United Liberty
Ron Paul Must Repudiate Lew Rockwell
Fri, 12/23/2011 - 2:40pm | posted by Jeremy Kolassa
Ron Paul needs to ditch Lew Rockwell.
As he climbs in the polls and gets within striking distance of winning the Iowa caucuses, it is inevitable that his newsletters would come up. You know the ones: written in the late Eighties, that contain racist material, that are really, really stupid, and that Paul swears he didn’t actually write. At least, that’s his line, and in an investigative piece by reason magazine writers Dave Weigel and Julian Sanchez back in 2008, it looks like the source is Ludwig von Mises Institute founder Lew Rockwell:
Financial records from 1985 and 2001 show that Rockwell, Paul’s congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982, was a vice president of Ron Paul & Associates, the corporation that published the Ron Paul Political Report and the Ron Paul Survival Report. The company was dissolved in 2001. During the period when the most incendiary items appeared—roughly 1989 to 1994—Rockwell and the prominent libertarian theorist Murray 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 recently unearthed by The New Republic. To this day Rockwell remains a friend and advisor to Paul—accompanying him to major media appearances; promoting his candidacy on theLewRockwell.com blog; publishing his books; and peddling an array of the avuncular Texas congressman’s recent writings and audio recordings.
One of Ron Paul’s former chiefs of staff, John Robbins, demanded that Rockwell step forward and admit what he wrote back in 2008. I agree with Mr. Robbins, but I would also like to say something different:
Ron Paul should publicly repudiate Lew Rockwell.
Some libertarians swear that Lew Rockwell is the real deal, and a great many people read his website every day. He’s what you call a “paleolibertarian,” and his ideas strike a chord with many out there. And he’s at least on the ball when it comes to Austrian economics. However, the evidence surrounding the newsletter case paints a pretty clear picture, that he has some clear issues with those of different races, ethnicities, and cultures, and these are not issues that Paul should suffer for. If Rockwell well and truly believes that African-Americans are beneath him, then Paul needs to recognize him for the man he is and distance himself as much as possible. This isn’t just good politics, mind you, this is being a good person. Someone who writes in a widely disseminated newsletter such idiotic and hateful material is not someone you should associate with, period, unless you’re taking it upon yourself to try and help the person change.
Then there is the politics behind it. Mentioned in Weigel and Sanchez’s piece was another libertarian giant, Murray Rothbard, who was mostly an advocate of what is known as “anarcho-capitalism.” This is what libertarians are typically branded with by those on the right and left, that we want to create a world where there is no government, where everything is handled by private companies (including courts, fire departments, police, highways, you name it, it’s private.) While I feel that anarcho-capitalism does get a bum rap, most libertarians do not espouse this position. Most of us instead believe a minimal government is ideal, even some of us (myself included) may be “philosophical anarchists,” that it would be nice to have anarchy, that it would be a great ideal, but it’s just that—an ideal, something that will not work in the real world.
This is going to start the whole “crazy radical vs. coward pragmatist” debate, which nearly sundered the Libertarian Party during the Reagan era, but I don’t care, for this needs to be said: anarcho-capitalism is a great theory, but when actually trying to advocate for greater liberty in the current system, it just doesn’t work, and I think it actually turns a lot of people off and sends them away, which is the exact opposite of what we need to be doing right now. It’s the whole “Overton Window” concept, and anarcho-capitalism is so far outside the window it might as well be orbiting the Moon. At best, it can make more “mainstream” libertarianism seem sensible to the rest of the country, but that’s about as far as I see it going.
Ron Paul has nothing to gain from palling around with these guys. If he truly finds Rockwell to be a friend, then okay, but he needs to get Rockwell to stop being involved with his campaigns, to take a step back, and them he himself needs to say that he disagrees completely with what Rockwell wrote and is ashamed that he went in under his watch. Paul, as much as I like him, does deserve a bit of a tongue-lashing for not carefully vetting the material that went in under his own name. It’s a mistake, not one that should cost him the Presidency, but a mistake nonetheless.
Only by doing this can Paul get it behind him. Right now, this baggage is his biggest foe, but interestingly, it’s the one foe he could stop with just one action.
It is also worth noting that Rockwell, along with Murray Rothbard, endorsed Pat Buchanan in 1992.
That too.
Jeremy K I COMPLETELY agree with your assessment. Ron Paulites are a well meaning bunch but we sometimes veer into the fanatical type of hero worship that makes me uncomfortable. Ron Paul is a man. A good man but a man nonetheless and this is a blight on an otherwise flawless life. He gave the keys to the wrong men and its time to get the car back to drive in the right direction.
While it is may occassionslly be correct to repudiate bad ideas, such as repudiation, it is totally anti individual liberty to demand that anyone repudiate someone for excercising their freedom of speech. We don’t need a bunch of kibbutz communists telling Americans how to live free.
That doesn’t make any sense. That’s like saying I can’t repudiate Paul Krugman, even though he quite obviously has no idea how economics works. That’s not anti individual liberty. Now, if I passed a law prohibiting Mr. Krugman (or Mr. Rockwell) from speaking, THAT would be anti liberty, but not repudiation, no.
Shocking racist statements of Republican candidate revealed:
“I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races — that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything.” — Abraham Lincoln (Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois, September 18, 1858; The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, pp. 145–146.)
