Ron Paul, Barack Obama, and Ray Taliaferro: Racism and Racism

The recent “spot of bother” concerning Ron Paul’s racist and homophobic newsletters has thrown a spanner in the works of his campaign. Watching his response to Wolf Blitzer’s blitz, Silverwolf was left with the feeling that there was something seriously lacking in his defenses which would be damaging to his campaign, and the ideals which those of us who have blogged in favour of his Libertarian/fiscal-conservative mix of philosophies have supported. Anti-racism in the form of a grand contempt for the moronic simpletonness of the racist has always been a cornerstone of the Libertarian philosophy. All Human Beings have sacredness under the Rights of Man, and the American Jeffersonian free-market Capitalist is only concerned with people’s actions as they fall within the purview of the law, and their lawful activity in the markets. Cash and the Constitution, that is, and has been, pretty much, America.

But now the Paul juggernaut has been partially derailed by, we feel, Dr. Paul’s inadequate response, which we think was perfectly summed up by David Gergen and Andrew Sullivan. They too felt that there was something seriously lacking in the reaction. And if the Doctor really didn’t know, well how can he sell things that are ghostwritten as being his own? And he never saw one copy? Is such a person to be trusted as president? However, as one discusser put to me, isn’t this information available in the record?Wouldn’t the business documents and receipts say who was reimbursed for what, who was the editor, who hired the ghost writers? And couldn’t the investigative reporters of America find out? But Silence means Consent to the American public.

It was also interesting to see how some of the bloggers who had, like Silverwolf, been writing in favour of Dr. Paul, suddenly turned against him and accepted statements made in James Kirchick’s smear in the New Republic as gospel truth. “Girlinshortshorts” blogger accepted the fact of “kind words” for the racist miscreant David Duke. Silverwolf read the passage in question very carefully, and it said nothing of the kind. What it did do was explain that the message Duke put out was popular, and that 9% of Blacks voted for him, showing that the 44% he got was largely due to the fact that many people going into the polls didn’t know that Duke was a racist, something quite plausible in an American electorate that is so uneducated and ignorant as we know it to be. Likewise the so-called defense of the racist miscreant and Holocaust-denier, Zundel, and so-called assault on Salman Rushdie was also nothing of the kind, but much more an explanation of why Muslims would be as outraged at what Rushdie wrote as Jews are at what Zundel claims. In fact, the  newsletter used the phrase “the historical reality of the Holocaust”. It equated the violence threatened against Rushdie by the Ayatollah’s fatwah with the martrydom conveyed on Zundel by the Canadian law which makes Holocaust-denial a crime, as it has been made in parts of Europe. Both are forms of violence. (However, we do think there may be something theoretically to a restriction on what might be considered “inciting to riot” in a society that does not permit its citizens to own weapons. One wonders how frequent the marches of Nazis we see in Czecho, Germany, etc. would be if Jews, Roma, and the remaining victims of World War II were allowed to own Uzis.) If we exclude the mass murder of Indians in America, race riots and lynchings,  and the great Crime of Slavery, there have never been religious pogroms in America, whereas they have been the norm in Europe for centuries, and have been practiced as of only a few years ago. In America, where people have a wide latitude to say things, as long as they are not inciting to riot, but where all are free to own firearms, and where “a wall of separation” between church and state has been  recommended strongly to us by WiseChief Jefferson, we have never had religious pogroms, something we can be proud of. But as Professor Debra Lipstadt has pointed out, and Silverwolf must agree, Holocaust-denial laws only serve to make martyrs of miscreants, and heroes out of scumheads. Let them walk the streets in a society where Jews are free to own Uzis.

The blogger Paul Levinson, who had been supporting Dr. Paul, also bailed out, for reasons similar to Silverwolf, but his sudden switch to supporting Senator Obama is most telling in light of the below.

However, as Silverwolf pointed out in his response to Timur Rozenfeld, a perceptive commenter on some of Silverwolf’s previous blogs, while he is willing to give Dr. Paul the benefit of the doubt (and as they say in the North of England, “I’d believe you. Thousands wouldn’t”), especially in light of his vociferous eschewal of the racially-tinged and homophobic drivel that seemed to be sprinkled throughout these newsletters, intermingled with paragraphs that sounded wholly like the Doctor we know, we wondered to Timur why someone didn’t bring out the warm relations between Senator Obama and the vicious Jew-hater, Al Sharpton, and also the fact that the religious congregation that Senator Obama belongs to has, in recent history, awarded its Man of the Year award to the Racist caitiff, Louis Farrakhan, another Jew-hater who has used his power countless times to make statements designed to whip up hatred, and ultimately violence, towards Jews. Remember that every racist is trying to get innocent children and old folk murdered — that is their aim.  In Sharpton’s case, his demonstrations against Freddie’s Fashion Mart, in which the phrase “Jewish bloodsuckers” was bandied about freely, led to the burning to death of seven human beings.  Yet we see pictures subsequently of Senator Obama embracing the racist miscreant  and Jew-hater Al Sharpton with a warm smile on his face, not unlike the warm smile President Bill Clinton gave to President Suharto of Indonesia at a time when he was murdering three-quarter of a million Catholics in East Timor. Birds of a feather flock together.

Well, Silverwolf’s question, put to Timur Rozenfeld several days ago, seemed to be answered today when Richard Cohen wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post pointing out exactly these ties between Obama and Sharpton, and the way that Obama’s Minister and spiritual mentor, the “Reverend” Jeremiah A. Wright, has praised the racist jackanapse Farrakhan for his “integrity and honesty”. One wonders what barrage of criticisms we would hear against Dr. Paul if it turned out the head of the congregation he had attended for years, and whom he had named as a major spiritual force in his life, had praised the racist Jew-hater and Black-hater, David Duke, for his “integrity and honesty”.  The “disagreements” that these “leaders” say they have with Farrakhan are a far greater cop-out and insult to anti-racists than the vociferous eschewal of racist views and acceptance of responsibility that Dr. Paul has stated, although we think that until he can name those responsible, he will suffer the stigma. But in comparison with the moral crime of legitimizing the racist filth of Farrakhan, Dr. Paul’s actions pale. Churchill said we must have no contact with the Nazi. No contact.

Added to this in disgust, was the disgusting sound of hearing a former hero of Silverwolf’s,—who has spoken so elequently against the death penalty and the controlled substance laws, two of the cornerstones of Fascism,—Ray Taliaferro, call Dr. Paul a racist, while only two days earlier praising Senator Obama and supporting him for president. So Taliaferro condemns someone who eschews racism and publicly takes responsibility for his actions, while praising someone who consorts with, smiles at, embraces and praises vicious Jew-haters and White-haters like the “Reverends” Sharpton and Farrakhan.

Farrakhan is the Klan, Ray, you old racist-lover lover.

Silverwolf will howl to the truth of that.

Hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwww! — Silverwolf

Tags: Al Sharpton, Barack Obama, Louis Farrakhan, Ray Taliaferro, Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Richard Cohen, Ron Paul