of a certain religious belief system.

edit: what I mean is, it's fine to be religious and teach science, it wouldn't be fine on the other hand, if you taught science, and wedged in your ignorance in the middle of your teaching, by saying evolution doesn't exit, and creationism is somehow a valid point.

This point doesn't really have anything to do with the newsletter ordeal. I just think the man is an idiot.

@vaire2ube Ron has already been in numerous interviews(atleast three that I've seen) talking about this subject and he was completely aware of the newsletters existence all the way back to the beginning. So I highly doubt anything fishy is going on here besides Ron Paul being dishonest about his role in the newsletters, from the beginning.

One such interview was in the top 15 here on the sift, in case you wish to look it up (I think it was about two weeks ago). Calling this another "Swiftboat" setup, a dredge of unsubstantiated myths and legends so people can wish away Ron Paul's past is very disingenuous. Ron has acknowledged his role with the newsletters, it's time that he answers the questions fully. Answering the questions with, "I didn't read them.", is now at a end I would think.

Ron may not have been the main force behind the letters, but he is certainatly culpable.


Edit-BTW, not all racists like to be out in the open. That's why things like the KKK came into existence. I won't pretend to know how Ron Paul would act if racist, he may not be very zealous about it. I've certainly met racists in my lifetime that required me to know them very well before they ever showed their bigotry at all, even a word. Which in the two cases I've known, they both expressed racist wording at first and then at least one moved on to jokes, the other societal opinions. One I had to know for more than a year before I heard so much as a peep.

There were newsletters with articles written by Ron Paul.

He knew there were newsletters, he knew the people who put them out.

He took responsibility and confused everyone by doing something no one does -- taking responsibilty... and if that costs him votes, so be it.

I'm not willing to take such a huge leap of faith when there is so much reasonable doubt here, and say he is a racist bigot.

Ron Paul's words and actions speak for themselves. Find HIM actually saying something bigoted, and provide the full source.

You can't do it. I find that interesting. I, however, easily found things that prove there is more here than "Ron Paul is a racist".


You know what? He can answer this question to everyone's satisfaction about as much as Obama and his birth certificate. It's a red herring. It's swiftboating.

The clips of Paul talking about newsletters? He describes how he writes articles on the economy and financial system. That's it.

If anything, that convinces me more that someone must have actively conspired to misappropriate the platform. Ron Paul sincerely believes he was putting out useful material, in a manner than only someone innocent would even approach.

He denies nothing except the lies. I like that.

Ron Paul regularly stands up in front of large crowds and tells them that we are being attacked by terrorists as a result of our own actions.

Ron Paul regularly stands up in front of large crowds and tells them that Israel has done reprehensible things in their battles with the Palestinians.

Ron Paul regularly stands up in front of large crowds and tells them that our military and our empire is weakening our country and bankrupting us and that we need to stop fighting perpetual wars.

He is often booed viciously for these comments and he goes on saying them anyway. So I have a hard time imagining that he's afraid to admit that he once said black kids run fast. A lot of the same people who boo the above statements would erupt in applause if he were to blame some shit on black people. That's a popular statement with diehard Republicans, particularly with Obama in office.

Why would Ron Paul, who is known for saying exactly what he thinks whether it's what people want to hear or not, suddenly be shy about this?

That's not to say he's free and clear on the newsletters. He dropped the ball and it's a blemish on his name but if he says these are not his positions then I see little reason to doubt him.

The issue definitely needed to be brought up and Paul needed to answer for it but, now that he has, I don't see the point in continuing to ask about it unless something new surfaces.