Among the places where my recent post on Ron Paul's far-right followers has been discussed is the Vanguard News Network forum, a neo-Nazi outfit that makes Stormfront look like model citizens. (It's one of the remnants of William Pierce's old organization.) I won't link to it, but you can Google VNNforum and "ARA-scum goes berserk on Ron Paul" if you want to see it.
Among the correspondence there's this, from a fellow named Subrosa:
Everytime I read stuff like this I picture the writer wearing fishnets over his hairy legs. I mean, really! Does it get anymore feminine than this?
I long, I pray for the day when I can slam people like this up against the wall and give them a quick burst from my AK.
Ah, the standard neo-Nazi response: violence first, talk later. If at all.
I'm reminded of Mussolini, described by Robert Paxton in The Anatomy of Fascism: "A few months before he became prime minister of Italy, he replied truculently to a critic who demanded to know what his program was: 'The democrats of Il Mondo want to know our program? It is to break the bones of the democrats of Il Mondo.' "
FWIW, I always forward things like this to my friends in law enforcement.
One of the other things about growing up in a place like Idaho is that, yes Virginia, there are racists. Neo-Nazis. White supremacists. Conspiracy-mongering survivalists. Militiamen.
You name it, we’ve got ‘em. Not very many of ‘em, mind you. Their numbers are really quite small, but they’ve been coming in numbers (mostly from California and Arizona) large enough to shift the political demographics in the state. And they come because the nearly all-white cultural landscape is a comfortable one.
Whatever name you want to give them, they all fit the description of being genuine American proto-fascists. Some of them -- the Aryan Nations folks in particular -- are quite unapologetic about it. Others, like the militiamen, are specifically geared, strategically speaking, to make inroads into the mainstream, and so they do their utmost to disguise it -- but inevitably it emerges, when you probe just a little into the belief systems they promote.
Idaho’s national image has taken a real beating as a haven for racists because of these folks, and for the most part the image is a gross distortion of the reality. Most Idahoans are deeply embarrassed by them and will find nearly anything else to talk about – as I say, they really are only a tiny faction, and most people think it’s unfair to judge the rest of the state by them, which is fair enough as far as it goes. What they seem slow to acknowledge is that the presence of such people poses special challenges that can’t be dealt with by running away from them.
It goes on to explore how mainstream conservatives have come increasingly to resemble the far-right extremists who used to hide out in the Idaho backwoods.
We noted the speculation earlier this week and now John Fund reports that friends of CNN anchor Lou Dobbs "say he is seriously contemplating" a presidential bid, "although it's still unlikely."
"They spin a scenario under which the acerbic commentator would parachute into the race if Michael Bloomberg, the New York billionaire and favorite of East Coast elites, enters the field as an independent. With Hillary Clinton continuing to score badly in polls in the categories of honesty and integrity, and with the public's many doubts about Rudy Giuliani and other GOP contenders, Mr. Bloomberg may well see an opportunity to roil the political waters by entering the race late. If so, Mr. Dobbs then sees a niche for a 'fourth-party' candidate who could paint the three other contenders as completely out of touch."
"His playbook would be similar to that of Ross Perot in 1992, who didn't enter the presidential race until the major parties began holding their primaries but quickly shot up to 25% in many polls."
Gee, I wonder if Dobbs decided to run another one of his CNN Instapolls to measure what his support would be like. Because that's probably the only data he could be looking at in this regard.
Dobbs was in Seattle earlier this week peddling his aw-shucks populism. Personally, I've always thought the scariest people were the ones who believed their own bullshit.
As part of a nationwide investigation, FBI agents raided three Coeur d'Alene business locations on Thursday, seizing records and dies used to make the so-called silver "Liberty Dollar" sold throughout the United States by anti-government patriot groups.
The Coeur d'Alene raids coincided with similar raids by FBI and U.S. Secret Service agents, on Thursday at the Evansville, Ind., headquarters of organization called NORFED -- the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve Act & Internal Revenue Code.
For a decade, the organization led by a self-described "monetary architect" and harsh critic of the Federal Reserve System has pumped out an estimated $20 million its own currency, reportedly backed by silver coins minted and stored in Coeur d'Alene. The raids Thursday are the first head-on federal challenge to that operation.
Since 1998, the NORFED silver coins were manufactured at Sunshine Minting, a private Coeur d'Alene business which makes a variety of precious metal products. The silver coins backed up paper currently in $1, $5 and $10 denominations marketed by NORFED.
The organization was about to begin selling and distributing "Ron Paul" dollars, supporting the candidacy of the Republican congressman from Texas who's seeking the GOP nomination for president. He previously ran for president as a Libertarian.
It was just Saturday in Philadelphia that Ron Paul held a campaign event near the U.S. Mint and pointed at it, saying: "And even over here, we look at a Mint, for the day that we will go back when the Mint is minting real money, gold and silver, not of paper!" (Video here)
I'm sure Ron Paul's followers and apologists will assure us that it is merely a coincidence that the purveyors of this funny-money scheme were about to issue a coin with his image on it. Just pay no attention to those far-right extremists lining up behind the curtain, folks!
A lot of times I regret leaving Idaho. Sometimes I don't.
Like when I read this Idaho Statesman piece about a bunch of legislators who are trying to bring back the good ole days when a woman's place was in the home, led by a fellow named Steven Thayn:
Thayn said more two-parent homes and fewer working mothers could be both a social and economic boon. The Emmett Republican sees the breakdown of the traditional family structure as the root of societal ills such as drug abuse, crime and domestic violence.
That's why, as chairman of the Idaho House of Representatives' Family Task Force, he and others are considering controversial solutions such as repealing no-fault divorce laws and finding ways to encourage mothers to stay home with their children.
"In one of the articles I read, quite a large percentage of mothers really do want to spend more time at home, and if that's the case, what can we do to help them?" Thayn said.
Now, in the Idaho I grew up in, this was the common-sense response to this sort of thing:
One such working mother, Mandy Hagler, drops her 5-year-old daughter, Riley, at school every morning before running to an internship or to a class at Boise State University. On weekends, she works in retail to pay for her education and to support her daughter.
Hagler, 26, spoke at a task force meeting in Boise, but doesn't think the task force listened. She thinks Thayn and others on the task force, trying to define what a family should look like, are pegging families like hers as part of the problem.
"I don't see the government's place in defining what the ideal family is," she said.
As the story goes on to explain, Hagler was expressing the deep libertarian streak that runs through Idaho's history and heritage and common sensibility. As one local prof puts it, "We have this libertarian strain in this state that government should stay out of personal business," he said. "Well, family's about as personal as it gets."
Of course, it goes almost without saying that these paleoconservative attitudes about "family" also reflect a distinctly male insecurity about working women and changing social conditions. It's not surprising that it's mostly men talking about making these changes (which are detailed in a sidebar on the Statesman piece, and really are worth reading on their own).
But as always with these things, there's even a bigger agenda afoot here, to wit, the War on Divorce:
Thayn believes that reducing divorces could save the state $200 million because the crime rate would drop if divorces dropped. He thinks making it more difficult to get divorced would help families avoid what he sees as the pitfalls of non-traditional families.
The task force endorsed a proposal to end no-fault divorce, which allows a couple to divorce without proof of fault.
"Divorce is just terrible," Rep. Dick Harwood, R-St. Maries, said. "It's one of Satan's best tools to kill America."
In any event, there are still even a few sensible Republicans left in Idaho who, fortunately, are keeping these loons at bay:
Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, a proponent of early childhood education and stronger day-care regulations, has been at odds with Thayn. Schroeder said stronger day-care regulations, including mandatory background checks for providers, are about keeping children safe from pedophiles and that research shows early childhood education helps children.
"Basically, we have in my opinion, and I stress in my opinion, a group of people who are living in the past," he said.
"Basically, they are people who think women ought to stay home and take care of the kids."
Thayn does not shy from this view, calling pre-kindergarten education a "free babysitting service" and suggesting that early childhood education, day-care and Head Start may hurt families by keeping mothers away from home.
"It seems to be (proponents of such programs) just assume that mothers have to work, and they're not really asking the question, ‘What can we do to help them stay home?' " he said.
In my all-too-brief half-decade as a stay-at-home dad, it was one of my more troubling observations that a lot of the undercurrent among at least some of the mothers of resentment, and a general view of childrearing as drudgery, was actually a product of prevailing social attitudes like Thayn's: that it's naturally the woman's responsibility in a family to be the chief child-care provider and overseer -- that this expectation has a dehumanizing and devaluing effect on what it is they do. Certainly it seemed to me to rob some of them of the joy of parenthood.
