[Peace-discuss] Fw: The Roots of Rand Paul's Civil Rights Resentment

[unionyes]

Absolutely Carl !

My analysis of the elections last week is that THE PEOPLE, despite " 
identity politics ", are angry and fed-up with the ruling class and the 
economic policies of the bought and paid for politiicains of BOTH corporate 
controlled political parties ( Dems and Repubs ).

Racism is still an evil part of American attitudes, BUT, CLASS is the 
overriding problem.
In a way, in a preverse sort of " progress " , the fact that certain rich 
and well connected African Americans ( and Latinos, Asians, American 
Indians ) are now part of the ruling class, where 40 - 50 years ago that was 
unherad of, is of little comfort to me or should be to anyone else who works 
for a living ( ie. WORKING CLASS .... Rather one wants to admit it or not ) 
regardless of one's race or ethnicity.
Does anyone really think that the Barack Obamas and the Vernon Jordans have 
anything in common in their day to day lives with the average working class 
African American ?

The sole focus on racism that the liberal establishment wants us to debate, 
is intentionaly avoiding the larger issue of class, inequality of income, 
oppurtunity, and access to services.
In essence, racism is still practiced against poor and lower middle class 
minorities, but NOT against minorities who are upper middle class ( rarely ) 
or wealthy and connected minorities ( NEVER ).
Their money buys them access and the ruling class uses them as a means for 
further control.

The Reverand Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. recognized that the two ( racism and 
classism, as well as a third pillar of the ruling class...militarism ) were 
inseperable and must be abolished.
And his public statement of such ( Riverside Church in Harlem in 1967.... a 
year to the day before his murder ) is considered by many ( myself 
included ) as the reason the U.S. ruling class authorized and arranged his 
murder !

David J.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at illinois.edu>
To: "unionyes" <unionyes at ameritech.net>
Cc: "Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Sent: Saturday, May 22, 2010 5:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Fw: The Roots of Rand Paul's Civil Rights 
Resentment


