IS RON PAUL A RACIST?

By some Leftist definitions, Ron Paul IS a racist. But Leftists class as a racist anybody who mentions racial differences at all -- a definition which is to my mind just a form of abuse. Are medical scientists (e.g. here) who repeatedly find medically significant differences between blacks and whites racists too?

I mentioned yesterday Taranto's feeble attempt to brand Ron Paul as a racist but he has clearly retracted that claim today. I suspect that I was far from the only one who sent him links and emails that took him to task over his comments yesterday.

A much more serious claim that Ron Paul is a racist comes from black conservative Bob Parks. Bob Parks generally speaks a lot of sense but the refusal of Ron Paul to be politically correct has obviously alarmed him. Parks has a whole list of broadly realistic utterances from Ron Paul that would have any Leftist shrieking "racism". The prime example seems to be:

"We don't think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That's true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such."

If you left out the word "black", I think there could well be a majority of Americans who agreed with that. And, given his vocal condemnation of real racism (as now linked by Taranto), I suspect that Ron Paul himself would intend his remarks to apply to all gang members who otherwise fitted his description. And who would deny that many of the gang members who fit Ron Paul's description are in fact black? Ron Paul has no difficulty in describing reality but Bob Parks seems uncomfortable with it.

One of my Jewish correspondents emailed me with the thought that Taranto initially got a bit freaked over Ron Paul because Ron Paul frequently denounces "neocons" and in Leftist mouths "neocon" is often code for "Jew". That would be an understandable mistake. But it shows no awareness of the libertarian position on armies and war. There are probably no two libertarians anywhere who agree totally with one another but, as extreme individualists, libertarians tend to be very suspicious of ANYTHING that governments do -- and armies and war are very clearly large examples of the exercise of government power. Many libertarians in fact deny that armed forces are needed at all. To caricature a little, they believe that each man should have his own bazooka and that would be sufficient to deter any invader or attacker. I disagree with that but I am describing a common libertarian view.

So given that background, opposition to foreign military interventions (interventions which neocons favour) is fundamental for a libertarian like Ron Paul. And that makes him fundamentally opposed to the foreign wars that GWB has undertaken with neocon support. So Ron Paul's opposition to the neocons is entirely explicable on POLICY grounds, not racial grounds. And his view that it is Bush's advisers who are most responsible for the foreign wars rather than Bush himself is one shared with many Leftists. For Ron Paul, however, that opinion clearly serves the end of limiting criticism of an administration (GWB, Cheney, Rice etc.) that is still popular in many conservative circles.

It has also been remarked that Ron Paul gets approval from a motley crew of political extremists, from Nazis to Communists. But that is again to be expected of a libertarian. Libertarians agree with conservatives on some things and Leftists on other things so a libertarian who forcefully expresses a view that is dear to the heart of an extremist will get some approval. And most extremists of all sorts are highly critical of Bush government policies (particularly in the middle East) so Ron Paul's vocal criticisms of those policies can be expected to be welcomed in extremist circles. To judge Ron Paul by those who praise him is very strange however. By that logic he is both a Communist and a Nazi!

I intend nothing that I have said above as support for Ron Paul. My preference remains strongly for Fred Thompson. I intend what I have said above as just my attempt to set the record straight in an area that is much prone to hysteria.

Update:

I am both amused and pleased that some readers have questioned my point above about Ron Paul being supposedly both a Nazi and a Communist. They say that in view of my own comments about the Leftist nature of Nazism, the combination is not at all improbable. That does however overlook the fact that "splits" are chronic on the far-Left and it is other "splittists" that Leftists tend to hate most of all. Sibling rivalry can be vicious. And the enmity between Nazis and Communists was indeed great in WWII (as the many German bodies resting in Russian soil attest) and continues to this day. The basis of the split was in fact a fundamental one. Marx and Lenin wanted class-war whereas Hitler wanted all Germans united in one big conformist happy family: Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer. Hitler was in that way closer to Hegel than Marx was.

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ELSEWHERE

More political fakery: "How does the Republican frontrunner in Iowa further ingratiate himself with the locals with just a week to go before the first votes are cast in the 2008 presidential election? He gets a dog called Dude and goes out shooting with his buddies, of course. It doesn't matter that it's freezing cold and there's nobody to greet with a big Arkansas howdy. It's about creating that experienced outdoors man look, and reminding all those Iowan evangelicals how much you enjoy their kind of fun. And getting yourself photographed with a gun can only help shore up those all-important Second Amendment credentials. Luckily for Mike Huckabee, and anyone else within cooee, there was no sign of Vice-President Dick Cheney, who famously (and almost fatally) sprayed his 78-year-old pal Harry Whittington with birdshot during a similar hunting trip in Texas in February last year. Early in the campaign, Mr Romney played loose with the truth when he claimed to be a "lifelong hunter". He later had to admit he owned neither a gun nor a hunting licence. To many, it was a startling oversight for someone whose presidential campaign is heavily dependent on early success in states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, where recreational shooting is a way of life."

Militants slain in Gaza air strikes: "Israeli air strikes killed at least six militants in the Gaza Strip overnight, including a senior member of Islamic Jihad, the militant group said. It said the man killed was Mohammed Abu Murshud, head of Islamic Jihad's armed wing in the central Gaza Strip. An Israeli army spokesman confirmed there had been an air strike in the central Gaza Strip, but did not say who had been targeted in the attack. At least five other militants were killed earlier and nine were wounded in Israeli air and ground attacks in the central Gaza Strip and near the southern town of Khan Younis, medical staff in the Hamas-controlled territory said. An official for Islamic Jihad said that two of its members had been killed and another was wounded. Three bystanders were also wounded. The Israeli army spokesman said the strikes targeted a vehicle carrying explosives and militants travelling to "execute a terror attack", and a group of gunmen who had launched a rocket propelled grenade at a military vehicle."

Sowell on Edwards: "None of the candidates looks truly inspiring at this point. I wouldn't buy a used car from most of them, nor a brand new car from some of them. John Edwards is the easiest to peg. He looks just like the phony that he is. His talk about poor children going to bed hungry may rouse the far left in his party but in fact the lowest-income people are even more obese than the rest of us, not that the facts make the slightest difference to Senator Edwards. As an attorney, Edwards conned millions of dollars out of gullible juries, using junk science to create the impression that it was the fault of doctors when babies were born with birth defects."

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and TELSTRA/BIGPOND.

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"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party".

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