The New Republic examines the archives of Ron Paul’s newsletters
Speaking of Ron Paul, the New Republic has a look at Ron Paul’s newsletters and sees things that don’t jibe with the clean-cut, anti-war, fan of America presidential hopeful being presented now:
TNR is down last I checked, maybe because of demand, but the great site Metafilter has a discussion this morning with excerpts like the following:
What [the newsletters] reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing—but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics….Martin Luther King Jr. earned special ire from Paul’s newsletters, which attacked the civil rights leader frequently, often to justify opposition to the federal holiday named after him. (‘What an infamy Ronald Reagan approved it!’ one newsletter complained in 1990. ‘We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.’) In the early 1990s, a newsletter attacked the ‘X-Rated Martin Luther King’ as a ‘world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours,’ ‘seduced underage girls and boys,’ and ‘made a pass at’ fellow civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy. One newsletter ridiculed black activists who wanted to rename New York City after King, suggesting that ‘Welfaria,’ ‘Zooville,’ ‘Rapetown,’ ‘Dirtburg,’ and ‘Lazyopolis’ were better alternatives. The same year, King was described as ‘a comsymp, if not an actual party member, and the man who replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration.’ While bashing King, the newsletters had kind words for the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke.
And this from wonkette:
Libertarians would like Ron Paul to go back to being a Republican