> Conason is a right-wing Democrat, a former gossip-columnist and a Clinton 
> loyalist.
>
> The liberal establishment is seriously worried about the politics beyond 
> the
> limits of allowable debate that are emerging with the Pauls, the tea party
> movement, etc., and are doing all that they can to destroy them - to 
> corral all
> political debate back into the predictable Republican-Democrat round. If 
> that's
> not done, who knows what people might start to think? (Remember that most
> Americans - who didn't go to good colleges - are stupid red-necks, and 
> easily led.)
>
> Of course establishment scribes like Conason would have trouble actually
> defending the policies of the administration (aggressive war, torture at 
> Bagram,
> summary execution of American citizens, denial of habeas corpus contrary 
> to the
> Constitution, etc.). So far better to suggest that all Obama critics are 
> simply
> motivated by racism, the one unforgivable sin on the liberal style-sheet.
>
> Obamaism uses "Racist!" as McCarthyism used "Communist!" - and for a 
> similar
> purpose.
>
>
> On 5/22/10 8:31 AM, unionyes wrote:
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: <moderator at PORTSIDE.ORG> To:
>> <PORTSIDE at LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG> Sent: Friday, May 21, 2010 9:14 PM Subject: 
>> The
>> Roots of Rand Paul's Civil Rights Resentment
>>
>>
>>> The Roots of Rand Paul's Civil Rights Resentment
>>>
>>> Lurking beneath the Paul family's libertarian politics is a strategy of
>>> pandering to "populists" like Pat Buchanan
>>>
>>> By Joe Conason May 21, 2010
>>> http://www.salon.com/news/rand_paul_kentucky_senate_republican/index.html?story=/opinion/conason/2010/05/21/racial
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> To understand Rand Paul's agonized contortions over America's civil 
>>> rights
>>> consensus, let's review the tainted pedigree of the movement that reared
>>> him. Specifically, both the Kentucky Republican Senate nominee and his
>>> father, Ron Paul, have been closely associated over the past two decades
>>> with a faction that described itself as "paleolibertarian," led by 
>>> former
>>> Ron Paul aide Lew Rockwell and the late writer Murray Rothbard. They
>>> eagerly forged an alliance with the "paleoconservatives" behind Patrick
>>> Buchanan, the columnist and former presidential candidate whose 
>>> trademarks
>>> are nativism, racism and anti-Semitism.
>>>
>>> Repeatedly during Ron Paul's political career, his associates used the 
>>> same
>>> kinds of inflammatory rhetoric used by Buchanan in order to attract 
>>> support
>>> and raise money, all while Paul himself pretended not to know what they
>>> were doing and saying in his name. Paul could always cover himself by
>>> saying, just as Rand Paul says now, that his opposition to civil rights
>>> statutes is purely constitutional and has nothing to do with bigotry.
>>>
>>> The last time that anyone examined the details of the Paul family's gamy
>>> history was back in 2008, when the New Republic dug up copies of
>>> newsletters sent out under Ron's name to raise money, and found that 
>>> they
>>> were replete with ugly references to blacks, Martin Luther King,
>>> homosexuals and other targets of the racist far right. At the time, 
>>> Reason
>>> magazine, a libertarian magazine that opposed the "paleo" deviation, 
>>> gave
>>> the most revealing account of its movement's degenerate element in a 
>>> long
>>> article by Julian Sanchez and David Weigel.
>>>
>>> Following Ron Paul's dismal performance in the 1988 presidential 
>>> campaign
>>> as the Libertarian Party candidate, Rockwell and Rothbard "championed an
>>> open strategy of exploiting racial and class resentment to build a
>>> coalition with populist 'paleoconservatives,' producing a flurry of
>>> articles and manifestos whose racially charged talking points and
>>> vocabulary mirrored the controversial Paul newsletters" uncovered by the
>>> New Republic. Rothbard died in 1995, but in 2008 Rockwell was still at
>>> Paul's side as a top advisor, "accompanying him to major media 
>>> appearances;
>>> promoting his candidacy on the LewRockwell.com blog; publishing his 
>>> books;
>>> and peddling an array of the avuncular Texas congressman's recent 
>>> writings
>>> and audio recordings."
>>>
>>> According to Sanchez and Weigel, the tone of Paul's newsletters shifted 
>>> to
>>> reflect his political circumstances. Between his first presidential
>>> campaign and his return to Congress in 1996 as a Republican, they were
>>> filled with slurs against blacks generally and Martin Luther King Jr. in
>>> particular, including the accusation that the civil rights leader 
>>> "seduced
>>> underage girls and boys." Rothbard hated King deeply, describing him in
>>> November 1994 as "a socialist, egalitarian, coercive integrationist, and
>>> vicious opponent of private-property rights ... who was long under close
>>> Communist Party control," and concluding that "there is one excellent
>>> litmus test which can set up a clear dividing line between genuine
>>> conservatives and neoconservatives, and between paleolibertarians and 
>>> what
>>> we can now call 'left-libertarians.' And that test is where one stands 
>>> on
>>> 'Doctor' King." (Then again, he hated Lincoln too, whom he disparaged in
>>> the same essay as "one of the major despots of American history.")
>>>
>>> This offensive drivel was calculated to wring contributions from a 
>>> narrowly
>>> targeted segment of the population. The Reason story quotes Ed Crane,
>>> longtime president of the Cato Institute, recalling a discussion with 
>>> Ron
>>> Paul about the most fertile source of direct- mail contributions to his
>>> campaign: the mailing list of the Spotlight, the anti-Semitic national
>>> tabloid published by the "populist" Nazi sympathizer Willis Carto.
>>>
>>> Both Rothbard and Rockwell wrote of their strategy for a "right-wing
>>> populism" that would bring "the rednecks" into the libertarian movement. 
>>> In
>>> an essay that appeared in their own joint newsletter in January 1992,
>>> Rothbard cited Joe McCarthy and David Duke, the openly racist former 
>>> Klan
>>> leader, as "models" for this approach. (According to Sanchez and Weigel, 
>>> a
>>> 1990 issue of the Ron Paul Political Report discussed Duke and his 
>>> movement
>>> "in strikingly similar terms.") This new movement would seek to mobilize 
>>> an
>>> alienated white middle class against wealthy East Coast elitists and the
>>> "parasitic Underclass" spawned by liberal policy -- identified clearly
>>> enough in a regular newsletter feature called "PC Watch," which featured
>>> news items about "interracial sex" and "thuggish black men terrifying
>>> petite white and Asian women."
>>>
>>> As for policy, the paleolibertarians advocated lower taxes, abolishing
>>> welfare, and "elimination of the entire 'civil rights' structure, which
>>> tramples on the property rights of every American" -- a sentiment that 
>>> Rand
>>> Paul echoes in alluding to the right of private businesses to practice
>>> racial discrimination.
>>>
>>> In 1992, Ron Paul joined with Rothbard and Rockwell to support Pat
>>> Buchanan's insurgent primary candidacy against the incumbent Republican
>>> President George Bush. (Buchanan returned the favor in 2008.) "We have a
>>> dream," wrote Rockwell, "and perhaps someday it will come to pass. 
>>> (Hell,
>>> if 'Dr.' King can have a dream, why can't we?) Our dream is that, one 
>>> day,
>>> we Buchananites can present Mr. and Mrs. America, and all the liberal 
>>> and
>>> conservative and centrist elites, with a dramatic choice ... We can say:
>>> 'Look, gang: you have a choice, it's either Pat Buchanan or David 
>>> Duke.'"
>>>
>>> No wonder Sanchez and Weigel concluded with a forthright condemnation of
>>> Ron Paul's dishonesty on race. "Ron Paul may not be a racist," they 
>>> wrote,
>>> "but he became complicit in a strategy of pandering to racists." The 
>>> same
>>> polite formulation could be applied to the hard-line activists behind 
>>> the
>>> Goldwater campaign in 1964, or the "Southern strategists" of the Nixon
>>> White House, or the "populist conservatives" of the George Wallace
>>> campaign, many of whom still remain active on the right today.
>>>
>>> Despite the persistent efforts of Buchanan, Rockwell and many others on 
>>> the
>>> far right, their deranged "dream" of political advancement through 
>>> racial
>>> conflict never developed into a full-scale national nightmare. Instead,
>>> King's dream has since drawn closer to fulfillment with the election of
>>> Barack Obama. But the profound resentment of the first black president
>>> symbolized by Rand Paul and his Tea Party supporters arose from an old
>>> political fever swamp that has never been drained.
>>>
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>>
>> 


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