How could anyone take Ron Paul seriously after this?

By the way, how could anyone take seriously as a leader, let alone as a candidate for the presidency of the United States, a man who for many years published newsletters under his own name, such as The Ron Paul Report and The Ron Paul Survival Report, and who now says that he never read the articles published under his name? Which is more disqualifying, to have said that the black population is vastly more violent and criminal per capita than the white population, or to avow that one had no interest in, and took no responsibility for, the words and ideas published in one’s own newsletter?

The Washington Post reports:

In the past, Paul has taken responsibility for the passages because they were published under his name. But last month, he told CNN that he was unaware at the time of the controversial passages. “I’ve never read that stuff. I’ve never read—I came—was probably aware of it 10 years after it was written.” Paul said.

A man who could say such a thing has revealed himself as a joke.

- end of initial entry -

January 28

TT writes:

Just wanted to alert you to a possibly confusing note you made regarding Ron Paul and his newsletters. It isn’t completely obvious what point you are making in this sentence. It seems as though you post many times about the problems with the black population, so that wouldn’t be a problem for Ron Paul if it wasn’t for the political correctness and the refusal of our society to deal frankly with the black problem. So is your point that Ron Paul should not be disavowing those articles or that he was wrong to have his name associated with them?

“Which is more disqualifying, to have said that the black population is vastly more violent and criminal per capita than the white population, or to avow that one had no interest in, and took no responsibility for, the words and ideas published in one’s own newsletter?”

LA replies:

It’s a confusing topic that cannot be sorted out short of a major article. The totality of the statements that have been quoted from Paul’s newsletters cover the gamut from things I would defend to things I would condemn. And each of these many, many troublesome quotes would have to be considered on its own. It would be huge job.

In 2007 I defended Paul from a 1996 article indirectly cited by Ramesh Ponnuru at NRO. Ponnuru and the authors he was depending on called Paul racist and anti-Semitic. On the basis of the Paul statements quoted in the original anti-Paul article from 1996 that Ponnuru was relying on, I defended Paul from the charges of racism and anti-Semitim, and I strongly criticized Ponnuru for his cheap shot against Paul. Here is my article.

But more recently other statements from his newsletters have come out (I can’t remember them at the moment) that I found much more troublesome. As I remember the most objectionable remarks had to do with Israel, but there may have been other topics touched on as well.

In any case, leaving aside the question of which Paul statements I personally would defend and which I would not defend, he clearly had a vast record of statements that would disqualify him, a presidential candidate, in the eyes of public opinion. He chose to say that he had nothing to do with those articles, that he had never even read them. We don’t know if this is true or not. It’s possible, as some have said, that Llewelyn Rockwell wrote those articles and that Paul didn’t want to throw his colleague and friend under the bus, so for years he was vague about the authorship. But then, during the current campaign, with all the quotations coming out, the pressure got too much and the only way he could clear himself and continue with his candidacy was by swearing on a stack of bibles that he had had no connection whatsover with those articles and utterly eschewed everything that was written in them.

There are two possible conclusions that can be reached from Paul’s recantation of his newsletter, both of them devastating to him. Either (a) he at least knew about those articles that he published for many years and is now with total, outrageous dishonesty claiming that he knew nothing about them (an act that is on on the same scale of dishonesty as Obama claiming not to know what Rev. Wright had been saying in the pulpit for 20 years); or (b) he’s a wholly irresponsible, empty person who for twenty years published a series of newsletters under his name and took no interest whatsoever in what was written in them.

Either way, the man has destroyed his own character. How could anyone take him seriously after this, especially as his fans/supporters insist that the greatest thing about him is his integrity?

John McNeil writes:

I lost respect for Ron Paul after watching him proclaim that blacks were victims of a racist legal system and that blacks were more likely to get the death penalty than whites, when it fact the opposite is true. It’s one thing to avoid race, it’s another to spout the enemy’s false propaganda.


Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 27, 2012 01:59 PM | Send
    

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