Cebu_4_2
1st January 2012, 02:50 PM
Ron Paul’s newsletter “problem quotes” (when you really look at them) are not such a big deal (http://www.escapetyranny.com/2011/12/29/ron-pauls-newsletter-problem-quotes-when-you-really-look-at-them-are-not-such-a-big-deal/)
December 29th, 2011 | Author: Posted by Ben Hart (http://www.escapetyranny.com/author/admin/)
I am not a supporter of Ron Paul because of his nutty foreign policy positions.http://thyblackman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/RonPaulNotARacist.jpg
I do like his economic positions and his stance on the Federal Reserve. But, for me, Ron Paul’s foreign policy positions are disqualifying. We should not allow Iran to get nukes. We should take out the Iranian Navy if it attempts to close the Strait of Hormuz. I’m thrilled that Navy SEALs Team Six went into Pakistan and killed bin Laden.
But let’s take a look at some of the quotes from some of Ron Paul’s old newsletters (The Ron Paul Political Report) that are getting him into so much trouble with the political establishment.
Keep in mind that these are quotes from other writers, not Ron Paul. But they appeared in the Ron Paul Political Report two decades ago.
In reading over these quotes, some of them are clearly edgy. But I don’t find these quotes inherently racist. Some of the edgier ones appear to me to be poor attempts at humor. So let’s examine the actual quotes in question.
QUOTE #1: “If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.” – 1992
MY COMMENT: You would have to see the context of this. This looks like humor to me. But for humor to work, there must be some truth behind it. There was a popular movie titled “White Men Can’t Jump.” The reason that’s funny is because there is some truth to that. Stereotypes become stereotypes because they are true — generally true. Blacks are generally better athletes than whites. Blacks are generally faster than whites. This does not mean all blacks are faster than all whites. It’s a general observation. And why would that be an insult? I’d love to be able to jump as high as Michael Jordon. I’d love the be able to run as fast as Usain Bolt.
Here’s a photo of the top three finishers of the 2008 Olympic 100 meter final:
http://img.phombo.com/img1/photocombo/216/24901_Celebutopia-Usain_Bolt-men36s_100-meter_final_during_Beijing_2008_Olympics-15_122_1071lo.JPG
So this is just an objective fact. Blacks are, in general, faster than whites.
QUOTE #2: “Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,’ I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.” – 1992
MY COMMENT: This is a certainly a borderline statement. I don’t like it, but it is probably clumsy hyperbole to make two legitimate points: 1) That Washington, DC’s criminal justice system is not so good; and that 2) There is a serious crime problem among black males, especially young black males in America’s inner cities. According to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission (not a conservative agency):
49% of prison inmates nationally are African American, compared to their 13% share of the overall population.
Nearly one in three (32%) black males in the age group 20-29 is under some form of criminal justice supervision on any given day — either in prison or jail, or on probation or parole.
As of 1995, one in fourteen (7%) adult black males was incarcerated in prison or jail on any given day, representing a doubling of this rate from 1985. The 1995 figure for white males was 1%.
A black male born in 1991 has a 29% chance of spending time in prison at some point in his life. The figure for white males is 4%, and for Hispanics, 16%.
Criminal justice experts say that only about one in four crimes are actually solved. I have been told by prosecutors that about 80 percent of black males in inner cities under the age of 50 have been in the criminal justice system for serious crimes such as robbery, drug trafficking, aggravated assault, murder.
So it’s a big problem. All social scientists and criminal justice experts agree that it’s a serious problem. It’s not a racial problem so much as a welfare state problem, which primarily targets inner city blacks and minorities. There was no special black crime problem before Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs. So the problem is not blacks, it’s liberal welfare state policies that reward dysfunction. It’s just that inner city blacks were the primary “beneficiaries” of LBJ’s liberal welfare state.
Hence the dysfunction.
The quote in the Ron Paul Political Report is indelicately stated, but not inherently racist. The KKK is racist. Hitler was racist. This poorly worded, poorly researched, probably inaccurate statement by a writer for the Ron Paul Political Report back in 1992 does not qualify as racist. Stupid, yes. Bad writing, yes. Bad politics, yes — especially if you hope to win some black votes.
