How Did We Get Here?

How Did We Get Here?

Prof. Steve Horwitz is a long time libertarian and one of the best known "Austrian" economists in the United States. In this piece he discusses the Ron Paul newsletter fiasco and the role of Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard in promoting some very ugly ideas under the label of "libertarian." This is reprinted from BleedingHeartLibertarians.com.As some of you might know, I’ve been stirring up quite a bit of trouble on Facebook the last few days discussing the Ron Paul newsletters story. Matt suggested I write up some of what I’ve been saying for the audience here at BHL, which I’m happy to do. First let me note that the posts by Gary and Jacob below are right on the money in their own ways. Some of what I will say below will echo Jacob in particular, but I want to explore the history of this whole thing a bit more and offer some more reasons why it should matter to bleeding heart libertarians.

To start, those of us who have been around the movement since the 1980s knew all about this stuff and knew that those newsletters would never go away. As Jacob says, the attempt to court the right through appeals to the most unsavory sorts of arguments was a conscious part of the “paleolibertarian” strategy that Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard cooked up in the late 1980s. What’s happening right now is that the chickens of that effort are coming home to roost with large external costs on all of us as libertarians. In other words, we are experiencing “blowback,” and Ron Paul supporters of all people should understand that when you poke at sleeping dogs, you should not be surprised when they turn around and attack you, even if it takes a couple of decades. Now Paul’s supporters understand viscerally what he’s rightly argued about US foreign policy.

So why does this matter for bleeding heart libertarians? Indulge me some history for a bit while I offer an explanation. Classical liberalism started as a movement of the left, with folks like J.S. Mill being our standard bearers against the forces of reaction and conservatism in England, especially over issues of race. We were the “progressives” of that era, viewing the market as a force for progress for all, especially the least well-off, and as a great equalizer. It was Mill who argued that it was a good thing that markets would lead to racial equality in opposition to people like Carlyle and Ruskin who rejected markets because they wanted to maintain racial hierarchy. The liberal revolution was a revolution against privilege and the old order. It was the radical progressivism of its day.

Unfortunately, classical liberalism never figured out how to respond to the development of socialism, and especially the state socialism of the Soviets and others in the early 20^th century, in a way that maintained our progressive credentials. By default, we moved from the “left” to the “right,” thrown in with the conservative opponents of the growing socialist wave. From the Old Right of the 1940s through the Reagan era, libertarianism’s opposition to socialism, especially interferences in the market, led us to ally with the forces of reaction. But even with the demise of really-existing socialism, we have been unable to completely break free of that connection to the right, though things are better than they used to be.

Even as this happened, though, the liberalism of libertarianism did not die. Within that libertarianism on the right was a strong strain of leftism, particularly from the late 1960s into the early or mid 1980s, both in the broader movement and in the Libertarian Party in particular. When I came into the movement in 1980, I can vividly recall meeting members of the Michigan LP and being surprised at how, for lack of a better word, hippie they were, right down to smoking dope during the breaks at the state convention.

By the mid-80s though, conservatism was hot, thanks to Reagan, and the internal strife of the movement pitted Murray Rothbard against the Koch Brothers, with the accusation by Rothbard that the liberal libertarians were undermining the movement’s ability to appeal to a broader audience thanks to their supposed libertinism. Murray wanted the hippies out. The irony here was that it was the Koch controlled parts that were (largely) the source of the left-deviation that pissed Rothbard off. Today, of course, the sin of the Kochs is that they’re too conservative. (Ever get the feeling that if the Kochs said the sky was blue….anyway, I digress.)

This led to the paleolibertarian strategy by the end of the decade after Rothbard broke with the Kochs and helped Lew Rockwell found the Mises Institute (originally located on Capitol Hill – right smack inside the hated beltway, it’s worth noting). The paleo strategy, as laid out here by Rockwell, was clearly designed to create a libertarian-conservative fusion exactly along the lines Jacob lays out in his post. It was about appealing to the worst instincts of working/middle class conservative whites by creating the only anti-left fusion possible with the demise of socialism: one built on cultural issues. With everyone broadly agreeing that the market had won, how could you hold together a coalition that opposed the left? Oppose them on the culture. If you read Rockwell’s manifesto through those eyes, you can see the “logic” of the strategy. And it doesn’t take a PhD in Rhetoric to see how that strategy would lead to the racism and other ugliness of newsletters at the center of this week’s debates.

The paleo strategy was a horrific mistake, both strategically and theoretically, though it apparently made some folks (such as Rockwell and Paul) pretty rich selling newsletters predicting the collapse of Western civilization at the hands of the blacks, gays, and multiculturalists. The explicit strategy was abandoned by around the turn of the century, but not after a lot of bad stuff had been written in all kinds of places. There was way more than the Ron Paul newsletters. There was the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, which was another major place publishing these sorts of views. They could also be found in a whole bunch of Mises Institute publications of that era. It was the latter that led me to ask to be taken off the Institute’s mailing list in the early 1990s, calling them “a fascist fist in a libertarian glove.” I have never regretted that decision or that language. What the media has in their hands is only the tip of the iceberg of the really unsavory garbage that the paleo turn produced back then.

Through it all though, Ron Paul was a constant. He kept plugging away, first at the center of the paleo strategy as evidenced by the newsletters. To be clear, I am quite certain he did not write them. There is little doubt that they were written by Rockwell and Rothbard. People I know who were on the inside at the time confirm it and the style matches pretty well to those two and does not match to Ron Paul. Paul knows who wrote them too, but he’s protecting his long-time friend and advisor, unfortunately. And even more sadly, Rockwell doesn’t have the guts to confess and end this whole megillah. So although I don’t think Ron Paul is a racist, like Archie Bunker, he was willing to, metaphorically, toast a marshmallow on the cross others were burning.

