The fall of Paul

It took me a long time to like \nRon Paul. \nI, like a lot of non-right-leaning libertarians, have always been at odds with many of his positions. I don’t agree with his anti-abortion stance, for instance, nor am I a fan of his beliefs about immigration. \nDespite those two issues, about which I have particularly strong opinions, I found a lot to like in Ron Paul. The man has provided well-researched, logical reasoning on why we should be out of the Middle East, rather than just spouting off well-worded emotional appeals. I have also been particularly impressed by his interests in traditionally liberal concerns, such as protecting the environment and improving the economy to help the working class, without the traditionally liberal position of throwing tax money at those problems in whichever way happens to be most politically advantageous. \nMost of all, though, I jumped on the Ron Paul bandwagon to show my support for libertarian positions getting a chance in the spotlight, where people can see that we have reasonable, creative views worth serious consideration. \nBut like nearly everyone who has been on the Internet lately, I was shocked and disturbed by the unashamedly racist, paranoid newsletter snippets that had been sent out under Paul’s name during a span of about 20 years, which James Kirchick published Tuesday in his New Republic article “Angry White Man.”\nYes, Paul issued a statement saying he was not involved with the newsletters’ content, that they were published while he was out of Congress practicing as a doctor and that he takes responsibility for not having paid attention to what was being done under his name. Yes, even if Paul was racist at one point in time he seems to have no sympathies thereof now. And yes, Kirchick’s timely publishing of his article was a dirty political move. \nBut none of that totally excuses the newsletters’ content, and even if Paul did come forward with a satisfactory explanation of his distance from them, he has endangered libertarian ideology of being viewed in the mainstream as a position of psychotic bigots. \nSo let me set the record straight. \nFor mainstream libertarians, issues such as withdrawal from the WTO, abolishment of the Federal Reserve, elimination of various bureaucracies and getting our troops off the Arabian peninsula have nothing to do with racism or conspiratorial paranoia. We hold these positions because we believe putting them into action would improve our economy and national security. \nFurthermore, we hold many opinions that counter bigotry. We want to end the federal war on drugs in large part because of its racist, classist prejudices. We want the government to give individuals more opportunities to choose their own groups rather than give privileges to certain groups that more often than not have power or money politicians want. \nIf your only introduction to libertarianism has been through Paul, I encourage you to give our philosophy a closer look. And no matter your opinion of the man, remember most libertarians advocate the opposite of bigotry.