It seemed to me that if more men were doing the babysitting, there'd be a lot more appreciation for how hard it is, and also for how rewarding and great it can be -- and most of all, for how really important it is. I think men, women and children alike would all benefit, not just from the attitudinal shift but from the positive familial results.
Perhaps more to the point, it's not merely the attitude that women are expected to fulfill this task, it's this notion that only the "traditional" dual-heterosexual family, is capable of providing children a healthy and stable home environment. There are a lot of people for whom that model just isn't valid, but who are fully and provably capable of doing the job too.
The problem is, they start out with two strikes against them -- as do women in general -- because of the prevalence of attitudes like Steven Thayn's.
Kevin Ogle, pastor of Northgate Colonial Baptist Church in Camden, GA, pleaded guilty in May to 15 counts of sexual exploitation on the Internet. A deacon for the church said, "A pastor is human just like everybody else is."
Five years ago, the Catholic Church -- the largest Christian denomination in the country -- was torn apart when it became front-page news that hundreds of its priests, working for decades in parishes across America, had sexually molested thousands of Catholic teenagers while their bishops actively covered up the problem, or simply looked the other way. The lawsuits that followed bankrupted Catholic institutions from coast to coast. Worse, the revelations and subsequent bad publicity shook Catholics' faith in their clergy to the bone, and made their ancient church the punchline of a thousand pedophile jokes in the process. It's going to take a generation or more for the church to recover -- if it ever does.
Jeff Hannah served for at least three years as the youth minister at The First Baptist Church of Romeoville, IL -- even though the church's leaders knew he was a convicted sex predator. He resigned in August when the Chicago Sun-Times revealed his past. "We believe in forgiveness," said one of the deacons who hired Hannah.
Given the huge media circus that surrounded the priest scandal, I'm left wondering why nobody, but nobody, is giving anything like that kind of attention to the almost identical sexual predator scandal that is, right now, rocking the Southern Baptist Church. Since last January, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) -- the same group that finally brought the Catholic Church's ingrained patterns of protecting pedophiles to light -- has filed legal charges against over 50 Southern Baptist ministers (they're bringing in over one a week now), and gotten convictions against 26 of them to date.
On September 13, Pastor John Bonine of the Sierra Heights Baptist Church in Fresno, CA was arrested on felony child molestation charges. "We are looking for any way we can to be supportive of the pastor's family," a church spokesman said.
This should come as no surprise to faithful Orcinus readers, since I've been pointing out for the better part of a year now that the Southern Baptist Church -- the nation's leading promulgator of Dominionist theology -- was starting to look like a broken-down old pickup rolling downhill with no brakes, bucking and wheezing headlong over the rocks toward some kind of spectacular calamity. With 16.8 million members in 43,000 congregations, the SBC is the second-largest Christian church after the Catholics. And those of us who've been sitting on the sidelines with our popcorn, watching that long parade strutting/frog-marching/displaying its wide stance as it gaily trots out of the right wing's vast walk-in closet, had no doubt that the coming SBC calamity would almost certainly involve sexual malfeasance on an epic scale.
On October 17, Steven Haney, former pastor of the Walnut Grove Baptist Church in Memphis, was indicted for sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy from his church over a five-year period. He told the boy that his attentions were "a test from God."
And so here it is -- in the form of hundreds of young women and men coming forward to tell their stories to judges and juries, exposing a decades-long pattern of unchecked predatory behavior on the part of their Baptist pastors. This parade, too, has gone on nearly non-stop and just as fast for nearly a year now -- so where are the reporters, the cameras, the headlines?
A few national papers have picked up on this, as has ABC's 20/20 (which did a report in April). Among bloggers, the perspicacious Pam Spaulding has been on the case. But mostly, the coverage has been confined to the local papers -- each one treating its own hometown pastor scandal as an isolated incident, without putting it in the context of a larger national trend. As long as the dots aren't being connected, this isn't getting anything like the 24/7/365 coverage that the Catholic scandal did.
We have to wonder: why did the Catholic Church get the full media treatment -- but all we hear about this still-exploding scandal is the sound of crickets chirping?
On November 1, SBC Deacon Roy Long of Victorville, CA was charged with molesting two seven-year-old girls over a four-year period. Police and prosecutors are looking for other victims.
I don't know the answer to this. But we do know the SBC has friends in powerful places, and an honored seat at the DC Village table. In the current climate, it's not out of line to wonder if their solid place at the Bush Administration's base might have something to do with the media's resolute determination to keep looking the other way. Or maybe it's just rank sexism at work once again: it's a scandal when priests molest underage boys, but not worth the headline when pastors abuse their authority to commit statutory rape on teenage girls, too. Either way, the national media's relative silence on this story is not only deafening -- it's infuriating.
Last week, SBC youth pastor Marshal Seymour confessed to sexually abusing several teenage boys he met through his church in Lakeland, FL. Police discovered he'd been let go from his previous church in Mobile, AL for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old boy.
I'll be rolling this story out in short installments over the next few days. There are a lot of details, including my interview with Christa Brown of SNAP about the SBC's abject state of denial; a look at a few of the most interesting and egregious cases; and a case-study view of the SBC that shows how the church's very structure is perfectly optimized to attract and bring out the very worst in high-SDO leaders.
We all understand it so well now that it hardly bears repeating -- but those who stand on the moral high ground and crow the loudest about their own righteousness are the ones we should be watching the most carefully of all. We've seen that lesson writ small over the past few years; but what's happening in the SBC looks like it may turn out to be the Broadway extravaganza version of a very old morality play.
On Saturday, Ron Paul held a campaign rally in Philadelphia. As Atrios noticed, it attracted a large crowd, most of them quite vocal about ending the Iraq war. But if you looked carefully, there was also an element (most them also antiwar) that's become something of a fixture at Ron Paul rallies: skinheads, neo-Nazis, militiamen, and various stripes of right-wing extremists.
The photographer Isis was there and captured some of this, including the shot above. That's Keith Carney of the Keystone State Skinheads on the left, posing with an unidentified Stormfront friend. Meanwhile, over at Stormfront, the event sparked a flurry of posts urging nonstop Paul support. And as One People's Project noticed, even one of the rally's speakers, a woman named Debbie Hopper, has a distinguished background in far-right activism, including having helped organize a tribute to Sam Francis.
Mike Flugennock made a video about it all, featuring a revealing encounter between Darryl of One People's Project and the skinheads, who were all toting Ron Paul signs and wearing his stickers and buttons:
What does this all mean? Does it mean Ron Paul is fronting for fascists? Does it mean he's a racist? Or is it something more complex, but equally disturbing?
Every presidential candidate attracts cranks, racists, kooks, conspiracy theorists, radicals of various stripes, and assorted fringe actors to their campaigns -- some more than others. Generally speaking, it's not worth paying a lot of attention to, because their numbers typically are quite small, and most of those involved are idiosyncratic -- that is, they only coincidentally reflect on the candidate themselves, if at all. They're irrelevant.
But people who track the activities of the far right -- the white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Patriots/militiamen, "Freemen"/"constitutionalists", and anti-abortion, anti-tax, and anti-gay radicals -- do pay attention to how they vote: where their money and support goes, and why. It's important to track this because it's about watching who they empower, and who's empowering them, and to what extent this is occurring.
In the 1980s and early '90s, they tended to divide their votes among a menu of various fringe candidates (David Duke, Bo Gritz), mostly under the banner of the Populist Party, and "mainstream" third-party candidates like Ross Perot and Patrick Buchanan. A lot of them, however, abandoned third parties altogether after the 2000 election, when Buchanan betrayed them by choosing a black woman as his running mate -- and many of them simply began voting Republican.
Of course, linking Bush -- who has never publicly appeared before, or expressly courted, such groups -- to their hateful activities would indeed be "guilt by association." Yet it's also dishonest to ignore the reality that movement conservativism made itself increasingly more hospitable to these blocs. As I noted in that piece, some of this had to do with gestures George W. Bush made throughout his campaign:
These failures were symptomatic of a campaign that made multiple gestures of conciliation to a variety of extreme right-wing groups. These ranged from the neo-Confederates to whom Bush's campaign made its most obvious appeals in the South Carolina primary to his speaking appearance at Bob Jones University. Bush and his GOP cohorts continued to make a whole host of other gestures to other extremist components: attacking affirmative action, kneecapping the United Nations, and gutting hate-crimes laws.
