Dear Lew,

You have now had three opportunities –1996, 2001, and 2008 — to prove that you are a friend of Ron Paul and freedom, and you have failed to do so each time.

This week, for the third time, the puerile, racist, and completely un-Pauline comments that all informed people say you have caused to appear in Ron’s newsletters over the course of several years have become an issue in his campaign. This time the stakes are even higher than before. He is seeking nationwide office, the Republican nomination for President, and his campaign is attracting millions of supporters, not tens of thousands.

Three times you have failed to come forward and admit responsibility for and complicity in the scandals. You have allowed Ron to twist slowly in the wind. Because of your silence, Ron has been forced to issue repeated statements of denial, to answer repeated questions in multiple interviews, and to be embarrassed on national television. Your callous disregard for both Ron and his millions of supporters is unconscionable.

If you were Dr. Paul’s friend, or a friend of freedom, as you pretend to be, by now you would have stepped forward, assumed responsibility for those asinine and harmful comments, resigned from any connection to Ron or his campaign, and relieved Ron of the burden of having to repeatedly deny the charges of racism. But you have not done so, and so the scandal continues to detract from Ron’s message.

You know as well as I do that Ron does not have a racist bone in his body, yet those racist remarks went out under his name, not yours. Pretty clever. But now it’s time to man up, Lew. Admit your role, and exonerate Ron. You should have done it years ago.

John Robbins, Ph.D.
Chief of Staff
Dr. Ron Paul, 1981-1985

I’ve been reading your blog for years now, and I’ve disagreed with you before, but I’ve never been as surprised by what I read as in this piece.

I think the most disappointing thing about all of this is what Dave Weigel posted this afternoon from New Hampshire: Paul doesn’t consider this worthy of a serious reaction.

I find nothing disappointing about his response. Frankly I’m impressed he had the courage to react that way. Most people would react by immediately blaming someone else, shirking responsibility, hurling return accusations. Ron did none of those things. He apologized, took responsibility for the fact that he did not exercise good judgment in who he allowed to use his name, and dismissed it generally as something he had already addressed in the 90s. This was just being dredged up again as a smear campaign and Ron was literally not going to dignify it with an extended response.

Ron is one of those people who lives with enough integrity that as you noted in your first two paragraphs that a simple look at the things he has actually said, and the things he has done, openly disprove such baseless allegations. To my mind, they are an embarrassment to the one who made them, not to Ron. That’s without even getting into the credibility issues of the people publishing it. Even people I know who don’t like Ron dismissed the information out of hand just from being informed who published it.

Given Paul’s schedule and the amount of reading he does already I don’t find it the least bit implausible that he didn’t bother to read a letter from a couple of Mencken want-to-bes.

Of course, Paul was never going to win.

I think you’ve been involved in the Libertarian party too long. See, this isn’t an exercise in issue campaigning. The plan is to win, and yes, it can still happen. You’re being rather short-sighted and such pessimistic comments from someone with your influence only makes it more difficult. Very irresponsible. Do you actually want things to change for the better or are you only here to complain about how they’re bad? Is this blog purely an academic exercise? What have you actually *done* to try to help him win?

As for your argument that this now taints everything, I think you’re making some big leaps. I know you haven’t exactly been involved in it at the grassroots level, but I’ve talked to hundreds of of them. They are not here because of Ron. Ron is only a vessel. As you noted briefly they are part of the campaign because of the issues. Most of them disagree with Ron on this or that point. That is not the issue. The reality is that he is the only one going in the right direction, and if you actually really truly want to put this country back on track then you’ve got to get behind and push.

Frankly, if you’re not willing, then I was wrong about you, and you’re really nothing more than a Libertarian version of Rush Limbaugh.

The reality is that anyone who would attach such foolish statements, divorced from their contexts, to the overall theories and positions of Ron as if they were somehow interdependent needs so much education that it doesn’t matter. Anyone that ignorant and devoid of basic reasoning skills cannot possibly apprehend the ideas. So they’re going to need so much work that adding on the need to disabuse them of their misconceptions hardly makes a big difference.

[Maybe it would have been better if we had] waited a cycle or two for someone else to come along to tap the sentiment.

Oh, of course, that’s brilliant. I mean, sure - we’re headed into a bad recession, if not worse. We’re arresting citizens of the united states and holding them indefinitely without trial. The govt is snooping in the details of the private lives of citizens without a warrant. We’re in debt to our eyeballs. The dollar is barely worth the paper its printed on. We’re facing the possibility of going to war with not one but two additional nations. We have the clear and present danger of national martial law.

But hey, lets just go ahead and see what the next couple terms bring right? Maybe we’ll get lucky and your perfect candidate that thinks exactly like you will come along, and everyone will love him, and we’ll sweep him into office in victory and nobody will have to lift a finger. And there’ll be rainbows, and unicorns, and ….

Get real. People, if you want your liberty you’re going to have to work for it. Quit your whining and do something.

“You do know the folks at the John Birch and Lew Rockwell sites are your people too.” That’s my choice to make for myself, not yours to make for me.