Even after the paleo strategy was abandoned, Ron was still there walking the line between “mainstream” libertarianism and the winking appeal to the hard right courted by the paleo strategy. Paul’s continued contact with the fringe groups of Truthers, racists, and the paranoid right are well documented. Even in 2008, he refused to return a campaign contribution of $500 from the white supremacist group Stormfront. You can still go to their site and see their love for Ron Paul in this campaign and you can find a picture of Ron with the owner of Stormfront’s website. Even if Ron had never intentionally courted them, isn’t it a hugeproblem that they think he is a good candidate? Doesn’t that say something really bad about the way Ron Paul is communicating his message? Doesn’t it suggest that years of the paleo strategy of courting folks like that actually resonated with the worst of the right? Paul also maintained his connection with the Mises Institute, which has itself had numerous connections with all kinds of unsavory folks: more racists, anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, the whole nine yards. Much of this stuff was ably documented in 2007 and 2008 by the Right Watch blog. Hit that link for more.

Those of us who watched all of this happen over two decades knew it would come back to haunt us and so it has, unfortunately just as Ron Paul and libertarianism are on the cusp of something really amazing. And that only goes to show what a mistake the paleo strategy was: imagine if the newsletters were not an issue and Paul were to win Iowa. Yeah, he might get ignored, but he would not be the easy media target he is now, nor would all of libertarianism pay a potential price. The legions of young people supporting Paul did not come in via the paleo strategy; they came because libertarianism in general is on the rise in all kinds of venues (and yes, the Mises Institute’s post-paleo influence is important here, but it’s hardly the only institution that matters). These young people, for the most part, are surprised by all of this dirty laundry. That, in my view, is the real tragedy: I think libertarianism could have got to this point just as fast, maybe faster, without the toxic baggage of the paleo strategy.

So why deal with this now, when libertarianism is so hot? Because those newsletters are not what libertarianism is and the sooner and louder we make that clear, the better. There are too many young people who don’t understand all of this and who we need to help see the alternative liberal vision of libertarianism – and to understand that “liberal libertarianism” is radical, principled, and humane and not “beltway selling out.” To do that, we need to confront the past and explicitly reject it. That doesn’t necessarily mean rejecting Ron Paul in electoral politics, but it does mean that we cannot pretend the past doesn’t exist and it means that Paul and the others involved need to do the right thing and take explicit responsibility for what they said two decades ago. That has not happened yet. Then we need a complete and utter rejection of the paleo world-view and we need to create a movement that will simply not be attractive to racists, homophobes, anti-Semites etc., by emphasizing, as we have done at this blog, libertarianism’s liberal roots.

What we need right now is Rothbard’s vision of a free society as sketched in For a New Liberty, but we need it defended better. More carefully. More richly. More empirically. More humanely. More progressively. More tolerantly. With better scholarship. And we have to do it in a way that’s immune to the charge that libertarians don’t care about making the world a better place, especially for the least well off and those historically victimized by the color of their skin, their gender, their sexual orientation, or anything else that’s irrelevant to their moral status as human actors.

The writings of the paleolibertarians will continue to stain that project unless and until the rest of the libertarian movement stops trying to apologize for them (“you don’t understand the context” or “it was a long time ago” or “Ron’s from a different generation”) or kicking the can down the road because Ron Paul might win (“why bring this up now when we’re winning?” or “Libertarians just like the circular firing squad”) or just plain saying they don’t matter because it’s all media bias (“it’s just the liberal media trying to destroy the libertarian candidate”).

It’s time to face our ugly past head on and to explicitly reject it. And it is the past of every libertarian. It doesn’t matter if you weren’t there, or weren’t alive, or think it’s stupid: if you call yourself a libertarian and especially if you support Ron Paul, it’s part of your past like it or not. That’s how life works sometimes. We can’t make Ron Paul name the authors or make the authors step forward, either of which would help immensely. We can, however, take pains to make clear that some of Ron Paul’s past and current associations are rejected by libertarians who understand the “liberal” in libertarian and whose vision of a free society is one that is so clearly in conflict with racism, homophobia, antisemitism and all the rest that people like Stormfront would never even consider sending us a donation and we would recoil at being photographed with them.

Until we can say that with confidence, there’s every reason in the world to keep talking about these newsletters and what they mean for the 21^st century libertarian project, especially in its bleeding heart version. It’s time to reclaim our progressive history from the hands of the right: from the Old Right of the 40s, to the Reagan era LINOs, to the paleolibertarianism of the 1990s. As many of us have argued from the start on this blog, the heritage of libertarianism is properly a progressive one. Our roots are in the anti-racism and proto-feminism of J.S. Mill and others in the 19th century. We believe in peaceful exchange, voluntary cooperation, progress, enlightenment, tolerance and mutual respect, and openness to change. That is our heritage and that’s the libertarianism that I grew up with in the 1970s and 1980s, and that’s the progressive libertarianism I want to proudly enter into the debate over the future of human social organization. If the newsletters fiasco serves to further prod us into reclaiming that heritage, we will have turned an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan. I’m going to continue to do all I can to help make sure it happens.

Ron Paul and His Bizarre Attacks on AIDS Victims

Ron Paul and His Bizarre Attacks on AIDS Victims

A lot of the discussion regarding Ron Paul and his horrible newsletters has focused on the racist and anti-gay statements that were made. Those were certainly very ugly. Ron’s newsletter claimed that race riots would sweep America with welfare-addicted blacks attacking whites because they have come to believe they are entitled to other people’s property. His newsletter suggested buying guns because “the animals are coming.” Calling black folks “animals” is very ugly indeed. For the record, the prediction of massive race riots sweeping the country proved as unfounded as Paul’s bizarre theories of secret conspiracies.

One area that was often ignored was Paul’s disgusting views regarding AIDS and people infected with HIV. First, in the fever swamp of Ron Paul’s imagination, AIDS is part of a government plot. It is basically a 9/11 truther kind of argument. In Paul’s January, 1988 newsletter a Dr. William C. Douglass is recommended reading for his “fascinating analysis” of AIDS. The newsletter wrote:

Dr. Douglass believes that AIDS is a deliberately engineered hybrid of these two animal viruses cultured in human tissue, and he blames the World Health Organization experimentation at Ft. Detrick, Maryland.