The result was that white supremacists and other right-wing extremists came to identify politically with George W. Bush more than any other mainstream Republican politician in memory. This was embodied by the endorsement of Bush's candidacy by a range of white supremacists, including David Duke, Don Black and Matthew Hale of the World Church of the Creator.
Of course, this support was so small as to be insignificant numerically speaking, though its influence and reach were another matter entirely. Still, in reality, far-right activists voted for Bush more as a desultory gesture than anything else. Which is why, of course, they have now fled him in large numbers, now that his presidency has proven to be such a manifest catastrophe.
Well, the far right has always been fond of tapping into threads of national discontent -- it's how they've survived all these years, really -- which is why they have made a living the past generation whipping up anti-government sentiment, exploiting the farm crisis, gun control, abortion, education, and a whole menu of other issues along the way. More recently, immigration has been their chief entree to the mainstream, and now they have jumped on the anti-Iraq war bandwagon.
Ron Paul's presidential candidacy has been the focal point for this, and it has been striking, not to mention disturbing, to observe the unanimity with which the far right has been coalescing behind Paul's candidacy. And the support (unlike that for either Buchanan or Perot) has not been merely avid, it's perfervid.
Virtually every far-right entity -- neo-Nazis, white supremacists, militias, constitutionalists, Minutemen, nativists, you name it -- that I've been monitoring for the past decade or more is lining up behind Paul. I've checked with other human-rights observers, and they're seeing the same thing. Ron Paul, rather quietly and under the radar, has managed to unite nearly the entire radical right behind him.
And it's not likely, even, that this is so much by design as by nature. It's a natural outgrowth of who Ron Paul is. Yet the scope of this coalescence of the far right is unprecedented. Certainly no other presidential candidate in my memory -- except perhaps the early George Wallace -- has energized and drawn the ardent support from the far right the way Ron Paui has.
Certainly, the Philadelphia event was far from unique. White supremacists from a variety of organizations -- the NSM, Stormfront, National Vanguard, WAR, Hammerskins -- have been outspoken and unapologetic supporters of Paul, and have come out to rally for him at a number of different campaign appearances. For example, at a Paul rally in August in New Jersey, a sizeable number of Stormfronters showed up. Indeed, a quick Google of Stormfront's site for "Ron Paul" gives you a clear idea just how involved they are: 789,000 links.
Carl Klang was a fixture on the militia K-ration-dinner circuit in the 1990s, being the guy who would come out onstage and sing a few "patriotic" songs like "Watch Out for Martial Law" and "Seventeen Little Children". Considering that Paul was once a fixture on the same circuit, they have even shared the stage back then.
And that, of course, is a large part of the reasons why talking about the radical-right bloc's support for Ron Paul's candidacy isn't "guilt by association," which by definition entails an irrelevant association.
Let's use the new neo-Nazi affinity for the antiwar movement as an illustrative example here. Smearing one by linking them to the other is in fact "guilt by association," because the association is irrelevant.
The skins' reasons for opposing the war are, in fact, wholly different from those of the much larger antiwar left, who are opposed largely on humanitarian grounds; the far right, however, opposes the war because it's perceived to be fought on behalf of Israel and the Jews -- which is why, when you hear them talk about "neocons", you know that they are in fact using it as a code word for "Jew." So the association, such as it is (it seems largely to occur at Paul events) is purely coincidental, accidental, a nonsequitur, and largely irrelevant (though it hopefully gives antiwar liberals pause about the way they talk about Israeli influence in the matter).
However, the fact that they do so in the name of supporting Ron Paul is neither merely accidental nor irrelevant. After all, Paul himself is inclined to rail against "the Israel lobby" and "the neocons". But that's only scratching the surface of his appeal to this sector. Unlike the antiwar left, there's more than an abundance of common ground between Ron Paul and the far right.
Paul's associations with the radical right, in fact, are fully relevant, on three levels:
2) His ideological framework -- fighting "the New World Order," eliminating the Fed, the IRS, and most federal agencies, getting us out of the U.N., ending all gun controls, reinstating the gold standard -- meshes neatly with theirs.
3) The organizations with whom he's associated are not benign, nor merely even "controversial", but are truly noxious elements that no responsible politician should be seen endorsing: racists, xenophobes, conspiracists, and frauds. This isn't the Rose Garden Society we're talking about here, or even the NRA.
[I]if you run through the broad array of kooky theories about the federal government promoted on the far right, you can find any number of Ron Paul's positions -- particularly regarding the gold standard, the Federal Reserve, the IRS, and the United Nations -- floating about there. Notably, Paul also played a significant role in Congress' ongoing failure to confront the growing problem of conspiracy-driven tax protests by diverting the blame to the IRS itself.
These are the first two pages of a 35-page mini-book that Ron Paul published in 1988 titled "World Money, World Banking, and World Government: A Special Report from the Ron Paul Investment Letter". It looks at the "threat" of the Trilateral Commission and the "European Currency Unit", which happened to be the far right's big bogeyman of the time. (Ever notice how their dire warnings of imminent doom never quite pan out? Of course, Ron Paul also has a long history of associating with one of the preeminent promoters of the most spectacular case of right-conspiracy failure, namely, the Y2K hysteria: Gary North.)
And it's not as though he's changed a lot. Just three years ago, he gave a long, rambling interview to Conspiracy Planet discussing the "New World Order," which included (among many gems) the following exchange at the open:
First question: do you believe there are secret forces at work that are attempting to dismantle the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
Ron Paul: I don't know what the best word is, but secret is pretty good. They're certainly not known to a lot of people; it's actually what their doing. But then again, it's not absolute secrecy. If you look around you can usually get the information. There was a time when nobody even knew who was a member of the CFR or the Trilateral Commission. I think it's a bad sign that they're not as secret as they used to be. They're bolder now. But there is an agenda.
It's also worth remembering, of course, that the bulk of the rest of much of Paul's radical agenda, such as dismantling the Federal Reserve, is similarly founded in old-fashioned right-wing bunkum.
This is why, as Bruce Miller elegantly explains, anyone who's been exposed to these folks for any length of time understand clearly just who Ron Paul is and where he's coming from. His "libertarianism" is more of a malleable veneer over old-style Bircherite conservatism than anything genuine.
So this is why it's not only relevant, but important, to talk about the kind of supporters Ron Paul is gathering behind him. Andrew Sullivan gets this half right when he notes, "I tend to place greater emphasis on loons and hate-mongers that candidates actively seek out." But because he neglects to dig deeper and find out just to what extent Paul has in fact sought out the "loons and hate-mongers," he then blithely assumes that only example of this is Paul's refusal to return a $500 donation from Stormfront's Don Black and dismisses it as "guilt by association" and a "smear." (For a nastier take on all this, you can also check out Justin Raimondo's attack on me today.)
But even that example is more relevant than Sullivan and Paul's apologists will admit. As Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates put it when I chatted with him about this today: "Those neo-Nazis have a First Amendment right to endorse Ron Paul, but Ron Paul has a moral obligation to disavow that donation."
He added: "There's two issues: Why would anyone have to ask Ron Paul to disassociate himself from the endorsement of neo-Nazis? And the second is that when they did ask him, his silence spoke volumes about his values. You know, 'I don't enjoy the endorsement of neo-Nazis' -- how hard is that to say? And why hasn't he refunded it? It's not like this is a gray area."
So I can't help largely agreeing, but wondering if there isn't a certain naivete involved, when Glenn Greenwald writes, in defense of Paul:
As the debates of 2002 should have proved rather conclusively, the arguments that are deemed to be the province of the weirdos and losers may actually be the ideas that are right. They at least deserve an honest airing, especially in a presidential campaign with as much at stake as this one.
That's all very good and very true, but I think some well-informed discretion about what arguments we engage is also needed. There is, after all, a reason that the arguments from such sectors as the radical right are (fortunately) held by only a small number of people: They are either founded on false information and bizarre distortions, or they're simply hateful and vicious, and often both.
Otherwise, what you'll often find being woven into the national conversation -- besides truly fringe ideas like eliminating the Fed and abolishing the IRS, as well as "New World Order" theories -- is the kind of ideology that spews from the fringe of Ron Paul's more rabid right-wing followers. This happens not only in public view, but also on the ground.
Take, for example, the Stormfront thread discussing the Philly rally, wherein a poster named "CassandraAdams" discussed meeting a woman who fled the Brown Peril in Arizona and was at the Paul rally, but who apparently fled when Cassandra started talking about defending the white race. She concluded:
The reason I've written this is that I am actually despairing, this morning, over the Fate of my Race. How can we survive, when the millions of victims of other Races refuse to acknowledge the FACT of the onslaught against us?
