Ron Paul: Fascist Creep

Ron Paul: dangerous enemy of freedom

Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Wed, 12/14/2011 - 05:42.

Ron Paul's iconoclastic stances on foreign interventions, civil liberties and the war on drugs are unfortunately winning him much support from naive "progressives"—despite the fact that he is clearly a right-wing wackjob. This is obvious enough from his own words, if his paradoxical "progressive" pom-pom wavers would take the time to do a little reading. For instance, this bogus pseudo-libertarian is proudly anti-choice! USA Today reported Oct. 14 that Paul is airing a lugubrious anti-abortion ad in Iowa. In the 60-second spot, an announcer says Paul is a "man of faith committed to protecting life" before the supposed gadfly congressman recounts how he once watched a late-term abortion being performed, calling it something "I am not able to accept." Where's Mr. Gadfly now? Like a typical weasily politician, he'll talk up the "revolution" (sic!) when he wants to make inroads to gullible elements of the Occupy Wall Street crowd—but toe the Republican line against reproductive freedom when he wants to win over heartland conservatives.

The Addicting Info blog assembles from the public record, "16 Ron Paul Quotes That Prove He Is NOT A Liberal." Well, nobody ever said he was a "liberal," but the assembled quotes indicate he is not even a "libertarian" (except where the sacred "free market" is concerned, natch). He disses gay marriage as "an act of social engineering profoundly hostile to liberty." He rejects the very concept of separation of church and state, saying (combining bad history with bad politics): "The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian yet religiously tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance." He rails against Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as unconstitutional (huh?). He vents wrath at affirmative action and says he would vote against the Civil Rights Act if it were to come before Congress today. And of course, the free market will take care of everything: "The freer the market is and the more respect you have for private property, the better the environment is protected." This after lax oversight caused last year's Gulf Coast oil spill!

To these we can add one gem dug up by Gail Collins in the New York Times:

"The founders of this country were well educated, mostly by being home-schooled or taught in schools associated with a church," he [Ron Paul] reasons. Those of us who were not born in the gentry could presumably go back to sowing and reaping hay.

But the real investigative digging was done by the African American NewsOne website, which convincingly finds "Ron Paul Is A White Supremacist." NewsOne documents the links between Paul and the ultra-right John Birch Society—the voice of paranoid anti-communism during the Cold War and today a peddler of anti-immigrant and especially anti-Mexican paranoia (e.g. the "North American Union" hallucination). Paul, it seems, was the keynote speaker for the John Birch Society's 50th Anniversary bash in 2008, telling the assemblage (at a resort near its headquarters in Appleton, Wisc.):

The John Birch Society is a great patriotic organization featuring an educational program solidly based on constitutional principles. I congratulate the Society in this, its 50th year. I wish them continued success and endorse their untiring efforts to foster 'less government, more responsibility…and with God’s help…a better world.' ...I am delighted to help celebrate this birthday... Continue what you have been doing… I come with a positive message and congratulations to you for all you have done. Congratulations and thank you very much for having me tonight.

This is all straight from the account in the Birchers' own publication, the New American, which NewsOne links to.

NewsOne then goes on to note the broad overlap between the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan and racist radical right. E.g. one notorious Bircher was William Pierce—founder of the blatantly white supremacist National Alliance, and author of The Turner Diaries. That's right, the book credited with inspiring Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.

Is this the kind of "revolution" Ron Paul wants to see?

If this joker ever gets into the White House, he'll be bringing troops back from Afghanistan, all right—to wage a race war in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Houston. Do not fall for this fascistic demagogue.

See our last posts on the radical right and the idiot left.