James Kirchick’s Smear Piece in the New Republic

Despite the fact that Paul has a strong personal approval ratings and polls well against his competitors; the media has deliberately—and very successfully—kept him out of the public eye. That will be more difficult to do now that his campaign war-chest is packed with contributions and his base of support is expanding across the country.

We expect the media to ditch its failed strategy of simply ignoring Paul and take the more aggressive approach of attacking him outright. Now that Paul has established himself as a credible threat to the warmongering, autocratic corporate elite; he will have to be discredited through a coordinated media-blitz which will target his voting record, his character, and any other trivial foible which may incite public scorn.

He’s got a bull’s-eye on his back.

The Media’s Plan to Ambush Ron Paul - by Mike Whitney - 11/07/07 - Information Clearing House

” … Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing–but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.”

Angry White Man: The bigoted past of Ron Paul - by James Kirchick - 01/08/08 - The New Republic

What can be learned about James Kirchick by reading his racist smear piece - Angry White Man: The bigoted past of Ron Paul - in the New Republic?

He opens noting how Ron Paul’s presidential bid has garnered support across the political spectrum from antiwar conservatives, to disaffected centrists to young liberal activists. Of course, were this not the case, Kirchick’s piece would not be much worth publishing now would it!

That’s about it for a discussion of Ron Paul’s actual political activities, however. Except, that is, for a series of newsletters that Paul faced up to some time ago disavowing any knowledge of their contents. These newsletters were published over the years under various “Ron Paul” type banners from the late 70s up to the 90s. These letters - or parts of some of them apparently largely in 1990 - are flat out offensive, as the quotes Kirchick chooses to highlight show. Nonetheless, it is to these newsletters and to these newsletters only that James Kirchick builds his smear campaign. There is no discussion of Paul’s voting record, no direct quotes or written materials attributed with certainty to Ron Paul, no discussion of Ron Paul’s 10 terms in office and of the countless interviews with countless media. The sole material basis for the Kirchick-slur-fest, rather, is on newsletters Ron Paul had already publicly disavowed knowledge of but accepted responsibility for, back in 2001. Of course, that Paul should have allowed such racist tripe to be disseminated under his name and without his knowledge is not something to dismiss outright. One must seriously question the managerial/organizational abilities of a person that allows such to be disseminated without knowing about it. But committing such an egregious error is not the same thing as actually writing or stating such things oneself now is it? The truth of matters here, however, are not obvious. Nonetheless, what does seem obvious is that Kirchick wanted to make a racist accusation against Paul and his sole basis for this were some newsletters of disputed authorship.

Kirchick’s Strategy of Associations Leading to the Racist Insinuation

Kirchick’s strategy in this article is to connect Ron Paul to “unsavory” folk not so much through actual argument than through insinuation and then to claim that this association “explains” how such racist comments would therefore be present in these newsletters (but, I want to repeat, not found anywhere else in Paul’s writings, interviews or speeches).

Before focusing on the “Ron Paul” newsletters, Kirchick discusses the right wing newsletter industry in general emphasizing that these newsletters were “often paranoid and rambling–dominated by talk of international banking conspiracies, the Trilateral Commission’s plans for world government, and warnings about coming Armageddon”. After quoting some offensive passages within the newsletters, Kirchick creates the associations he wants the reader to believe make it plausible that Ron Paul is a racist.

Let me show the connections that Kirchick emphasizes on route to this insinuation:

Paul’s libertarian political philosophy is associated with the Ludwig von Mises Institute. The Institute was founded by Lew Rockwell who was Ron Paul’s “congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982″ (see Lew Rockwell and get a sense yourself for the flavor of this libertarian political philosophy). Paul has had a long time association with the institute and the institute has published some of Paul’s books. The politics of the organization are “complicated” Kirchick states. Instead of exploring some of those complications, Kirchick associates the political philosophy of the Institute with “the late Murray Rothbard, a Bronx-born son of Jewish immigrants from Poland and a self-described ‘anarcho-capitalist’ who viewed the state as nothing more than ‘a criminal gang’”. Further, the Institute is connected with “an attachment to the Confederacy.” Of course, who in “respectable” circles wants to be associated with that!

The connection of the Institute to the confederacy is highlighted by means of various figures/authors and their connection to Ron Paul.

Thus we get:

-”Thomas E. Woods Jr., a member of the institute’s senior faculty, is a founder of the League of the South, a secessionist group, and the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, a pro-Confederate, revisionist tract published in 2004. Paul enthusiastically blurbed Woods’s book, saying that it ‘heroically rescues real history from the politically correct memory hole.’”

-”Thomas DiLorenzo, another senior faculty member and author of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, refers to the Civil War as the ‘War for Southern Independence’ and attacks ‘Lincoln cultists’; Paul endorsed the book on MSNBC last month in a debate over whether the Civil War was necessary (Paul thinks it was not).”

-”In April 1995, the institute hosted a conference on secession at which Paul spoke; previewing the event, Rockwell wrote to supporters, ‘We’ll explore what causes [secession] and how to promote it.’”

Since I haven’t read these books (or attended the conference) I’m in no position to evaluate the meaning of Ron Paul’s endorsement (attendance). This isn’t dissimulation. It is a statement of the obvious. Ron Paul’s endorsement of such is not self-evidently problematic. Such re-examinations of past historical “knowns” and “certainties” can always be fruitfully challenged via revisionist histories. Nonetheless, such is hardly the political angle from which I tend to view matters but nor do I find such endorsements (attendance) in itself objectionable. It still comes down to the facts of the matter and whether or not and to what extent, these books hold up against such facts. At any rate, Kirchick sees no need to expand further as if what he has stated already speaks for itself. Thus Ron Paul through the Ludwig von Mises Institute is associated with two historical revisionist books and a secessionist conference. Therefore he is a racist? I’d personally want a tad more substantive argument to leap from the former connections to the racist insinuation that follows.