A charmer named "Wolfsnarl" responded:
If we can get them to defend their race without them actively thinking they are doing so in those terms-through mainstream anti-immigration groups like NumbersUSA or Ron Paul activism for example. After all, how many foot soldiers of the jewish/communist takeover actively thought of themselves as communists or whatever?
This is why they're out in large numbers for Ron Paul: they see his candidacy as a real opportunity to advance their agenda -- and they have very good reasons for believing that. It's a fertile ground for them, and they know it.
Which should be reason for the rest of us -- even those who appreciate Paul's ardent antiwar position, or who see him as potentially a GOP stalking horse -- to pause before applauding his rise.
Now, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that a smear by definition is false. And I'm having difficulty fathoming how a post comprised almost solely of links to legislation Paul has sponsored -- 161 of them, in fact -- could constitute a smear. In the world of the blogosphere, the posts don't get much more fact-oriented.
[Secondarily, a minor corrective note: I didn't write the passage that Greenwald quotes. It was written by our regular commenter Trefayne, as I tried to explain in the intro. Minor carelessness, but indicative, I'm afraid, of Greenwald's approach in general here. Certainly I published it, and continue to stand behind Trefayne's reportage and his remarks.]
Greenwald points out, quite accurately, that two of the bills described in the post in question -- a laundry list of legislation sponsored by Paul -- dealing with flag burning were actually indicative of Paul's opposition to flag-burning legislation:
Indeed, he only introduced those flag-burning amendments in order to dare his colleagues who wanted to pass a law banning flag burning to do it that way -- i.e., the constitutional way. When introducing his amendments, he delivered an eloquent and impassioned speech on the floor of the House explaining why he considered anti-flag-burning measures to be "very unnecessary and very dangerous."
I'd zeroed in on the flag-burning issue in my own followup work on the post, and was baffled by the facts of the case -- namely, that Paul had sponsored a bill in 1997 proposing a bill to amend the Constitution to allow for flag burning prohibitions, but then turned around and voted against a measure with nearly identical wording.
So Greenwald does seemingly help fill in the essential facts -- namely, that Paul had offered up the measure as an attempt to highlight the wrongness of what it proposed. Or was it?
This is a very subtle misreading of Ron Paul's position. He's largely right, but at the beginning Glenn states that Ron Paul is "vehemently against any and all laws to criminalize flag burning." Then I guess he missed this quote from Ron Paul's speech on the issue (Glenn quotes Ron Paul at length, but doesn't include this line):
"Under the Constitutional principle of federalism, questions such as whether or not Texas should prohibit flag burning are strictly up to the people of Texas, not the United States Supreme Court. Thus, if this amendment simply restored the state's authority to ban flag burning, I would enthusiastically support it."
So, actually, yes... Ron Paul is for prohibiting flag burning. He's just against amending the Constitution to do it. But if your state wants to criminalize it, then that's mighty fine by him. Once again, his complete and utter commitment to states' rights overshadows anything.
In any event, it is not exactly an ordinary legislative tactic to sponsor legislation that proposes to enact something you oppose, but it is known to happen, and may have in this case, though the evidence is dubious at best. If that is the case, then we were wrong -- but we invite Greenwald to demonstrate that Paul isn't in fact a supporter of state prohibitions on flag burning.
Moreover, to read Greenwald's post, one would come away with the impression that this was the similar case for a significant portion, if not a majority or perhaps even the entirety, of the bills cited in the post.
After all, we're talking about a post with 161 links to bills that Paul not merely voted upon, but sponsored. Out of them, two arguably were misrepresentative of the thrust of the post (namely, that Paul's legislative record reflects his extremist orientation and background) -- but after further review, it becomes clear that the remaining 159 pieces of legislation were almost certainly sincere attempts at lawmaking.
It's clear, after all, that Paul is an advocate of returning to the gold standard, of disbanding the Federal Reserve, the IRS, the Education Department, and a host of other federal agencies, and of withdrawing the United States from the United Nations. He not only has sponsored bills to do so, he's publicly advocated for them.
But if you were to only read Greenwald's post, you'd have a hard time telling that this is the case. Indeed, there's nary an effort to address the actual radicalism of Paul's positions raised in the many posts we've written here detailing them (there's a pretty complete list at the bottom of this post).
Instead, we get this:
This raises a broader point. It has become fashionable among certain commentators to hurl insults at Ron Paul such as "huge weirdo,""fruitcake," and the like. Interestingly, the same thing was done to another anti-war medical doctor/politician, Howard Dean, back in 2003, as Charles Krauthammer infamously pronounced with regard to Dean that "it's time to check on thorazine supplies." Krauthammer subsequently said that "[i]t looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again."
Note: This is an analogy akin to the very kind that I know have driven Greenwald crazy in the past -- wherein we compare the scribblings of bloggers to nationally syndicated pundits appearing on national television. What gives?
That notwithstanding, you'll note that Greenwald doesn't link here when issuing that complaint -- because we haven't talked about Paul in terms anything like that. The closest I've come to doing so was when I referred to some of the organizations from whom Paul has received financial and ideological support over the years as "nutcases" and said "he's one of them":
After all, what this comes down to is not so much beliefs and values but judgment. One expects, after all, a congressman to display better judgment than to appear before a group of nutcases. Ron Paul didn't, and hasn't, for a simple reason -- he's one of them.
What I've consistently said about Ron Paul is that the agenda he advocates is, by nearly any measure, that of a far-right extremist. I haven't ventured any armchair psychology into his motivations -- I've been simply reporting reportable facts. If Glenn has facts to prove me wrong, he needs to present them. I know I observed (usually from afar, but once in person) Paul's avid presence at many a "Patriot" gathering in the 1990s, rubbing shoulders with Bo Gritz and John Trochmann, enough times to feel confident that I'm not bending the reality.
I wrote and asked Sara for her thoughts on this, and she responded (thus the dual byline):
1) Much of Glenn's screed is against people who call Paul a "weirdo" and a "fruitcake." Nowhere in your missive did you use either word. In fact, you have avoided ad hominems entirely in your recent posts [note the exception above]. But there's a strong implication throughout the post that somehow it was YOU who engaged in this name-calling -- and if that's false, you need to strenuously object to that association. In fact, he probably owes you an apology for implying that that you did this, and a clarification that you did not.
2) Much of the rest of it is about how bizarre Hillary and our mainstream discourse in general is. I think you and I would both agree with him on this point (and, in fact, our agreement that the system is screwed is why we blog in the first place) [ed: Indeed we do] --- but we're not talking about Hillary, we're talking about Paul. Glenn is trying to change the subject in a very lawyerly way. Nice attempt at diversion there, Glenn -- but let's stay on the subject, which is not Hillary or the mainstream, but rather Paul.
And suggesting that we've got some kind of either-or choice here is simply false. Glenn is usually a more subtle thinker than that, but he's slipped a gear here. The enemy of our enemy is not always (or even usually) our friend.
3) You may want to reiterate that you've spent 20 years tracking the right wing, and have written several well-regarded books on the subject. In fact, you're the left-wing blogosphere's point man on this subject -- so it's rather surprising to find these kinds of attacks on your credibility on this subject coming from inside our own quarters.
The fact is that you know the players in this end of the field a hell of a lot better than anyone else does. You're not saying these things in the service of an agenda or just to be mean -- even though many of Glenn's commentors on this post seem to think so. (Lawyers may do that. Professional journalists do not.) You are calling it like you see it -- and you are a credible witness who is seeing things other people are not in a position to notice, let alone interpret properly. A little trust in your good reputation and long familiarity with the beat would be in order here, and it's a shame that it's not forthcoming.
4) Nowhere does Glenn refute our central argument, which is that Paul has a 25-year history of getting strong financial and voter support from the farthest fringes of the right wing. In fact, he is largely a creation of the extremist fringe, though he's doing his very best to obscure that fact now. If Glenn has contrary information that proves these people are not who we say they are, he needs to provide it.
5) And I just loved this: "And I read every day that corporations and their lobbyists are the bane of our country, responsible for most of its ills. What does it say about her that her campaign is fueled in large part by support from exactly those factions? Are she and all of her supporters nonetheless squarely within the realm of the sane and normal? And none of this is to say anything of the Giulianis and Podhoretzs and Romneys and Krauthammers and Kristols with ideas so extreme and dangerous, yet still deemed "serious."