Striving for MATERIAL equality and freedom have historically been in conflict: a forced equality of job and educational opportunities, housing, income, etc. However, equality of individual rights and individual freedom has been, or at least I thought, at the core of libertarian philosophy as expressed in the non-aggression principle.

When you see in one of those newsletters analysis of the L.A. riots couched in racially collective terms of “the blacks” and “the whites,” purporting to know the political views of each group, one has to wonder if the author actually subscribes to von Mises’ methodological individualism, or refrains from it when it doesn’t suit his unproveable prejudices.

As you well know, one has every right to associate with or dissociate from whomever one wants. One can also express whatever social analysis one wants, no arguments there. But when one publicly expresses racially collectivist views or crude sterotypes, one does not have the right to be free of criticism.

I think what we’re really dishing about here is values, not what’s properly or improperly “libertarian.” Not all values are necessarily explicitly or even implicitly “libertarian,” as you yourself are aware. Certainly, any libertarian worthy of the label would actively oppose government interference into racially segregated schools, but that doesn’t mean that libertarians are obligated to uphold racial segregation as a value, and neither are they obligated to refrain from persuading others to voluntarily withhold their sanction of racial segregation. (If racial segregation is enforced by state or local law rather than wholly voluntary, then I would say that it IS distinctly unlibertarian to be unopposed to such segregation. The non-aggression principle doesn’t apply to the Feds and yet exempt the local tyrants.) Accordingly, opposition to drug laws does not necessarily obligate libertarians to uphold indulgence in recreational narcotics as a value, and neither does that position obligate them to refrain from persuading others to voluntarily withhold their sanction of narcotic indulgences.

It would appear that a great many libertarians don’t agree with many values expressed in some of those newsletters. Perhaps they will dissociate themselves from libertarians who do, as is their prerogative under the right of free association.

And to think I didn’t even smoke any weed before I started writing this…

It’s a bill to reduce government expenditures overseas, and doesn’t prohibit anyone other than the federal government from doing business in Darfur.

If he ran as an independent candidate, I would vote for him. He has more views I agree with than all the others combined.

To the best of my knowledge Paul has always oppossed economic sanctions.

There are quite a few things that killed my support for Paul months ago:

#1: The newsletters and his campaign’s reaction thereto. I first heard about the newsletters in May of ‘07. I’ve been making fun of the whole fleet-footed blacks thing for months now. There’s some seriously virulent racism going on, and Paul’s reaction to this really, really, really has been underwhelming since it was first unearthed during his Congressional runs.

#2: Immigration

#3: 14th Amendment

#4: Darfur divestment: Somehow he votes against a bill that would prevent the federal government from 1) spending money 2) overseas. What the fuck? How is this in any way consistent with his stated politics? It’s just so bizarre that it gives credence to concerns that he’s using libertarianism as a cover for racism.

#5: His involvement in the anti-psychiatry movement.

#6: War on Christians/Christmas bullshit

While it is true that libertarians support freedom of association and reject the state attempting to outlaw private discrimination, state mandated segregation is not “libertarian.”

I don’t believe in “State’s Rights.” I believe in individual rights. I do not believe a state should have the power to mandate racial segregation or any other kind of violation of individual rights- just because it is not done on the “federal” level. The state itself should treat people equally and not force private discrimination. ALLOWING for private discrimination is completely different.

Maybe that view is “federalism” but, IMHO, it ain’t libertarianism.

While I agree libertarianism should have a big tent ( though a lot of your friends apparently don’t think so), racial collectivists who seek to use state power to impose their views are not libertarians in my view.

Add to this Paul’s views on immigration and his anti-14th amendment stance (a stance I find particularly sickening) and you have some of the major reasons I stopped supporting Paul several months ago.

I have enjoyed the investigative work this site has done, sadly, it has chosen to take on a political opinion page too.

Why should he have to acknowledge any of the claims against him? Acknowledging them would give them some kind of weight or value. He doesn’t want to make this a she-said, he-said contest. An election for the presidency should solely be about the issues, backed by someone who shows consistency in supporting those values (i.e. voting record).

If a presendential candidate had to vehemently dismiss all the mud slung at them, what we’d find up with is a bunch of crappy political partisian games. Oh wait, that’s what we have.

So I guess the point is: Yes, a political game exists where this sort of exchange occurs quite frequently. Unfortunetly, the American people are blind to the negative consequences of these games, so they allow them to exist and they become an essential part of the political process.

Should Ron Paul submit to this crap just to win the election? Or should he stick to his beliefs and run for president the correct and honest way?

I guess you believe the former.

Everyone is so quick to judge and throw stones. I submit that everyone has associated on some extremely loose level with people that society would find reprehensible. Does that mean you have to come out and disavow the person to appease “society”?

And to say “someone never would have won” means you can predict the future, which we know you can’t. Reaffirming your guess (which is all it is) after the fact is invalid, since a guess can always be affirmed after the fact.

The degree to which MSM is treating Paul unfairly makes me think he’s worth supporting.

Otherwise I agree with you Radley, this mud ought to be dealt with. Thanks for the rebuttals explaining why it’s OK to have views that particularly kooks also have.