Kirchick’s view of the Institute and its people including Ron Paul is that they represent a radical strain of libertarianism: “they represent a strain of right-wing libertarianism that views the Civil War as a catastrophic turning point in American history–the moment when a tyrannical federal government established its supremacy over the states.” Again, from within the frame of libertarianism, this assertion hardly strikes me as controversial. Indeed, mustn’t it logically follow? While my understanding of the Civil War isn’t adequate to substantively delve in here, it does appear that libertarian notions find the right to independent political organization of paramount importance. To the extent that a federal government - through various violations of civil liberties and human rights - insisted on its dominion and dominance over all the states in the union, the federal government basically acted tyrannically by definition. So again, Kirchick appears to regard this view of the Civil War as quite obviously objectionable but, in fact, it is but one perfectly legitimate interpretation of what the Civil War really was. It was government dominance over the rights and liberties of its citizens for the purposes of forcing a union upon those not wishing to be part of the union.

At any rate, it is these connections that Kirchick uses to “explain the views his [Ron Paul’s] newsletters have long espoused on race”. While my understanding is that “confederacy” is typically associated with racism and a defense of white supremacy, I do not understand how racism and white supremacy notions can in any way be informed by a libertarian political philosophy of civil rights and freedoms. Something is missing in this connection of the two and what I suspect is missing are the more critical and nuanced understandings of what the Civil War was actually all about and what actually happened and why. What I suspect is that Kirchick is invoking words such as confederacy and secessionist simply because they automatically invoke a unreflective and negative response in the average reader. The fact, as always, is that such matters need to be explored more substantively. One needs to understand, for example, Ron Paul’s political arguments in defense of his above support for such books and attendance at such conferences: Arguments that, no doubt, do not lead to racist screeds of the form Kirchick wishes to insinuate.

But insinuate he does. From these “connections” Kirchick then “explains” the racism within the newsletters as following naturally. It doesn’t. Kirchick presumably is clever enough to know this but then again, Kirchick is not aiming at rigorous argument and conclusions. He is aiming at sensationalist political muckraking with admittedly impeccable, no doubt, well orchestrated political timing. Ron Paul’s anti-war stance is getting noticed. Ron Paul is raking in the campaign contributions. Ron Paul makes almost all the other presidential candidates appear as disgusting panderers against what is truly in the interest of America. Time to attempt to discredit Ron Paul by quoting from newsletters discussed and addressed long ago and never mind that Kirchick has nothing else whatsoever of a material nature to support the statements found in the newsletters.

Further, it is worth emphasizing the while Kirchick insinuates that these racist comments were going on for decades, in fact, he quotes from a limited number of years (i.e., 1987, 1989 to 1994) with the bulk of the quotes coming from 1990. No less than ten of his quotes come from newsletters published in 1990 (with one from 1989, two from 1991, two from 1992, one from 1993 and one from 1994). My point? With Ron Paul claiming he - embarrassingly - knew nothing of the content of these newsletters, it is certainly more plausible to accept his response given that the offending racist comments occurred within a narrow time frame. Paul is still responsible for allowing such tripe to be disseminated under his name but the fact that Kirchick quotes much of this material from one year indicates that for a short period one or two unscrupulous assholes took advantage of some sloppy oversight.

Conclusion

I’ve left aside the non-racist aspects also discussed by Kirchick - what he terms conspiracy theories of one form or another. The point here was to show the way James Kirchick implied racism without actually showing it. After all, as stated, were Kirchick really wanting to hammer home a racist accusation, you’d think he might want to substantiate this innuendo with concrete, direct quotes from Ron Paul as revealed either in interviews or from books or based on his voting record. But he didn’t do any of that did he? Is that perhaps because, in fact, Ron Paul is not a racist and that all his years of public service show that he is, in fact, opposed to racism in all and various forms? I can’t say for certain but I’d like to believe so. At any rate, what is James Kirchick up to then? He appears to answer it well in one of his two concluding paragraphs:

Ron Paul is not going to be president. But, as his campaign has gathered steam, he has found himself increasingly permitted inside the boundaries of respectable debate. He sat for an extensive interview with Tim Russert recently. He has raised almost $20 million in just three months, much of it online. And he received nearly three times as many votes as erstwhile front-runner Rudy Giuliani in last week’s Iowa caucus. All the while he has generally been portrayed by the media as principled and serious, while garnering praise for being a ’straight-talker.’

Exactly. Ron Paul has gained political capital making a mockery of almost every other pandering presidential candidate and the ridiculous “horse-race” coverage given to this war-mongering, rights violating (by not speaking against it) gang of power hungry lackey’s. Listen to Ron Paul. Check out his own response to the Kirchick smear on CNN. Kirchick is obviously not some lone gun here. It was just a move, a tactic. He was just the face. See through that at least. See this little Kirchick smear piece for what it is. Spit in the face of this kind of media clap trap. Scrutinize Ron Paul, to be sure, but give this man due consideration.

No one else would do the things he would do to rescue America from the self-destructive path it has unreflectively embraced. America is supposed to be a Republic not an empire. It is supposed to respect the sovereignty of nations not violate that sovereignty with impunity. It is supposed to uphold the rule of law, of rights and civil liberties not systematically erode them. Of all the other leading presidential candidates, who else even approaches seriously discussing these central issues?