“Ft. Detrict is one of the centers of biological warfare research where federal scientists are engaged in deliberately manufacturing deadly diseases for World War III. Could they have produced AIDS? Could the government have experimented with it in the civilian population, as it did in the 1950s with LSD, and had things get (sic.) out control?

What makes Dr. Douglass an expert on these topics? Who is he? He is another resident of the fever swamp, of course. Douglass has long be associated with the extreme Right fringe groups. He was active in the extreme Right “Constitution Party of Florida” for instance. A report from the St. Petersburg Times, Oct. 14, 1966 refers to the party as “ultra-conservative” and said that William. C. Douglass, was the “party’s Florida chairman, a John Birch Society leader and founder the controversial “Let Freedom Ring” telephone messages.” The Let Freedom Ring campaign was a Birch Society project.

The January, 1994 issue said that gay men in San Francisco "don't really see a reason to live past their fifties. They are not married, they have no children, and their lives are centered on new sexual partners." As for the issue of AIDS, it said that gay men "enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick." In the Dec. 1989 issue he quoted Right-wing Bill Dannemeyer claim that "the average homosexual has 1,000 or more partners in a lifetime." That article refers to Dannemeyer as “my old colleague” which indicates that former Congressman wrote the comment. The only former Congressman on the staff of the Paul newsletter, was Paul himself.

In January, 1990 the newsletter ridiculed the "Silence=Death" campaign, on AIDS awareness, by suggesting it should be changed to "Sodomy=Death." In September, 1994 Paul assured his white, heterosexual readers that unless they engage in sodomy, have a blood transfusion, or swap needles they are "virtually assured of not getting AIDS unless they are deliberately infected by a malicious gay." Paul’s newsletter was never pleasant to gay people. In June, 1990 the newsletter called the gay rights movement “the organized forces of perversion.”

This is where he said. “I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities. They could also not be as promiscuous. Is it any coincidence that the AIDS epidemic developed after they came “out of the closet,” and started hyper-promiscuous sodomy? I don’t believe so, medically or morally.” The Paul newsletter claimed that the reason AIDS wasn’t named Gay Related Immune Deficiency Syndrome was entirely due to “political pressure… to try to hide the origin of this plague.” Actually, medical evidence showed the disease originated in Africa with heterosexuals, not with gay people. And, worldwide, the majority of victims are heterosexual.

The Paul newsletter also said that blood banks in San Francisco caved in to political pressure to hold blood drives “in the gay Castro district, where the people give at three times the usual level.” This, in the newsletter at least, raises the question whether “they [gays] are trying to poison the blood supply.” This last part is on par with the claim that the only way straight people are infected is by a “malicious gay.”

In a subscription appeal letter of the time, which Paul sent out to various far Right mailing lists, including the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby of Willis Carto, he told potential subscribers: “I’ve been told not to talk, but these stooges don’t scare me. Threats or no threats, I’ve laid bare the coming race war in our big cities. The federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS (my training as a physician helped me see through this one.” The Bohemian Grover-perverted, pagan playground of the powers. Skull & Bones: the demonic fraternity that includes George Bush and leftist Senator John Kerry, Congress’s Mr. New Money. The Israeli lobby, which plays Congress like a cheap harmonica.” Paul’s signature was attached to this letter that seems to explicitly endorse the crazed theories of Douglass regarding a “federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS.”

In a January 1990, piece called AIDSomania, the article is written entirely from Paul’s perspective. While it is widely known that Lew Rockwell often did ghost-writing for Paul, including writing some of the more offensive material in the newsletters, this piece seems to imply Paul wrote it directly. For instance, the author says, “I’m not Catholic.” Rockwell is Catholic, though more the Mel Gibson variety than mainstream Catholicism. And the article favorably quotes a “well-known libertarian editor just back from New York,” which would appear to be a reference to Rockwell. This was the source of the “Sodomy = Death” slogan. Next the author refers to “my former church, the Episcopal has just ordained its first openly gay priest.” Ron Paul was Episcopalian until he switched over to a rabidly anti-gay fundamentalist Baptist Church. The church Paul joined links to anti-gay extremists on its web page. So, according to the article the author is not Catholic, is a former Episcopalian and seems to refer to Rockwell. Of course, Rockwell could have written it on Paul’s behalf, but the entire newsletter is written in Paul’s name, in the first person.

If one has to deal with AIDS patients, Paul’s newsletter offered the following hysterical advice. (I don’t mean hysterical as in funny, but as in crazy.)

1. "Wear rubber gloves when handling the clothes, dishes, etc. of the patient. Wear a surgical mask if he is coughing and wheezing."
2. "Use paper plates and cups and burn them afterwards."
3. "Boil all his laundry for at least 15 minutes".
4. "Pour half a cup of Clorox in his bath water before draining it."
5. "Always wipe the toilet seat with a soapy paper towel."
6. "No kissing, since AIDS can be transmitted by saliva."
7. "No sexual relations, since condoms are far from foolproof."
8. "Don’t allow the patient to eat in a restaurant."
9. "Do not allow the patient to drive or operate machinery due to mental impairment."

Paul’s newsletter called these unnecessary and extreme measures “commonsense precautions” and they show “how we should actually proceed, instead of having tax-funded programs to promote the conduct that causes AIDS.” Conduct doesn’t “cause” AIDS, it may help it spread, but it doesn’t cause it, a virus causes it. In addition, when this was published in October, 1990 the causes of AIDS and the precautions actually are needed were well known. What Paul’s publication called “commonsense” was considered extreme, fear-mongering by experts in the disease and that fact was well known when Paul published this.

