Did Lew Rockwell Write the Racist Rants In Ron Paul's Newsletter?Oh, my this is going to be pretty funny if it turns out
to be true.
Ron Paul doesn't seem to know much about his own newsletters. The libertarian-leaning presidential candidate says he was unaware, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, of the bigoted rhetoric about African Americans and gays that was appearing under his name. He told CNN last week that he still has "no idea" who might have written inflammatory comments such as "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks"—statements he now repudiates. Yet in interviews with reason, a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists—including some still close to Paul—all named the same man as Paul's chief ghostwriter: Ludwig von Mises Institute founder Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr.
The article goes into some arcana about how Rockwell and some other "paleolibertarians" decided to reach out to paleoconservatives:
The newsletters' obsession with blacks and gays was of a piece with a conscious political strategy adopted at that same time by Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard. After breaking with the Libertarian Party following the 1988 presidential election, Rockwell and Rothbard formed a schismatic "paleolibertarian" movement, which rejected what they saw as the social libertinism and leftist tendencies of mainstream libertarians. In 1990, they launched the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, where they crafted a plan they hoped would midwife a broad new "paleo"
coalition.
But of course, the funniest thing is that Rockwell was
romantically linked about a year and a half ago to Cindy Sheehan. Yep, that Cindy Sheehan:
Cindy, run! There's a big black man near you!
One thing about the potential Rockwell authorship is that it explains why Paul has declined to reveal who wrote the articles. Rockwell's now apparently forging an alliance with the libertine left; in 2005-2006, he was one of the
irregular posters over at Airiheadda's Huffington Post.
Labels: Cindy Sheehan, Lew Rockwell, Ron Paul