But not racist.
QUOTE #3: “We don’t think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That’s true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such.” – 1992
MY COMMENT: The writer (not Ron Paul) certainly could have left the word “black” out of this statement. Surely, there are many big scary 13 year olds out there of all races. No doubt, Ron Paul should have been a more critical editor here. But keep in mind also that Ron Paul is all about freedom. He believes in freedom of speech and probably not micromanaging the writings of his writers. He probably should have micromanaged this a bit more, given that this publication has Ron Paul’s name on the masthead.
QUOTE #4: “What else do we need to know about the political establishment than that it refuses to discuss the crimes that terrify Americans on grounds that doing so is racist? Why isn’t that true of complex embezzling, which is 100 percent white and Asian?” – 1992
MY COMMENT: I see nothing racist in this statement (again, penned by someone other than Ron Paul). Provocative, yes. Racist, no. Ron Paul is best when he is talking about economics, not social science.
QUOTE #5: In analyzing the Los Angeles riots in 1992, the writer for the Ron Paul Political Report states that: “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. … What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided.”
MY COMMENT: This is more of a commentary on the corrupt economic incentives of the welfare state than on race. It was blacks rioting over the Rodney King verdict, not whites. That’s just an objective fact. Not a great quote, for sure. If you pick through 30 years of someone’s newsletters, you’ll find some questionable stuff. Conversely, we have Jeremiah Wright’s sermons. Ron Paul probably should have told this writer to take his writings elsewhere. But Ron Paul is not a micromanager, which is what makes his libertarian philosophy attractive to so many who think our government is doing too much micromanaging of life. The problem, of course, is President of the USA is a management position. He needs to exercise tighter control over his communications.
QUOTE #6: An issue of the Ron Paul Political Report in 1990 describes Martin Luther King Jr. as “a world-class adulterer” who “seduced underage girls and boys” and “replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration.” – 1990
MY COMMENT: That Martin Luther King, Jr. was a world-class womanizer is a well-established fact. I had not read that he also liked young boys until now. So that’s a question of fact. Either it’s true, or not. As to the statement about the “evil of forced integration,” we know that Ron Paul is against government coercion unless absolutely necessary. Forced bussing did not work out well. “Freedom of association” is a Constitutional right, which implies “freedom of disassociation.”
Part of what makes America great is that it’s a melting pot. We’ve reached a point where the many races in America get along pretty well. Ron Paul’s point is that government should not force integration. It’s happening naturally anyway.
QUOTE #7: “Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems.”
MY COMMENT: Shaquille O’Neal became a volunteer cop in Los Angeles to signal to the young black community in LA that the cops are the good guys and to discourage rioting and vandalism following championship victories by the LA Lakers. Shaq even paid out of his own pocket for a police car that was burned and blown up by a vandal “celebrating” a Lakers victory. So the quote is not great, but doesn’t signal much about Ron Paul either.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Ron Paul is all about rolling back government’s ever-expanding interference in our lives. Racial politics has been the battering ram that has justified much of government expansion and meddlesomeness. These indelicate quotes that have been culled from three decades of the Ron Paul Political Report (quotes by other writers) are really not the least bit alarming; and certainly are not evidence that Ron Paul is any kind of racist.
So these quotes are really much ado about nothing. If you’re alarmed by these, you should also be equally outraged by “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” “Trading Places,” and “White Men Can’t Jump” — all packed with racial humor and stereotypes.
What is far more troubling for me is Ron Paul’s stance on the Iran problem. Will he really just allow Iran to get nukes? Will he really just allow Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz?
But if you like Ron Paul, including his Looney Tunes foreign policy and defense views, I wouldn’t get too bent out of shape about his newsletter quotes.
I would certainly vote for Ron Paul over Barack Obama. Their foreign policy and defense policy are about the same — equally bad. If Ron Paul were ever actually elected POTUS, reality would probably slap him upside the head and he would have to change his positions, as Obama has done on Gitmo, keeping the Patriot Act (actually expanding it), killing terrorists, etc. But Ron Paul wants to cut $1 TRILLION from the federal budget in the first year of his Administration and wants to balance the federal budget in three years. Put me down for that.