In March, 1990 (Vol IV, Number 3) of the Paul newsletter there is a lead article regarding the often crude Andy Rooney. Rooney made a comment about gay sex causing AIDS. Paul’s newsletter reported, “The ‘gay community’ went berserk at the suggestion that sodomy might cause AIDS, or that its practitioners might be in some way responsible for the consequences of their conduct.” Rooney made an equally silly reply, which the Paul letter called “hilarious.” Rooney “said he was no more biased against gays than against smokers, he just didn’t ‘want to be in a small room with either one.’” Yep, hilarious Ron, really hilarious. When CBS told Rooney to apologize the Paul newsletter said it was because “you’re not supposed to express such sentiments about Official Victims.” When a gay reporter interviewed Rooney Paul’s publication wrote that he “certainly had an axe to grind, and that’s not easy with a limp wrist.” More of Ron Paul’s charming opinions.

At this point Ron’s newsletter went into an extended commentary:

“The liberals promised us release from guilt, points out Murray N. Rothbard of the Ludwig von Mises Institute [a group run by Paul’s co-editor Lew Rockwell, which Rockwell started using Paul’s mailing list], and they did abolish sexual guilt (and gave us widespread sodomy, AIDS, promiscuity, illegitimacy, and abortion in the bargain). But speciesism, ageism and homophobia (the dread belief that normal sexual conduct is superior to abnormal).

Earlier, we quoted Paul’s newsletter referencing Murray Rothbard, a close associate of both Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell. Rothbard, who got his political start promoting the 1948 racist campaign of Strom Thurmond’s so-called Dixiecrat ticket. The party explicitly endorsed racial segregation, Jim Crow laws and white supremacy. Rothbard was widely considered to be, along with Rockwell, one of Paul’s primary ghost-writers. Rothbard regularly feed ideas to Paul which the Congressman they regurgitated as his own.

In 1992, during the newsletter era, Rothbard wrote a piece praising the Klansman and anti-Semite, David Duke. Rothbard claimed that only “a massive campaign of hysteria, of fear and hated, orchestrated by all wings o the Ruling Elite” prevented Duke from winning the Gubernatorial race in Louisiana. He referred to “the old bogey images of the Klan,” ignoring the fact that Duke was Klan leader and these were not “bogey images” but facts. To this day Duke publicly endorses white supremacy, segregation, and Jew hating. Duke got started in the racist National Alliance, and then joined the Klan in 1967. In 1980 he formed the National Association for the Advancement of White People, and in the 1990s turned his attention to attacking Jews. His 1998 book, My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding made reaffirmed his support for segregation and racial separatism. He then followed that book with Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening on the Jewish Question.

At no point in time did Duke make an attempt to tone down his bigoted views. He was a white supremacist from the start and remains one to this day. Rothbard’s apparent support for Duke is a very large dark spot on his life. Just as Rothbard, Paul’s close friend, supported Duke, the Klanner, in return, supports Ron Paul. He wrote: “I like Ron Paul’s campaign, and I think it is good for America and the political process.” Duke, who says the Jews run the Federal Reserve, thought Paul’s problem is that “Jewish extremists are the political fundraisers and power brokers and they also dominate the mass media, the single greatest influence in politics.” It should be noted that Duke referred to “the positive things that Paul wrote about me and my campaign issues.” Apparently David Duke saw Ron Paul as being supportive of him.

Rothbard launched into a paranoid discourse on banking elites, conspirators and secret organizations ruling the world. And he called for a “Right-wing Populist” crusade that would merge Rothbard’s libertarian ideas with the racialist-populist ideas of the extremists. Among his suggestion was: “Cops must be unleashed, and allowed to administer instant punishment, subject of course to liability when they are in error.” Yea, that liability thing would really make me feel more comfortable if the cops assaulted me. He said, “Unleash the cops to clear the streets of bums and vagrants. Where will they go? Who cares?” He argued that “the Fed is an organized cartel of banksters,” a theme that anti-Semites on the Right have pushed for years. [One of them is Eustace Mullins, who previously met with Paul as an adviser, according to some sources. A writer at Daily Paul saud Paul and Mullins “would do luncheons regularly. Ron Paul has a copy of Eustace’s book on the Fed.” Mullins decided Paul was part of the banking conspiracy because Ludwig von Mises was Jewish.]

Rothbard becomes important in Ron Paul’s fear-mongering concerning AIDS and gay people because Rothbard was the source of much of this. I have a memo that Rothbard wrote “Ron” on Sept, 26, 1987 that outline what Ron Paul’s view on AIDS should be. You will see that these are the positions that Paul’s newsletters took over the years. Rothbard tried to push these views into the Libertarian Party platform at their Seattle convention, but his platform was rejected by the delegates and replaced with a new one, that didn’t push the fear planks that Rothbard advocated.

Rothbard’s views was that Paul should push the idea that people ought to discriminate against people with HIV because every such person was a legitimate threat to others. “We should be emphatic and proclaim it through the land, on the right of doctors and nurses not to treat AIDS patients if they so choose. …Any doctor or nuse should have the right to save their own lives.” “Everyone should have the right to boycott AIDS victims, not associate with them, etc., if they so choose.”Rothbard told Paul “The dangers of homosexual sex have been widely and properly advertised.” And, he said that children with HIV infection should be banned from schools. “AIDS children should not be allowed to attend public schools, and a fortiori, parents should have the right to withdraw their kids if AIDS children are permitted.”Ron Paul took the advice and in 1988 his presidential campaign ran full page ad in the November 6 issue of the New York Times included a plank “Protect the Healthy From AIDS,” which repeated some of Rothbard’s suggestions, though not all. “Dr. Ron Paul, a physician, says that healthy Americans must be free not to associate with AIDS carriers,, and he urges prosecuting as a murderer any AIDS carrier who knowingly spreads the disease, and as a mass murderer any AIDS carrier who sells or donates blood while concealing his condition.” He also said employers have the “right to fire AIDS carriers,” another one of Rothbard’s suggestions.From the late 1980s to the mid 1990s Ron Paul continued to publish articles that consistently scapegoated gay people and individuals with HIV. These positions were not only in Rothbard’s memo to Ron Paul, but appeared in multiple issues of Ron’s newsletter. And he included some the same planks in his 1988 presidential bid. Is he going to argue that he didn’t know what his campaign ads said?