Like most big government neocons, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Rick Perry are Lincoln cultists who deify and worship the “Great Emancipator” as god-like. While in all the Abrahamic religions idolatry is strongly forbidden, neocons make the exception in the case of the racist Lincoln, who to his dying day, wanted to expell all African-Americans from these shores.
Repudiate Lew Rockwell? When will these Lincoln cultists repudiate the racist Abraham Lincoln?
Lew Rockwell is (in an email to me) a self-described anarchist.
Paleolibertarianism and anarchism are not mutually exclusive, one can easily be both.
I can’t believe that you think that the answer is to throw longtime friend Lew Rockwell under the bus. I think that’s your bogus idea of “taking responsibility” for the newsletters. That is, blame them on someone else and then chide him for being a “bad, bad, man.”
No, the solution is to admit that he (RP) wrote them. He admitted as much in 1996. The ghostwriter theory is getting stupider by the minute.
Except it isn’t. He was told by PR idiots that he wrote them in ‘96—clearly, that was a bad decision.
His poor judgment about having Rockwell on it were clearly bad, but as I’ve cited, the “theory” is not getting stupider every minute.
Okay, so first you blamed a “ghost writer”, then a “ghost editor”, and now you’re blaming PR people. They knew that RP didn’t write them, but just before the interview, his people lied to him and told you that he did. So then RP went out there and defended all of their content as his own.
Oddly enough, RP didn’t immediately know that he didn’t write them. he didn’t leap out of his seat and say, “That’s crazy! I didn’t write THAT! Those aren’t my sentiments at all.”
No, he defended their contents. When he was asked by the Dallas Morning News about his comment that ninety-five percent of blacks in DC are criminal in nature, he replied: “These aren’t my figures. That is the assumption you can gather from the report.”
Jeremy, I’ve given you every opportunity to prove that you’re not a brainwashed drone. You’ve failed every time. Like 90% of the other Ronulans I’ve ever met, you checked your brain at the door. Your hero worship is not healthy and it should not be confused with political analysis.
The Ron Paul campaign is a cult.
I can see where you can get some of your wacky ideas, but if you think about it, it makes sense. Your PR guy tells you not to say you don’t know about this, because you’ll look like an idiot. And in political campaigns, a lot of people listen to their PR guys out of fear of what might happen if they don’t. Yes, it’s dumb, and yes, Ron Paul has exercised poor judgment, but as I have shown, there is still quite a good deal of evidence that Paul was not the writer, but Rockwell and Rothbard. (Also, I never brought up “ghost editor,” so that whole stage is of your fabrication.)
Mitt Romney won’t repudiate his Mormon Church’s racist policy of not allowing blacks to hold the priesthood. A 12-year-old white boy could hold the priesthood in 1977 but a black man couldn’t. Romney won’t repudiate the ban on blacks but it came from his god.
very true indeed. personally i believe RP runs with a circle of racist yet mostly benign thinkers and academics. My only concern with him in the white house is if he would put some of these people in positions of influence.
This just your uneducated opinion.
Reason and Rockwell are extremely competitive with each other and there is no evidence that Murray Rothbard didn’t write all of these letters.
Read a little before you try and bash the single-most prolific Austrian econ. writer of all time!
Lately I came to your website and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my initial comment. Keep writing, because your posts are impressive!
Murray Rothbard, brilliant as he was, insightful as he was, sometimes made mistakes about strategy. I’ve read some of the alleged racist statements and they mostly seem to me to be in regrettably poor taste, but hardly hard-core segregationist stuff.
IMHO, we need to distinguish between what we, with hind-sight, might consider to be no longer “politically correct” and what are inappropriate statements under our Constitutional system.
So, for example, calling for denying any group equal protection of the law is reprehensible. On the other hand, the most often cited remark, making crude comments about white fears of black violence, while regrettable, is hardly a call for racism. Some whites, even today, continue to fear such violence and we need to address their fears, not cut off discussion by labeling them “racists.”
Oftentimes we misinterpret political positions of an earlier period based on our current, presumably more enlightened times. The famous “3/5th” compromise is a case in point. The Constitution limited slave states representation in Congress, counting each slave as 3/5th of a free person. This was intended as an incentive to the slave states to move toward abolishing slavery. Today, though, many see it as a manifestation of racism.
Both Wallace and Thurmond were allowed to overcome their racialist pandering to become politicians of a different stripe… so it should be with Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul.
In any event, what was misstated some twenty years ago is hardly as important as the issues of today, namely the crisis of the Federal System with the collapse of the fiat dollar while neocons of left and right seek even more wars which will lead to…
On these great issues of the current period Ron Paul offers significant change from both the neocons of the Bush/GOP right and the Obama/Clinton neocons on the left.
I agree that the issues surrounding the Federal Reserve are more important, but that’s now how the media and the public will see it. For them, it will only be the newsletters, that’s it. So right now, this is what his campaign has to focus on.
Honestly, though, to address white’s “fear” of blacks, all they have to do is recognize the 2nd Amendment, end the Drug War, and scale back welfare programs.
I’ve long thought it interesting that the controversial material in the newsletters disappeared shortly after Murray Rothbard’s death. Something to think about.
This article is dead on. It has been my hope Rockwell would publicly fall on the sword, but I don’t see it happening unless his followers demand it. Pragmatism works. You don’t win football games by throwing long passes. I think most libertarians are philosophically radical, but I cannot name a single incident where radical political strategy worked.
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