So it's OK to demonize Hillary for the people who are funding her campaign and supporting her candidacy -- but we're not allowed to judge Paul by the same criteria? Glenn keeps coming back over and over to how we're not supposed to engage in guilt by association -- but he just did it himself here. Furthermore (as I said before, and think bears repeating), don't we wish we'd understood just a heck of a lot more about the people who were supporting George Bush before we elected him? And isn't our willingness to ask those questions one of the essential things that we do that differentiates us from the MSM, who have repeatedly failed to give us the full background on the people we're supporting? In an age of corporate cronyism, is Glenn honestly arguing that this kind of stuff doesn't matter?
I won't try to argue, actually, that my extensive background (discussed in some detail here, for those interested) in dealing with the far right gives me any particularly overwhelming authority on this subject -- I've been wrong before and could be again. But I have been tracking Ron Paul and his activities for so long that I'd be criminally remiss not to report what I know about his background and his agenda. Moreover, I would like emphasize the underlying point: I'm not doing this in service of anyone's agenda, but simply out of respect for my craft.
Besides, appeals to authority are fairly clear logical fallacies. The problem with Greenwald's argument, conversely, is that it's founded on a kind of logical fallacy as well, or at least fallacious reasoning -- namely, that my arguments about Ron Paul constitute "guilt by association." It is in fact a misapprehension of what comprises such "guilt." In one of his updates, he writes:
On another note, I wrote in my prior post concerning Paul that I found the efforts (by Neiwert and others) to smear him by linking him to some of his extremist and hate-mongering supporters to be unfair (for reasons I explained here). Neiwert responded and compiled what he thinks is the best evidence to justify this linkage here.
For reasons I'll detail at another time, I found virtually all of that to be unpersuasive, relying almost entirely on lame guilt-by-association arguments that could sink most if not all candidates (the only arguably disturbing evidence in this regard is this 1996 Houston Chronicle article, which Neiwert didn't mention, and the pro-Paul response is here). Everyone can review the evidence -- all of which is quite old and very little of which relies on any of Paul's own statements -- and make up their own minds.
[Actually, FWIW, we have mentioned the Houston Chronicle piece a coupleof times, had Greenwald bothered to explore the links in that piece with any care.]
Well, what is "guilt by association"? It's considered part of the association fallacy:
An association fallacy is an inductive formal fallacy of the type hasty generalization or red herring which asserts that qualities of one thing are inherently qualities of another, merely by an irrelevant association. [my emphasis]
The problem with Ron Paul isn't that he has irrelevant associations with far-right extremists -- it's that he seeks out their support, openly advocates their agenda, and receives financial and ideological support from them. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but I read somewhere awhile back -- though I can't find it now -- that Paul has historically received an unusually high percentage of his financial support for his congressional campaigns from outside his district.) Those grim realities make his associations all too relevant, especially for a public official in the position of a serving congressman, and now, presidential candidate.
[T]his isn't "guilt by association" -- first, the argument isn't that Paul is a racist per se, but that he is an extremist who shares a belief system held not just by racists but other anti-government zealots as well. Paul is identified with their causes not simply because he speaks to them, but because he elucidates ideas and positions -- especially regarding the IRS, the UN, the gold standard, and education -- identical to theirs. This is why he has their rabid support. There is an underlying reason, after all, that Paul attracts backers like David Duke and the Stormfront gang: he talks like them.
Second and perhaps most importantly, there are legitimate reasons for anyone to raise objections to Paul's associations, speaking before the Patriot Network, the CofCC, and similar groups -- he's a public official, and he is lending the power of his public office to legitimizing radical-right organizations like this. Think of why it would be wrong to appear before the Klan, or the CofCC, as Trent Lott and Hayley Barbour have done in the latter case.
It's not merely what it implies about your own beliefs and standards -- it's that you've lent the power of your public office to empowering and raising the stature of racists and extremists. You of course have the right to do so -- but the public has every right to criticize you for it as well, as it should. After all, what this comes down to is not so much beliefs and values but judgment. One expects, after all, a congressman to display better judgment than to appear before a group of nutcases. Ron Paul didn't, and hasn't, for a simple reason -- he's one of them.
And just as his associations with far-right extremists have empowered those groups -- a favor now being returned in the form of their avid support for him even as he attempts to strategically distance himself from them -- his recent stunning successes mean the further empowerment of these groups. And that is why, over the long term, we ought take much greater pause in considering the value of his success.
His supporters are fond of talking about Ron Paul's integrity and honesty and forthrightness, but the stark truth is that, so far, he has been incredibly disingenuous about his beliefs and his background, as well as his supporters.
I mean, it's one thing to claim that you want nothing to do with white supremacists. People in my line of work hear that a lot from people for whom the evidence suggests otherwise (see, e.g., Trent Lott). But the fact is that Ron Paul gladly accepts not just their support but their money. Given the opportunity to disavow them -- especially, say, by refusing their donations -- he politely declines. Actions, after all, speak louder than words.
But even Paul's words, moreover, are somewhat less than forthcoming. The most thorough disavowal of his support from overt racists I've seen so far has been along the lines of, "Well, they'll be disappointed if that's why they're supporting me." Hello? (Perhaps Glenn can find better, but I haven't yet.)
Of course, it's not just Paul who's being disingenuous here. It's his supporters -- and his apologists.
I'm still having trouble, I'll admit, recovering from my astonishment that Glenn Greenwald is one of them.
NOTE: I edited this briefly after posting it, adding Bolo's comment.
Yesterday was Remembrance Day in Canada. In many ways, it is the most Canadian of all the statutory holidays we have here -- more heartfelt than Thanksgiving, more widely observed than Canada Day, more essential to the deep strain of honor in the Canadian character than -- well, any day we celebrate up here.
Canadian city parks are designed around Remembrance Day exercises. Even small towns boast a downtown park dominated by a tall and stately stone cenotaph, a memorial obelisk that is the centerpiece of the day's events. On November 11, these parks are full to the edges, because nobody, no matter how anti-war, misses the event. (Last year, the CBC reported the dismal news that only two-thirds of Canadians had attend some kind of Remembrance Day exercises. The horror.)
And it's a show worth showing up for. Brass and bagpipe bands march. The Mounties turn out in their scarlet coats. Old men stand a bit straighter in their regimental coats and kilts, their chests full of medals, to receive their nation's honor once again. Brilliant red poppies bloom on the lapel of every dark coat as the poem "In Flanders Fields" (written by Canadian officer John McCrae, and inscribed in the memory of every Canadian schoolchild) is read aloud. Families come together, and go out for lunch after. Every civic group and church comes forward to present a wreath in memory of Canada's fallen soldiers, in a procession that can last well into the afternoon and ends with enormous piles of greenery and poppies banking the monument. And at 11:00 sharp, the entire country -- in streets, in stores, everywhere -- comes to a dead halt, observing a full two minutes of national silence honoring the moment that the Armistice began, and World War I came to an end.
The high pomp and circumstance is largely due to the transformative role the war played in Canadian history. Though the country had been independent of the Crown since 1867, by the early 20th century, there still wasn't much in the way of a Canadian national identity -- a sense that they were one people with a shared destiny. The Great War was the event that galvanized that. For the first time, Maritime fishermen, Ukrainian farmers from Saskatchewan, urban Torontonians, Calgary cowboys, Japanese nurserymen, and self-sufficient Scots loggers from the forests of BC were brought together in battle, under one flag, wearing one uniform. They were often assigned the most hopeless battles by the British and American generals; and as a result, they took catastrophic casualties at places with names like Somme, Ypres, and Vimy Ridge. Out of a population of seven million, 67,000 were killed and 173,000 were wounded. Every Anglo-Canadian family I know was touched by this, and can recount the history of their ancestors with quiet pride. It was the event that catalyzed the identity of the nation -- the moment Canada really became itself.
(The war also ripped open a historical breach between English and French Canada that has yet to heal. Quebec didn't appreciate the prospect of sending its sons to a war that they felt only advanced British interests; and that resistance was the genesis of the Quebec separatist movement that persists to this day.)
Yesterday, as the city fell silent at 11 am, I marveled -- as I do every year -- at the fullness with which peaceable Canadians embrace the sacrifices of war, and the unconflictedness of their feelings toward their veterans. This is the country that is known, more than any other, as the world's peacekeepers. Their whole culture is built around conflict avoidance; that scrupulous gentleness and politeness goes bone-deep, and there is no doubt in most of their minds that war usually entails far more mindless waste than it does noble and worthy sacrifice. And yet, there they are, standing for hours in the November wind and rain, coming out once again to honor those who fought in a war that wasn't even really their own. In the past, this has seemed like a massive contradiction. But yesterday, during that long quiet minute, I finally understood.
