More racist newsletters from the past have emerged

The mainstream media, along with countless mainstream “conservatives”, have been attacking Ron Paul for un-PC sentiments expressed in his various newsletters back in the 1980s and 1990s. They’ve dredged up several quotes, from different issues and different years. I won’t rehash them all, but here’s the gist of a few of them:

The Rodney King riots only died down when the 1st of the month rolled around and it was time for blacks to pick up their welfare checks.

95% of young black males in Washington, DC are criminals or semi-criminals.

Martin Luther King was a commie and a pervert and is the last person who should have a national holiday.

You get the picture. So far, Rep. Paul has managed to stave off these attacks, and they don’t appear to have done him much damage.

But now other quotes from that same era have turned up, and the old quotes we’ve all heard about pale in comparison to these new ones that have come to light. See for yourself:

“The race question,” said Adolf Hitler, “not only furnishes the key to world history but also to human culture as a whole. There is absolutely no other revolution but a racial revolution ….”

To the enlightened and civilized, all of that sounded like gobbledygook. According to sophisticated books, the term “race” had little if any scientific status. There was no evidence that any “race” was superior to another. We were all part of “mankind,” though divided somewhat arbitrarily into “nation-states.” Our rational destiny was some sort of Parliament of Man.

Only it turns out that Hitler was, politically viewed, very nearly right.Race, or more antiseptically “ethnicity,” emerges as the critical factor in twentieth-century political behavior, with religion—another atavistic category, from the enlightened standpoint—running a close second. And, often, race and religion are intertwined, reinforcing one another.

These reflections are prompted by the deteriorating situation in South Africa, where race is the determinant, and by the fatuous things being said about South Africa in so many quarters . . .

You could argue that the present government in Pretoria is in fact, by most accepted criteria, the best on the continent of Africa. Blacks in large numbers are willingly emigrating to South Africa. No Berlin Wall keeps people from leaving South Africa if they want to do so. But, because of the factor of race, it is South Africa –not Uganda, not Mozambique -that is denounced by Mr. Reagan and even the Pope. Any tyranny, any caste system –even Cambodia’s or North Korea’s –is apparently more acceptable to our moral custodians than the South African racially based system .

So, that’s the way it is. In India, in Latin America, in Asia, race or “ethnicity” is the determining political category. Hitler seems to have won his debased argument.

[R]ace governs all . [From the January, 1986 issue of Instuaration, last page. See also the front page article on Newt Gingrich. It turns out that Gingrich’s recent prostrations to all things Jewish have a long history.]

Wow.

Hitler was basically right about race?

Race is the key to world history and human culture?

Race is the critical factor in politics?

The racist, apartheid government of South Africa was the best system of government in all of Africa?

Liberals claim that no race is superior to any other race, but Hitler won that argument?

Race governs everything?

Wow.

Yeah, I’d say these quotes are a lot more inflammatory than the earlier ones. This looks like trouble. Big trouble.

So how do you suppose Ron Paul will explain away these quotes?

Actually, he won’t have to. The passage didn’t appear in a Ron Paul newsletter. It’s an editorial which was published in the September 6, 1985 edition of National Review, which was the voice of American conservatism in the 1980s. The editorial was published with the full approval of William F. Buckley; it’s very likely he wrote it himself. (Read more here – scroll down to page 17.)

If you’re planning to wait and see how many of the mainstream “conservatives” who have denounced Paul for being a racist now go on to condemn William F. Buckley for being a racist, well, you might wanna grab a Snickers, because it’s probably gonna be a while.

Of course, the main point of all this is how badly conservatism has degenerated in only 27 years. Nobody raised an eyebrow when that editorial appeared in the leading conservative journal in 1985. That’s because they agreed with Buckley; these views about the stark differences between the races, and how important they are when it comes to politics, were taken for granted by conservatives. What WFB said in this editorial wasn’t merely mainstream conservative thought; he was expressing principles that are foundational to conservatism. Now, a mere quarter century later, these very same foundational principles are beyond the pale, and anyone who expresses even the slightest skepticism about the radical left wing doctrine of racial equality is immediately repudiated and denounced by all respectable conservatives.

Originally posted at James Edwards’ The Political Cesspool site.