December 29th, 2011 | Author: Posted by Ben Hart (http://www.escapetyranny.com/author/admin/)
I am not a supporter of Ron Paul because of his nutty foreign policy positions.http://thyblackman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/RonPaulNotARacist.jpg
I do like his economic positions and his stance on the Federal Reserve. But, for me, Ron Paul’s foreign policy positions are disqualifying. We should not allow Iran to get nukes. We should take out the Iranian Navy if it attempts to close the Strait of Hormuz. I’m thrilled that Navy SEALs Team Six went into Pakistan and killed bin Laden.
But let’s take a look at some of the quotes from some of Ron Paul’s old newsletters (The Ron Paul Political Report) that are getting him into so much trouble with the political establishment.
Keep in mind that these are quotes from other writers, not Ron Paul. But they appeared in the Ron Paul Political Report two decades ago.
In reading over these quotes, some of them are clearly edgy. But I don’t find these quotes inherently racist. Some of the edgier ones appear to me to be poor attempts at humor. So let’s examine the actual quotes in question.
QUOTE #1: “If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.” – 1992
MY COMMENT: You would have to see the context of this. This looks like humor to me. But for humor to work, there must be some truth behind it. There was a popular movie titled “White Men Can’t Jump.” The reason that’s funny is because there is some truth to that. Stereotypes become stereotypes because they are true — generally true. Blacks are generally better athletes than whites. Blacks are generally faster than whites. This does not mean all blacks are faster than all whites. It’s a general observation. And why would that be an insult? I’d love to be able to jump as high as Michael Jordon. I’d love the be able to run as fast as Usain Bolt.
Here’s a photo of the top three finishers of the 2008 Olympic 100 meter final:
http://img.phombo.com/img1/photocombo/216/24901_Celebutopia-Usain_Bolt-men36s_100-meter_final_during_Beijing_2008_Olympics-15_122_1071lo.JPG
So this is just an objective fact. Blacks are, in general, faster than whites.
QUOTE #2: “Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,’ I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.” – 1992
MY COMMENT: This is a certainly a borderline statement. I don’t like it, but it is probably clumsy hyperbole to make two legitimate points: 1) That Washington, DC’s criminal justice system is not so good; and that 2) There is a serious crime problem among black males, especially young black males in America’s inner cities. According to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission (not a conservative agency):
49% of prison inmates nationally are African American, compared to their 13% share of the overall population.
Nearly one in three (32%) black males in the age group 20-29 is under some form of criminal justice supervision on any given day — either in prison or jail, or on probation or parole.
As of 1995, one in fourteen (7%) adult black males was incarcerated in prison or jail on any given day, representing a doubling of this rate from 1985. The 1995 figure for white males was 1%.
A black male born in 1991 has a 29% chance of spending time in prison at some point in his life. The figure for white males is 4%, and for Hispanics, 16%.
Criminal justice experts say that only about one in four crimes are actually solved. I have been told by prosecutors that about 80 percent of black males in inner cities under the age of 50 have been in the criminal justice system for serious crimes such as robbery, drug trafficking, aggravated assault, murder.
So it’s a big problem. All social scientists and criminal justice experts agree that it’s a serious problem. It’s not a racial problem so much as a welfare state problem, which primarily targets inner city blacks and minorities. There was no special black crime problem before Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs. So the problem is not blacks, it’s liberal welfare state policies that reward dysfunction. It’s just that inner city blacks were the primary “beneficiaries” of LBJ’s liberal welfare state.
Hence the dysfunction.
The quote in the Ron Paul Political Report is indelicately stated, but not inherently racist. The KKK is racist. Hitler was racist. This poorly worded, poorly researched, probably inaccurate statement by a writer for the Ron Paul Political Report back in 1992 does not qualify as racist. Stupid, yes. Bad writing, yes. Bad politics, yes — especially if you hope to win some black votes.
But not racist.