It is not a contradiction. In fact, Remembrance Day and Canadian pacifism are two essential parts of one consistent whole. Canadians believe in peace because they make a point of stopping, once every year, to truly ponder the cost of war -- to look their veterans in the eyes, and take in the damage, and thank them. And, perhaps, to ask forgiveness for asking so much. They gather at the cenotaphs to remind themselves and their children of what is lost, and how precious life is, and how very important it is not to allow those kinds of conflicts to get started in the first place. It is that annual willingness to come back, year after year, and unflinchingly take stock of the prices paid that drives their determination to pursue peace. If they failed to remember, to open their hearts to the grief as thoroughly as they do, their commitment to peace might not be so strong. Those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it.
On this issue, as with so many others, Americans are notable for their willful amnesia. I remember, from the depths of my 1960s childhood, that we used to have an almost identical holiday, also on November 11, which we called Veterans' Day. In my youngest years, this was also an American statutory holiday, when we got the day off school to go downtown for parades. I have a fond memory of winning the fourth grade poster contest and having my Veterans' Day poster on display in a business window downtown; and veterans' groups coming to school to talk to the classes and sell paper crepe poppies for a quarter. We pinned them proudly on our winter coats. (I hadn't seen a poppy in decades by the time I moved to Canada; but here, they still bloom everywhere promptly on November 1.)
That holiday all but went away for a long time after Vietnam. There came a time in the late 70s when it wasn't even a school holiday any more. We were so conflicted about that war that any holiday about war did more to divide us than it did to bring us together. As we moved into the Reagan years, the observances that remained were captured by pro-military groups, and voices promoting peace were shut out of the discussion. While it's still an important holiday among veterans, the vast majority of Americans observe Veterans' Day by going about their business as usual. There's nothing here to celebrate.
And I think that's a loss. I suspect there's a direct relationship between the near-invisibility of Veterans' Day and the near-invisibility of our support for our veterans -- or our awareness of the true costs of this war. It's a lot easier on our corporate masters if we spend the day shopping the Veterans' Day sales at the mall than standing on Main Street, hearing our veterans' stories and confronting the actual flesh-and-blood consequences of our leaders' decisions. The devaluation of Veterans' Day is of a piece with the way the Bush Administration brings fallen soldiers home in the dead of night, or embeds reporters, or cheats veterans out of their benefits. It's all a distraction, another way of making us look the other way. For all the talk of "supporting our troops," the last thing they want is for us to gather by the thousands in the park, and be sobered into silence once again by the magnitude of the sacrifice these men and women are making.
My Canadian experience suggests that a heartfelt willingness to stop, remember, and honestly reckon the cost can add tremendous moral gravity and authenticity to progressive arguments for reason, diplomacy, and peace. Beyond that, it's a lot harder to ignore the needs of our veterans when you see their proud faces out there, every November 11, accepting the nation's thanks. You're forced to realize that once a year isn't enough; that they are part of your community, and their day-to-day care is a community responsibility. The "thanks" rings hollow if you're not backing up the words with real and constant support. If we stopped the country for a full day just to look at all that, as the Canadians do, I think the things we'd see would change the terms of our conversation about war forever.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved, and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
— John McCrae
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As I'm writing this, Keith Olbermann just came on TV. He's pointing out that George W. Bush was in Crawford this weekend, and hence unavailable to lay the wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery yesterday -- a formal duty presidents have performed, in peace and in war, since shortly after the Civil War to honor the soldiers of the nation.
Instead, he attended a little local gathering in Texas.
Sometimes, we need two minutes of silence because there's simply nothing left to say.
What's more, consider Ron Paul's record in Congress. Not that he'll ever occupy the Oval Office, but what would he do after pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq? His past legislative proposals will provide some clues, and they are not friendly to progressive ideas. Here are some bills that Ron Paul has proposed, not merely voted on, but sponsored. And you can see that he tries repeatedly on certain issues, which suggests they are important to him.
INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS -- He opposes the right of women to be free to control their own reproductive systems if they happen to live in particular states or other countries, or if they work for the Peace Corps.
H.R.1095: To prohibit any Federal official from expending any Federal funds for any population control or population planning program or any family planning activity.
H.R.777: To prohibit any Federal official from expending any Federal funds for any population control or population planning program or any family planning activity.
H.R.1548: To prohibit any Federal official from expending any Federal funds for any population control or population planning program or any family planning activity.
H.AMDT.1003 (A024): Amendment no. 17 printed in the Congressional Record to prohibit the use of funding for abortion, family planning, or population control efforts.
H.AMDT.380 (A022): An amendment no. 9 printed in the Congressional Record to prohibit funding for population control or population planning programs; family planning activities; or abortion procedures.
H.AMDT.312 (A011): An amendment, printed as amendment No. 32 in the Congressional Record of July 16, 1997, to prohibit the use of funds appropriated in the bill for Family Planning, birth control or abortion.
H.R.4984: A bill to prohibit the use of funds for the Peace Corps to be used for travel expenses of individuals in order for abortions to be performed on those individuals.
-- He wants to erase the distinction in U.S. law between a zygote and a person
H.R.2597: To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.
H.R.1094: To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.
H.R.776: To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception
H.R.392: A bill proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States guaranteeing the right to life.
-- He would deny the use of the Federal court system -- and even Federal precedent -- to people discriminated against because of their religious beliefs or sexual orientation. This would also limit the cross-state recognition of same-sex marriages. Some of these bills he cynically calls this the "We the People Act".
H.R.300: To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes.
H.R.4379: To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes.
H.R.5739: To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes.
H.R.3893: To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes.
H.R.1547: To restore first amendment protections of religion and religious speech.
H.R.4922: To restore first amendment protections of religion and speech.
H.R.5078: To restore first amendment protections of religion and speech.
-- This includes limits on courts' hearing cases related to abortion, and he has introduced bills specific to these kinds of cases. He also uses the deceptive term "partial-birth abortion".
H.R.1545: To prohibit Federal officials from paying any Federal funds to any individual or entity that performs partial-birth abortions.
H.R.1546: To provide that the inferior courts of the United States do not have jurisdiction to hear abortion-related cases.
H.R.2875: To provide that the inferior courts of the United States do not have jurisdiction to hear abortion-related cases.
H.R.3400: To provide that the inferior courts of the United States do not have jurisdiction to hear abortion-related cases.
H.R.3691: To provide that the inferior courts of the United States do not have jurisdiction to hear partial-birth abortion-related cases.
H.R.15169: A bill to eliminate the appellate jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court with respect to certain abortion cases.
-- Even though he claims to be a "libertarian", he opposes people's freedom to burn or destroy their own copies of the design of the U.S. flag
H.J.RES.80: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States authorizing the States to prohibit the physical destruction of the flag of the United States and authorizing Congress to prohibit destruction of federally owned flags.
H.J.RES.82: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States authorizing the States to prohibit the physical destruction of the flag of the United States and authorizing Congress to prohibit destruction of federally owned flags.
LAWS IMPROVING THE LOT OF THE WORKING CLASS
-- He has tried to repeal the Occupational Safety and Health Act:
H.R.2310: A bill to repeal the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.
H.R.13264: A bill to repeal the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970
-- He would like to make it much easier to decertify labor unions:
H.R.694: To amend the National Labor Relations Act to permit elections to decertify representation by a labor organization.
-- He opposes the Minimum Wage:
H.R.2962: A bill to repeal all authority of the Federal Government to regulate wages in private employment.
-- He would deny the prevailing wage to employees of federal contractors, and remove prohibition on kickbacks in Federal projects:
H.R.736: To repeal the Davis-Bacon Act and the Copeland Act.
H.R.2720: To repeal the Davis-Bacon Act and the Copeland Act.
-- He wants to severely weaken Social Security:
H.R.2030: A bill to amend the Social Security Act and the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to make social security coverage completely optional for both present and future workers, to freeze benefit levels, to provide for the partial financing of future benefits from general revenues subject to specified conditions, to eliminate the earnings test, to make changes in the tax treatment of IRA accounts, and for other purposes.
H.R.4604: A bill to repeal the recently enacted requirement of mandatory social security coverage for employees of nonprofit organizations.
VOTER ISSUES
-- He has come out against attempts to make the United States more democratic, including the idea of eliminating the Electoral College, even *after* the debacle in the 2000 Presidential election:
H.CON.RES.48: Expressing the sense of the Congress in reaffirming the United States of America as a republic.