In closing, let me make clear that Ron was fully aware of the newsletters. When he was first asked about them he said he wrote them and said he stood by the words he wrote. In 1996 the Dallas Morning News reported: "Dr. Ron Paul, who is running in Texas' 14th Congressional District, defended his writing in an interview Tuesday. He said they were being taken out of context. ...Dr. Paul denied suggestions that he was a racist and said he was not evoking stereotypes when he wrote the columns. He said they should be read and quoted in their entirety to avoid misrepresentation." The May 23, 1996, Austin American-Statesman quoted a Paul spokesman claiming "Dr. Paul is being quoted out of context." The May 26, 1996 Washington Post said Ron Paul was claiming that his political opponent "was taking his 1992 writings out context." Ron Paul consistently said he wrote the newsletters and his only defense was he was being taken out context.

These 1996 interviews also disprove Ron Paul's lie to CNN recently. When asked about the newsletter Paul refused to answer, preferring to evade the issue by claiming he already addressed the issue elsewhere. He claimed he didn't even know about the content of the newsletters until 10 years after they were published. Most of the newsletters we quote here were written between 1990 and 1994. Paul was publicly claiming authorship of them in 1996. How would it be possible for him to only know about the controversy somewhere between the year 2000 (ten years after 1990) and 2004 (ten years after the 1994 articles) if he was already being asked about the same controversy in 1996?

Paul's new claims regarding him not knowing about this material is unfounded. The staff of the newsletter was small and included his friend and business partner Lew Rockwell, along with Ron’s wife and daughter. The idea that his closest friend, along with his wife and daughter, kept the content of Ron’s publication from him, for more than decade is almost as crazy as his banking conspiracies. It is even crazier to claim this when he was already being challenged about them in 1996.

Murray Rothbard, Lew Rockwell and Scientific Racism

Murray Rothbard, Lew Rockwell and Scientific Racism

The following is reprinted from Holocaust Controversies. It deals primarily with Rothbard and Rockwell, two of the major influences on Ron Paul and two men who have pushed libertarianism into some strange waters indeed.

In his review of Herrnstein and Murray's 'The Bell Curve', Murray Rothbard praised the book for "expressing in massively stupefying scholarly detail what everyone has always known but couldn't dare to express about race, intelligence, and heritability." Rothbard reached the following conclusion:

SO: WHY TALK ABOUT RACE AT ALL?

If, then, the Race Question is really a problem for statists and not for paleos, why should we talk about the race matter at all? Why should it be a political concern for us; why not leave the issue entirely to the scientists?

Two reasons we have already mentioned; to celebrate the victory of freedom of inquiry and of truth for its own sake; and a bullet through the heart of the egalitarian-socialist project. But there is a third reason as well: as a powerful defense of the results of the free market. If and when we as populists and libertarians abolish the welfare state in all of its aspects, and property rights and the free market shall be triumphant once more, many individuals and groups will predictably not like the end result. In that case, those ethnic and other groups who might be concentrated in lower-income or less prestigious occupations, guided by their socialistic mentors, will predictably raise the cry that free-market capitalism is evil and "discriminatory" and that therefore collectivism is needed to redress the balance. In that case, the intelligence argument will become useful to defend the market economy and the free society from ignorant or self-serving attacks. In short; racialist science is properly not an act of aggression or a cover for oppression of one group over another, but, on the contrary, an operation in defense of private property against assaults by aggressors.

Rothbard was proud to be a 'racialist' because racialism exposed the true source of inequality in a free market, namely genetics. A belief in biological racial inequality was, for Rothbard, part of the libertarian project, because racial inequality was simply how markets reflected nature. Moreover, this was no sudden conversion: Rothbard promoted the same view, as early as 1973, here.

Rothbard's article was published in the Rockwell Rothbard Report. His partner in that journal, Lew Rockwell, is the founder and Chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Rothbard and Rockwell were involved in Ron Paul's 1988 Presidential election campaign. In early 2008, this article revealed that "a half-dozen longtime libertarian activists—including some still close to Paul" had identified Rockwell as the "chief ghostwriter" of the Ron Paul newsletters published from "roughly 1989 to 1994." Some of those articles had a racist theme and can be viewed here.

Rothbard advocated support for ex-Klansman David Duke:

It is fascinating that there was nothing in Duke's current program or campaign that could not also be embraced by paleoconservatives or paleo-libertarians; lower taxes, dismantling the bureaucracy, slashing the welfare system, attacking affirmative action and racial set-asides, calling for equal rights for all Americans, including whites: what's wrong with any of that? And of course the mighty anti-Duke coalition did not choose to oppose Duke on any of these issues.

This led one disaffected libertarian to write:

The idea that it's fine to [buddy] up with open racists just because they are for limited government is ridiculous though. Is the idea that with their help it will just be a tiny racist government?

A racist using the pseudonym Peter Bradley posted a tribute to Rothbard, reproduced here:

Murray Rothbard was the founder of modern libertarianism and was also a proponent of voluntary racial separation. I never met Rothbard, but Sam Francis and several others told me he was on the same wavelength as American Renaissance on racial issues. Michael Levin was a frequent contributor to the RRR for the four years I subscribed to it. He wrote very honestly about things such as black crime, race and IQ, and the media whitewash of black failure. Hans Hoppe, who favors immigration, wrote that America could keep its racial identity and still have immigration by selecting immigrants based on IQ and race. Jared Taylor’s book of essays, The Real American Dilemma, received a favorable review by Paul Gottfried in a 1998 issue of RRR. The RRR’s forthrightness on race got it lambasted by David Frum in his 1994 book Dead Right. Frum was particularly displeased about an unflattering essay on the moral character of Martin Luther King.

