I never pay attention anymore to TNR or the other Lefty rags I once read with such devotion when I was a youngish liberal Democrat journalist. Most all journalists still are, however much some of them pretend to be objective. It’s hard to be objective when you think Republicans are evil right-wingers, and most journalists really do think that.
But now, after forty years of watching government grow ever larger and more corrupt, and bloated with intrusive and obnoxious and largely ineffective bureaucrats making six figures administering useless laws which we must all pay higher taxes to support, I count myself a small-government Libertarian.
As such I sympathize with many of Libertarian Republican Ron Paul’s positions and his supporters: his desire to stop the endless wars we have involved ourselves in since World War II in our sometimes-justified, but often-overblown role as world policeman; his idea of cutting way back on our foreign aid, which is largely arms sales to some truly awful regimes such as the misogynist and homophobic Saudis; and his desire to close the CIA and the ATF, which are too bumbling and political to be worth any tax money.
Mostly I don’t think about Ron Paul because I know he has no chance of enacting his ideas. He isn’t electable, except in his own small district in Southeast Texas. At least the small district he once had before Texas Republicans redistricted him out of it to get him out of their hair. Which they did because, to mix metaphors, he is a loose cannon who will not toe their line. They’re big-government boys, like Mittens Romney. They just argue about the details. But even they don’t accuse Ron Paul of being a racist, anti-Semite Truther, Birther, etc.
That’s the sort of spurious crap that rags like TNR spew, backed up by their fellow clones in the Democrat Media Complex. And it bothers me when some people I otherwise respect hop on TNR’s bandwagon, denying Ron Paul the right to simply be wrong. Or to have opinions they disagree with. Including, years ago in his newsletters, mocking Dr. King as an adulterer, which, according to the FBI he was, and sneering at black rioters for ceasing to riot on the day their welfare checks arrived. The inner-city ones on the east and west coasts do riot, repeatedly, and many of them are on welfare.
But even his former senior aide found, among other things, Ron Paul’s apparent homophobia off-putting. I suspect it has more to do with unreasoning fear of AIDS than anything else. But the aide’s is just one man’s opinion, and there are other opinions.
If Paul really were a racist anti-Semite, as the former communist and fulltime extremist David Horowitz proclaims, I’m sure that Charles Krauthammer would second the emotion in big, bold print. Instead, he says of Paul, “I find him a principled, somewhat wacky, highly engaging eccentric.” And for my money, folks, that is the real Ron Paul.
Texas has long required presentation of a driver’s license, or other photo i.d., in order to vote. Prove you’re a citizen with a right to the privilege. What could be more sensible?
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 