H.CON.RES.443: Expressing the sense of the Congress in reaffirming the United States of America as a republic.
-- He wants to repeal the "Motor Voter" Act, which has made it easier for people to register to vote.
H.R.2139: To repeal the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
CORPORATE POWER
-- He would repeal significant portions of antitrust law, including the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, and others.
H.R.1247: To ensure and foster continued patient safety and quality of care by exempting health care professionals from the Federal antitrust laws in their negotiations with health plans and health insurance issuers.
H.R.1789: To restore the inherent benefits of the market economy by repealing the Federal body of statutory law commonly referred to as "antitrust law", and for other purposes.
-- He would gut the regulatory power of Federal agencies, forcing Congress to micromanage all decisions:
H.R.1204: A bill to an Act to restore the rule of law.
DISCRIMINATION
-- He has tried to make it easier for racial and ethnic discrimination in our society:
H.R.3863: A bill to provide that the Internal Revenue Service may not implement certain proposed rules relating to the determination of whether private schools have discriminatory policies.
H.R.5842: A bill to make all Iranian Students in the United States ineligible for any form of federal aid.
H.R.4982: A bill to provide for civil rights in public schools.
-- He would propose an amendment to the Constitution to gut the Fourteenth Amendment by denying citizenship to people born here whose parents aren't already citizens "nor persons who owe permanent allegiance to the United States". That latter part could produce some serious political discrimination, especially if radicals can have their citizenship revoked:
H.J.RES.46: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to deny United States citizenship to individuals born in the United States to parents who are neither United States citizens nor persons who owe permanent allegiance to the United States.
H.J.RES.46: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to deny United States citizenship to individuals born in the United States to parents who are neither United States citizens nor persons who owe permanent allegiance to the United States.
H.J.RES.42: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to deny United States citizenship to individuals born in the United States to parents who are neither United States citizens nor persons who owe permanent allegiance to the United States.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
-- He would limit or try to repeal various environmental protection laws and regulations, including the Clean Air Act, the Soil and Water Conservation Act, and the use of devices that protect the "bycatch" of sea life:
H.J.RES.104: To disapprove a rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to proposed revisions to the national pollutant discharge elimination system program and Federal antidegradation policy and the proposed revisions to the water quality planning and management regulations concerning total maximum daily load.
H.R.3735: To disapprove a rule requiring the use of bycatch reduction devices in the shrimp fishery of the Gulf of Mexico.
H.R.4423: To amend the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to provide that the Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishery shall be managed in accordance with such fishery management plans, regulations, and other conservation and management as applied to that fishery on April 13, 1998.
H.R.2504: A bill to amend the Clean Air Act to postpone for one year the application of certain restrictions to areas which have failed to attain national ambient air quality standards and to delay for one year the date required for adoption and submission of State implementation plans applicable to these areas, and for other purposes.
H.R.7079: A bill to repeal the Soil and Water Conservation Act of 1977.
H.R.7245: A bill to amend section 404 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to restrict the jurisdiction of the United States over the discharge of dredged or fill material to discharges into waters which are navigable and for other purposes.
Ron Paul also has a lot of bills relating to the shrimp industry and trying to block competition. Maybe he's in their pocket?
-- He would promote offshore oil-drilling, the construction of more refineries, coal-mining on Federal lands, and block conservation measures. This would further threaten our coastal and internal environments, and further trap our economy in fossil-fuel dependency:
H.R.2415: To reduce the price of gasoline by allowing for offshore drilling, eliminating Federal obstacles to constructing refineries and providing incentives for investment in refineries, suspending Federal fuel taxes when gasoline prices reach a benchmark amount, and promoting free trade.
H.R.4004: To reduce the price of gasoline by allowing for offshore drilling, eliminating Federal obstacles to constructing refineries and providing incentives for investment in refineries, suspending Federal fuel taxes when gasoline prices reach a benchmark amount, and promoting free trade.
H.R.393: A bill to amend section 404 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to restrict the jurisdiction of the United States over discharge of dredged or fill material to discharges into waters which are navigable and for other purposes.
H.R.4639: A bill to repeal all Federal regulations and taxes on the production of fuel.
H.R.5293: A bill to prohibit the imposition of unreasonable severance taxes or fees on coal or lignite mined from Federal lands.
H.R.6936: A bill to prohibit the Secretary of Energy from promulgating any federal emergency energy conservation plan which would restrict recreational boating.
-- He has fought ratification of the Law of the Sea. As President would he "un-sign" it? [More here.]
H.CON.RES.56: Expressing the sense of the Congress that the United States should not ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND MILITARY ISSUES
-- This "champion of peace" wanted to prohibit the dismantling of ICBM silos in the U.S.:
H.R.1665: To prohibit the destruction during fiscal year 2002 of intercontinental ballistic missile silos in the United States.
H.R.3769: To prohibit the destruction during fiscal year 2001 of intercontinental ballistic missile silos in the United States.
-- He would continue U.S. opposition to the International Criminal Court, despite the usefulness of this body for prosecuting war-crimes that are not challenged domestically.
H.R.1154: To provide that the International Criminal Court is not valid with respect to the United States, and for other purposes.
H.AMDT.480 (A010): An amendment numbered 9 printed in part A of House Report 107-450 to prohibit funds authorized in the bill from being used to assist, cooperate with, or provide any support to the International Criminal Court.
H.R.4169: To provide that the International Criminal Court is not valid with respect to the United States, and for other purposes.
H.CON.RES.23: Expressing the sense of the Congress that President George W. Bush should declare to all nations that the United States does not intend to assent to or ratify the International Criminal Court Treaty, also referred to as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the signature of former President Clinton to that treaty should not be construed otherwise.
H.RES.416: Expressing the sense of the Congress regarding the International Criminal Court.
-- He has promoted the Bricker Amendment to the Constitution, and otherwise sought limit the protections of international law. He would also prohibit U.S. courts from citing foreign laws or policies (other than English ones) in their decisions:
H.J.RES.1028: A resolution proposing the Bricker amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to force and effect of treaties and executive agreements.
H.J.RES.492: A joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to force and effect of treaties and Executive agreements.
H.CON.RES.49: Expressing the sense of Congress that the Treaty Power of the President does not extend beyond the enumerated powers of the Federal Government, but are limited by the Constitution, and any exercise of such Executive Power inconsistent with the Constitution shall be of no legal force or effect.
H.R.4118: To ensure that the courts interpret the Constitution in the manner that the Framers intended.
H.R.1658: To ensure that the courts interpret the Constitution in the manner that the Framers intended.
-- He would end U.S. participation in the United Nations. Failing that he would prohibit or severely curtail appropriations for U.S. payments to the U.N. or its affiliated agencies. Please note that isolationism is not the same as anti-imperialism:
H.R.1146: To end membership of the United States in the United Nations.
H.R.1146: To end membership of the United States in the United Nations.
H.AMDT.285 (A038): An amendment numbered 11 printed in the Congressional Record to prohibit use of funds in the bill to pay any United States contribution to the United Nations or any affiliated agency of the United Nations
H.R.1146: To end membership of the United States in the United Nations.
H.AMDT.190 (A024): Amendment sought to prohibit use of funds for any U.S. contribution to the UN or any affiliated agency of the UN.
H.AMDT.191 (A025): Amendment sought to prohibit use of funds for use toward any U.S. contribution for UN peacekeeping operations.
H.R.1146: To end membership of the United States in the United Nations.
H.AMDT.306 (A006): Amendment sought to eliminate the authorization of funding for any United Nations program.
H.R.1146: To end membership of the United States in the United Nations.
H.AMDT.138 (A010): Amendment sought to provide for the withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations.
H.R.1146: To provide for complete withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations.
H.R.3890: A bill to limit United States contributions to the United Nations.
H.R.3891: A bill to terminate all participation by the United States in the United Nations, and to remove all privileges, exemptions, and immunities of the United Nations.
H.R.6358: A bill to limit United States contributions to the United Nations.
H.R.14788: A bill to limit U.S. contributions to the United Nations.
-- Not having any success there, he has worked to block U.S. membership in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization:
H.CON.RES.132: Expressing the sense of the Congress that the United States should formally withdraw its membership from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
H.CON.RES.4: Expressing the sense of the Congress that the United States should not rejoin the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
H.CON.RES.443: Expressing the sense of the Congress that the United States should formally withdraw its membership from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
H.CON.RES.489: Expressing the sense of the Congress that the United States should not rejoin the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
-- Would he pull the U.S. out of the ABM Treaty?