In 1993, Rothbard wrote about Malcolm X and discussed the possibility of a separate state for blacks, but concluded that it would "require massive "foreign aid" from the U.S.A.". He also described black nationalism as "a phony nationalism" that was "beginning to look like a drive for an aggravated form of coerced parasitism over the white population." The overall impression created by the article was that Rothbard was using black nationalism as a straw man with which to complain about black 'parasitism' and the supposed inability of blacks to form independent, self-sufficient communities without welfare support from whites.

Rothbard stated that "There is no question that black nationalism is a lot more libertarian than the compulsory integration pushed by King, the NAACP, and white liberals." This says more about Rothbard than it does about black nationalism. A separatist state, with restricted migration to 'the USA', does not seem to be a free one, nor would black nationalism in its Muslim form have offered women the range of liberties that Rothbard took for-granted in the case of white men.

Rothbard also advocated during this period that "Cops must be unleashed, and allowed to administer instant punishment, subject of course to liability when they are in error." The implication clearly was that the cops would be white and the recipients black. The latter thus had no entitlement, according to Rothbard, to due process under the law. The irony that a libertarian should believe that public officials ought to possess those draconian powers was lost on Rothbard. As Matt Welch noted, "Empowering police to mete out street justice on dark-skinned youth does not square with any notion of limited government I’m familiar with."

Moreover, Rothbard's Jewish background did not deter him from taking dubious positions relating to Jewish questions. He fixated here on the roles of 'Jewesses' and 'top Jewish financiers' in the rise of the Welfare State, without explaining why their "ethnic" [his term] origin should be relevant. His reference to an 1860's "cohort" of such women did not establish an explanation for the existence of that cohort. He appeared to be inviting readers to draw their own inferences.

Rothbard's public views on antisemitism constituted a minimization strategy. He insisted here on a narrow definition of antisemitism and that Pat Buchanan could not be an antisemite, even though Rothbard cited this article which discusses Buchanan's views on the Treblinka death camp. Although Treblinka 'skepticism' is not proof of antisemitism, it is indicative of a willingness to believe that Jewish witnesses participated in a monstrous fabrication. At the very least, the article showed that Buchanan was 'fellow traveling' with antisemites: "Much of the material on which Buchanan bases his columns is sent to him by pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic cranks." It is therefore revealing that Rothbard omitted any discussion of Buchanan's views on the Holocaust from an article in which Rothbard was supposedly proving that Buchanan was not an antisemite. It suggests that Rothbard was insincere and that his real suspicions concerning Buchanan's views on Jews differed from the conclusions which he expressed in the article. He concealed those suspicions by erecting a straw man definition of antisemitism and excluding beliefs that may have shown that definition to be inadequate.

Rothbard's work on race and politics, eulogized and promoted by Rockwell, therefore poses major problems for his current supporters and potential new followers. Even Ron Paul recognized this problem, belatedly, when he claimed that "Libertarians are incapable of being a racist, because racism is a collectivist idea." If this statement is true, it would mean that Rothbard was not a true libertarian. If the statement is false, it would mean that at least one brand of libertarianism was racist, and Rothbard's present and future supporters must decide if they wish to wear that brand.

Ron Paul: Thunder on the Right

Ron Paul: Thunder on the Right

The following was published by the Libertarian Republican Organizing Committee when Ron Paul was seeking the Libertarian Party nomination. While the alleged author of this piece, it was published anonymously, is now closely allied to Lew Rockwell and is now promoting his own conspiracy theories and dabbling in the very politics he damned here, his original dissection of Ron's extremist views are still worth reading. Note this was converted from a scanned file and some ORC recognition problems may have slipped by us. If you see any mention them in the comments and we will fix them. Otherwise this is an accurate reprint of what LROC claimed at the time.

Reading Alan Crawford's Thunder on the Right: The New Right and the Politics of Resentment, some years ago, we remember being fascinated by the book, but puzzled by its organization. For Crawford coupled his analysis of the John Birch Society, the epitome of all that is authoritarian in the American Right, with a discussion of the libertarian movement. "The Birchites and libertarians," wrote Crawford, "though often at war, represent the tradition of 'entrepreneurial radicalism' (as Richard Hofstader had described the rugged individualist tradition), but the Birchites represent as well a backlash against the 'hot-tub' morality of Hollywood and its 'laid-back' lifestyles."

Highlighting the fact that California's Orange County is a hotbed of both Birchism and libertarianism, Crawford makes his point in the title of the chapter, "The New Old West." "While the libertarians detest and fear the New Right, and find the John Birch Society somewhat comical (a disdain which is returned), there are striking similarities between the two groups. Both the Birchers and the libertarians, so characteristic of the attitudes of the New Old West, are deeply suspicious of... politics in general. ... Both groups are individualist to the bitter end, yearning to get the federal agencies off their backs, the United States out of the U.N., and Uncle Sam's hand out of their pockets and away from their gun holsters."

With this we could not agree. It was, after all, the spring of 1980, and the Libertarian Party seemed to be living up to the vision of a movement that was truly "beyond left and right," as the party theoreticians claimed. Under the tutelage of the Cato Institute, the LP had just run Ed Clark for governor of California, an effort that featured radio ads simultaneously praising Howard Jarvis's tax­cutting Proposition 13 and condemning State Senator John Briggs' Prop. 6, which would have banned all gay teachers from the public schools. Back in those heady days, when Clark's gubernatorial campaign garnered a respectable 5% of the vote and the LP was in its heyday, such an ideological confluence as Crawford suggested seemed utterly fantastic.

Re-reading this chapter of Thunder on the Right seven years later, Crawford's thesis seems uncannily accurate. Today the leading candidate for the LP presidential nomination is Ron Paul, an ex-Republican congressman from Texas, whose farewell speech to the House, delivered on September 19, 1984, is the perfect expression of the Birchite influence on our movement, replete with Welchian references to a conspiracy of "internationalists" intent on destroying America's sovereignty.