QUOTE #3: “We don’t think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That’s true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such.” – 1992
MY COMMENT: The writer (not Ron Paul) certainly could have left the word “black” out of this statement. Surely, there are many big scary 13 year olds out there of all races. No doubt, Ron Paul should have been a more critical editor here. But keep in mind also that Ron Paul is all about freedom. He believes in freedom of speech and probably not micromanaging the writings of his writers. He probably should have micromanaged this a bit more, given that this publication has Ron Paul’s name on the masthead.
QUOTE #4: “What else do we need to know about the political establishment than that it refuses to discuss the crimes that terrify Americans on grounds that doing so is racist? Why isn’t that true of complex embezzling, which is 100 percent white and Asian?” – 1992
MY COMMENT: I see nothing racist in this statement (again, penned by someone other than Ron Paul). Provocative, yes. Racist, no. Ron Paul is best when he is talking about economics, not social science.
QUOTE #5: In analyzing the Los Angeles riots in 1992, the writer for the Ron Paul Political Report states that: “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. … What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided.”
MY COMMENT: This is more of a commentary on the corrupt economic incentives of the welfare state than on race. It was blacks rioting over the Rodney King verdict, not whites. That’s just an objective fact. Not a great quote, for sure. If you pick through 30 years of someone’s newsletters, you’ll find some questionable stuff. Conversely, we have Jeremiah Wright’s sermons. Ron Paul probably should have told this writer to take his writings elsewhere. But Ron Paul is not a micromanager, which is what makes his libertarian philosophy attractive to so many who think our government is doing too much micromanaging of life. The problem, of course, is President of the USA is a management position. He needs to exercise tighter control over his communications.
QUOTE #6: An issue of the Ron Paul Political Report in 1990 describes Martin Luther King Jr. as “a world-class adulterer” who “seduced underage girls and boys” and “replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration.” – 1990
MY COMMENT: That Martin Luther King, Jr. was a world-class womanizer is a well-established fact. I had not read that he also liked young boys until now. So that’s a question of fact. Either it’s true, or not. As to the statement about the “evil of forced integration,” we know that Ron Paul is against government coercion unless absolutely necessary. Forced bussing did not work out well. “Freedom of association” is a Constitutional right, which implies “freedom of disassociation.”
Part of what makes America great is that it’s a melting pot. We’ve reached a point where the many races in America get along pretty well. Ron Paul’s point is that government should not force integration. It’s happening naturally anyway.
QUOTE #7: “Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems.”
MY COMMENT: Shaquille O’Neal became a volunteer cop in Los Angeles to signal to the young black community in LA that the cops are the good guys and to discourage rioting and vandalism following championship victories by the LA Lakers. Shaq even paid out of his own pocket for a police car that was burned and blown up by a vandal “celebrating” a Lakers victory. So the quote is not great, but doesn’t signal much about Ron Paul either.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Ron Paul is all about rolling back government’s ever-expanding interference in our lives. Racial politics has been the battering ram that has justified much of government expansion and meddlesomeness. These indelicate quotes that have been culled from three decades of the Ron Paul Political Report (quotes by other writers) are really not the least bit alarming; and certainly are not evidence that Ron Paul is any kind of racist.
So these quotes are really much ado about nothing. If you’re alarmed by these, you should also be equally outraged by “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” “Trading Places,” and “White Men Can’t Jump” — all packed with racial humor and stereotypes.
What is far more troubling for me is Ron Paul’s stance on the Iran problem. Will he really just allow Iran to get nukes? Will he really just allow Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz?
But if you like Ron Paul, including his Looney Tunes foreign policy and defense views, I wouldn’t get too bent out of shape about his newsletter quotes.
I would certainly vote for Ron Paul over Barack Obama. Their foreign policy and defense policy are about the same — equally bad. If Ron Paul were ever actually elected POTUS, reality would probably slap him upside the head and he would have to change his positions, as Obama has done on Gitmo, keeping the Patriot Act (actually expanding it), killing terrorists, etc. But Ron Paul wants to cut $1 TRILLION from the federal budget in the first year of his Administration and wants to balance the federal budget in three years. Put me down for that.