H.J.RES.566: A joint resolution withdrawing the United States of America from the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems, and the Interim Agreement Protocol, and Agreed Interpretations of the Treaty, signed of May 26, 1972.
-- Oh, but he would "protect" U.S. soldiers from wearing any insignia of another country or the U.N.
-- Would he try to re-establish U.S. "sovereignty" over the Panama Canal? As I recall, the Canal Treaty was a major concern of the far Right back in the 1970's and 1980's:
H.CON.RES.231: Expressing the sense of the Congress that the Panama Canal and the Panama Canal Zone should be considered to be the sovereign territory of the United States.
H.RES.1410: A resolution in support of continued undiluted U.S. sovereignty and jurisdiction over the U.S.-owned Canal Zone on the Isthmus of Panama.
H.R.2522: A bill to prohibit the use of any United States funds to implement the Panama Canal Treaty of 1977 unless the use of those funds for that purpose is hereafter expressly provided for by the Congress and to prohibit the transfer to the Republic of Panama any territory or other property of the United States in the Canal Zone unless the Congress hereafter enacts legislation which expressly authorizes such transfer.
A GUN FREE-FOR-ALL
-- He would allow more guns in schools and National Parks, repeal requirements for background checks and gun-locks, use Federal authority to nullify state laws regarding concealed weapons, and eliminate many other regulations including prohibitions on gun possession by minors, recent felons, fugitives, addicts, and domestic abusers, and prohibitions relating to semiautomatic weapons:
H.R.2424: To repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 and amendments to that Act.
H.R.1897: To protect the second amendment rights of individuals to carry firearms in units of the National Park System, and for other purposes.
H. R. 1096: To restore the second amendment rights of all Americans.
H.R.1703: To restore the second amendment rights of all Americans.
H.R.3125: To protect the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.
H.R.153: To restore the second amendment rights of all Americans.
H.R.1762: To restore the second amendment rights of all Americans.
H.R.1179: To restore the second amendment rights of all Americans.
H.R.407: To amend title 18, United States Code, to provide for reciprocity in regard to the manner in which nonresidents of a State may carry certain concealed firearms in that State.
H.R.2721: To restore the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.
H.R.2722: To amend title 18, United States Code, to provide for reciprocity in regard to the manner in which nonresidents of a State may carry certain concealed firearms in the State.
H.R.1147: To repeal the prohibitions relating to semiautomatic firearms and large capacity ammunition feeding devices.
H.R.3892: A bill to repeal the Gun Control Act of 1968.
H.R.3892: A bill to repeal the Gun Control Act of 1968.
H.R.2311 A bill to repeal the Gun Control Act of 1968.
H.R.14768: A bill to repeal the Gun Control Act of 1968.
EDUCATION POLICY
-- Speaking of schools, he would weaken educational standards by using Federal power to interfere with states improving their standards for teacher certification:
H.R.966: To prohibit the Federal Government from planning, developing, implementing, or administering any national teacher test or method of certification and from withholding funds from States or local educational agencies that fail to adopt a specific method of teacher certification.
H.R.1706: To prohibit the Federal Government from planning, developing, implementing, or administering any national teacher test or method of certification and from withholding funds from States or local educational agencies that fail to adopt a specific method of teacher certification.
H.R.4653: A bill to prohibit the payment of Federal Education assistance in States which require the licensing or certification of private schools or private school teachers.
TAX POLICY
-- He wants to dramatically reduce the tax obligations of people who make inordinately high incomes and who inherit large fortunes they did not earn. Specifically, this includes attempts to repeal the estate tax, and to apply one tax rate to all income levels.
H.J.RES.23: Proposing an amendment the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens.
H.J.RES.14: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens.
H.J.RES.15: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens.
H.J.RES.45: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in the business in competition with its citizens.
H.J.RES.81: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens.
H.J.RES.116: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens.
H.R.5484: A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to provide for the taxation of certain income at the flat rate of 10 percent and to repeal the estate tax.
H.R.2137: A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to provide that a 10-percent income tax rate shall apply to all individuals, and to repeal all deductions, credits, and exclusions for individuals other than an exemption of $10,000.
H.R.1664: A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to provide that a 10-percent income tax rate shall apply to all individuals and to increase the deduction for personal exemptions from $1,000 to $2,500.
H.J.RES.23: A joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens.
H.R.6352: A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to provide that a 10 percent income tax rate shall apply to all individuals, and to repeal all deductions, credits, and exclusions for individuals other than an exemption of $10,000.
H.R.4569: A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to repeal the estate and gift taxes and the tax on generation-skipping transfers.
-- And short of that he wants us to pay our income taxes every month, and not use withholding.
H.R.1364: To restore to taxpayers awareness of the true cost of government by eliminating the withholding of income taxes by employers and requiring individuals to pay income taxes in monthly installments, and for other purposes.
H.R.4855: To restore to taxpayers awareness of the true cost of government by eliminating the withholding of income taxes by employers and requiring individuals to pay income taxes in monthly installments, and for other purposes.
Finally, the even weirder parts of Ron Paul's record:
GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!
-- What is his obsession with gold, and does this make for sound economic policy?
H.R.3101: To amend title 5, United States Code, to provide for the establishment of a precious metals investment option in the Thrift Savings Fund.
H.R.3732: To amend title 31, United States Code, to limit the use by the President and the Secretary of the Treasury of the Exchange Stabilization Fund to buy or sell gold without congressional approval, and for other purposes.
H.R.4226: A bill to provide for the minting of gold coins and silver coins by the United States.
H.R.1662: A bill to provide for the minting of American Gold Eagle coins pursuant to Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution of the United States.
H.R.1663: A bill to provide for the minting of American Gold Eagle coins pursuant to Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution of the United States.
H.R.878: A bill to execute Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution.
H.R.391: A bill to repeal the privilege of banks to create money.
H.R.3862: A bill to provide for a full assay, inventory, and audit of the gold reserves of the United States, and for other purposes.
H.R.3349: A bill to direct the Secretary of the Treasury to strike and sell gold medallions to the general public.
H.R.2658: A bill to amend the Federal Reserve Act to terminate the authority of the Secretary of the Treasury to require the delivery of gold to the Treasurer of the United States, which shall be known as The Gold Ownership Act of 1979.
H.R.5605: A bill to amend the Trading with the Enemy Act.
H.R.5658: A bill to make Federal Reserve Notes and United States Notes redeemable in gold.
H.R.6217: A bill to prohibit the sale of gold bullion by any agency of the United States unless specifically authorized by law.
H.R.6297: A bill to direct the Secretary of the Treasury to strike and sell gold medallions to the general public.
H.R.7874: A bill to repeal the privilege of banks to create money.
H.R.6054: A bill to provide for the minting of the American Eagle gold coin pursuant to article I, section 8 of the Constitution of the United States.
-- He might even try to get rid of the Federal Reserve, which has long been a bogeyman of the far right:
H.R.2778: To abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks, to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and for other purposes.
H.R.5356: To abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks, to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and for other purposes.
H.R.1148: To abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks, to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and for other purposes.
H.R.875: A bill to repeal the Federal Reserve Act.
H.R.876: A bill to repeal section 105(b) of the Monetary Control Act of 1980.
H.R.4652: A bill to provide that no officer or employee of the United States shall change the design of Federal reserve notes unless such change is specifically authorized by Federal law.
-- Does he want to abandon the dollar and set up 50 separate state currencies? Does that even make sense?
H.R.2779: To repeal section 5103 of title 31, United States Code.
H.R.3931: A bill to amend the Coinage Act of 1965 to provide that coins and currencies of the United States, including Federal Reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal Reserve banks and national banking associations, shall be legal tender only for the payment of Federal taxes, duties and dues.
OMNIBUS REACTIONARY
-- He has favored all manner of other right-wing policies, in the following case with a single bill, which includes provisions for such things as supporting corporal punishment, requiring that young people seeking reproductive care have their parents notified, allowing churches and religious organizations that run "public" services to discriminate against potential clients, and moving us back to school segregation.
H.R.7955: A bill to strengthen the American family and promote the virtues of family life.
Fortunately, Ron Paul rarely gets anywhere with his proposals. I doubt there would be many progressives, or even many liberals, who would like where this man comes from politically, or where he wants to take us.
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A note from Dave: For more on the "gold standard" schtick and where it comes from, as well as its "rationale," such as it is, read here, with the full legal explanation here.