The Trilateralists are Coming

"Our problems," says Paul, "have become international in scope due to the nature of the political system and our policies. This need not be, but it is. The financial problems of the Nation, although clearly linked to our deficits and domestic monetary policy, cannot be separated from the international schemes of banking as promoted by the IMF, the World Bank and the Development Banks. It is much clearer to me now, having been in Washington for 7 years, how our banking and monetary policies are closely linked to our foreign policy and controlled by men not motivated to protect the sovereignty of America nor the liberties of our citizens."

This talk: of the "elite"—a word which, Paul uses interchangeably with "the international bankers" and "the internationalists"—runs like a leitmotif throughout the speech. Attacking conservative advocates of massive military spending, Paul scolds them for being naive. "This only serves the inflationists, the internationalists, the banking elite..."

Who are these mysterious, sinister internationalists? Paul is vague on this point. Although he never uses the word "insiders," there is more than a hint of conspiracy in the air. Describing Congress as the captive of special interests, he says: "The errand boy mentality is ordinary-the defender of liberty is seen as bizarre. The elite few who control our money, or foreign policy, and the international banking institutions, in a system designed to keep the welfare rich in diamonds and Mercedes, make the debates on the House and Senate floors nearly meaningless."

If this particular defender of liberty was seen by his colleagues in the House as bizarre, then perhaps it was due to the striking similarity between Paul's rhetoric and that of that other lone nut in the House of Representatives, the late Larry McDonald. A leader of the John Birch Society, McDonald was an anomaly within his own party, a nominal Democrat who denounced both major parties as "dominated by the same forces, internationalist forces that are downplaying national sovereignty" and the Constitution in favor of "international concepts." Like Paul, he sees "internationalism" as the main danger to American liberty; unlike Paul, he was not vague as to the exact identity of the internationalist cabal. "The key leadership in the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderbergers ... the American liberal internationalist establishment [are promoting] international sellout." (Thunder on the Right, p. 135.)

This talk: of the "elite"-a word which, Paul uses interchangeably with "the international bankers" and "the internationalists"—runs like a leitmotif throughout the speech. Attacking conservative advocates of massive military spending, Paul scolds them for being naive. "This only serves the inflationists, the internationalists, the banking elite ... " Who are these mysterious, sinister internationalists? Paul is vague on this point. Although he never uses the word "insiders," there is more than a hint of conspiracy in the air. Describing Congress as the captive of special interests, he says: "The errand boy mentality is ordinary-the defender of liberty is seen as bizarre. The elite few who control our money, or foreign policy, and the international banking institutions, in a system designed to keep the welfare rich in diamonds and Mercedes, make the debates on the House and Senate floors nearly meaningless." Paul's fixation on the evil international bankers—an obsession shared by Lyndon LaRouche and other less savory characters—is echoed in Alan Stang's JBS pamphlet It's Time Expose the Conspiracy. Like Paul, Stang sees the IMF at the center of an internationalist conspiracy. Discussing the IMF’s 1979 rescue operation, which shored up a sinking dollar, Stang quotes right-wing economist Jeremiah Novak's study of "Trilateralism": "The problem with this program is that the IMF would then have the same power over the U.S. as it does over most other nations. The difference is that the U.S. no longer controls the IMF, for Europe and Japan have as much power as does the U.S., and their power is increasing. The IMF will be able, therefore, to dictate to the U.S .... " Then comes the punch line:

"The man who supervised creation of the International Monetary Fund at the close of World War II," says Stang, "was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White, who was later exposed as a Soviet spy."

The specter of a grand conspiracy, a world in which both sides are puppets in the hands of master puppeteers, is the dominant theme of the American ultra-right. It colors—and, I would contend, distorts—their analysis of every issue, from economics to foreign policy. Attacking the conservative hawk who supposedly "appeases and subsidizes the Communists, and never starts the war," and the liberal dove, "the one more likely to involve us in a war to protect democracy," Paul says: "Is this a mere coincidence or is it contrived by those dedicated to internationalism?"

The right-wing myth that U.S. foreign policy failures are due to treason in high places, that America wasn't allowed to win the war in Vietnam because we were stabbed in the back by weak-kneed liberals, is echoed in Paul's farewell address:

"Praising the greatness of the Vietnam veterans and honoring them can never remove the truth of our failed policy that took us there. Resurrecting heroes will never erase the pain and suffering of an interventionist foreign policy that prompted unnecessary military activities and a no-win strategy" [emphasis added]. No doubt the villains are the all­ powerful international bankers who, according to Paul, control U.S. foreign policy and "are not motivated to protect the sovereignty of America."

This standard right-wing revisionist history is expanded on by Stang, who traces the pattern of betrayal all the way back to the Korean War. "The traitors did the same thing in Vietnam. How many times must this happen before we get the point? Again we entered the war under the auspices of the United Nations, through our membership in the South East Asian Treaty Organization, a U.N. subsidiary. Again we couldn't win it because our own C.F.R. leaders wouldn't let us. " According to Stang—and Ron Paul—the reason Vietnam was a bad war was because we didn't win.

Whatever their superficial differences, Paul and the Birchers share the same crankish mind set. Although they may argue as to the exact identity of the conspirators—whether they refer to the Trilateral Commission, the CFR, "international bankers," the Bilderbergers, or (a LaRouche favorite) the Queen of England—the shared vocabulary of the nutty Right is the rhetoric of conspiracy.

This hyperbolic fantasy world, the shared worldview of the Birchite Right, is always presented in a tone of the utmost urgency. The rhetoric of conspiracy is almost always accompanied by visions of apocalypse. The Birchers used to publish a yearly map of the world, with the Communist-controlled areas in various shades of red. The last installment showed the continental U.S. a bright pink which, according to the key, indicated the area was 65% Communist-dominated.

Like the Birchers, whose anti-"internationalist" rhetoric he parrots, Ron Paul rejects the idea that free market ideology has made any gains in the Reagan years. "Repealing the welfare state may be popular with a growing number of frustrated American citizens, but that attitude is not yet reflected in Washington." Things are bad and getting worse. "It's highly unlikely that we'll reach the 1990's without a convulsion of our political and economic system," says Paul. "Although nothing goes up or down in a straight line, we can be sure the long term will bring us ever-increasing interest rates—higher with each cycle and over 20 percent before this cycle completes itself in 1986 or 1987."

In the hopped-up world of the political cult—whether it be the Marxists predicting the sudden collapse of capitalism or the Birchers predicting the end of U.S. national sovereignty—apocalypse is always right around the comer. Paul is more dramatic, and more explicit than most. Interest rates will reach "unbelievable heights in this decade." No doubt the evil international bankers are responsible for this one. "There will come a day," says Paul, "when the world finanaciers will rush from dollars just as they have recently rushed into dollars." He predicts "chaos in the international financial markets," "massive debt liquidation," and an "inflationary collapse." "The form of timing of the collapse are yet to be determined; the event itself is certain." All of this—a major banking, currency, economic, and political crisis"—will supposedly "hit this Nation and the western world, most likely before the 1990's."

This wild-eyed millennialism is characteristic of all fringe political movements, and is a device utilized by religious cults as well, notably the Seventh Day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses. These groups are forever forecasting universal destruction. Some, like the early Adventists—and Ron Paul—even set a specific date for Armageddon. The Adventists found, however, that the popularity of their sect plummeted when the appointed day arrived and the End was nowhere in sight. Ron Paul and his followers would do well to heed the Adventist example and stay vague about dates.

Like his Bircher allies and brothers-in-spirit, Ron Paul is an avid defender of South Africa's racist apartheid regime. "The shortcomings of South Africa's apartheid system are denounced continuously by the same politicians who ignore the fact that in communist countries dissidents aren't segregated; they are shot or sent to concentration camps. In comparison, segregation is seen as more vicious than the exiling and the killing of the political dissidents in Russia. South Africa, for its defective system of civil liberties, is banned from the Olympics, while we beg the murdering communists to come."

A system which denies the black majority the right to vote, to own property, to travel freely, to live as human beings, is described as merely a "defective system of civil liberties." Apartheid is reduced to "segregation," as if the wholesale enslavement of the black population was not involved. Paul seems to think that poor persecuted South Africa is getting a bum rap, picked on by pinko liberals who "beg the murdering communists to come" to the Olympics.

What Paul misses is that the world has seen what happens when racist ideology is allowed to take and keep power in a Western, industrialized state; South Africa's status as an international pariah is inextricably linked to memories of the Holocaust and the determination that it shall not happen again.

Blind to the oppression of millions of black South Africans, Paul is a fanatic on the subject of the "rights" of the fetus. "Government responsibility to protect life and liberty becomes muddled when the Government and courts chosen to protect them under the guise of privacy and civil liberties, totally ignore the real issue. The abortionist who makes a fortune dropping fetuses and infants into buckets, instead of being restrained by government, is encouraged by the courts and the law. Some show greater concern for the lives of seals than for the life of a human baby."

At a time when the Reaganites are determined to leave their mark on future generations by stacking the Supreme Court and reversing Roe vs. Wad, is the Libertarian Party really going to nominate an anti-abortion activist for Presidents of the United States? If anything is a clear indication that some in the LP have hitched their wagon to the New Right, then this is it.

"Unwitting allies, [libertarians and Birchers] usually end up voting in what must be, for them, a distressingly similar manner, against the liberals," wrote Alan Crawford, in 1980. "When it comes time to put aside discussions of ideology and enter the voting booth to choose between the candidates before them, they reject liberalism and function as supporters (grudgingly or otherwise) of the New Right." This thesis, startling back in 1980, was years ahead of its time. The nomination of Ron Paul will be proof enough of that.

What is "Libertarian Populism"?

In his apologia for Ron Paul, which is being distributed by the campaign, Murray Rotbard claims that "the exciting thing about the Ron Paul campaign is that he will push for a resurrection of the Old Right (that's the old­old Right, the pre-National Review right), the right-wing of Taft and Bricker and Wherry ... Ron Paul believes, and I agree, that there are millions of Americans who are instinctive Old Rightists, or libertarian populists, who have been confused and bewildered by decades of Establishment propaganda, and who are there waiting for someone to supply articulation and leadership to resurrect the old cause.

The reality is that, in the unlikely event Ron Paul resurrects anything, it is likely to be the Same Old Right of Robert Welch, Gary Allen and Larry McDonald. As for the alleged appeal of some strange hybrid known as "libertarian populism," the truth of the matter is that this is an exotic brand of populism indeed. Far from appealing to the average, everyday voter, Paul's perfervid rhetoric denouncing the nefarious "internationalists" and the evil bankers will appeal only to convinced ultra-rightists. "We have before us a rare and remarkable opportunity to seize the moment,” fantasizes Rothbard, “to leave at long last the era of the small club and the study group and leap into the mainstream of history.” But Paul’s Birchite line will narrow rather than broaden the LP political horizons. His hate-the-bankers line will only make sense to the minuscule constituencies of the American Independent Party and the Liberty Lobby-inspired Populist Party, which regularly excoriate the evils of “internationalist bankers and “international Zionist-Communist conspiracy” in the same breath. (In these circles, the former is a code word for the latter.)

Rothbard claims that the purpose of the campaign will be to "mobilize a coalition of Americans who are exercised over one or more libertarian goals." In fact, it will mobilize only a dubious and unstable coalition with an embarrassing array of right-wing extremists. As an admirer of "tax protester" Gordon Kohl, the right-wing terrorist and leader of the anti-Semitic Posse Comitatus, no doubt Rothbard considers this a good thing.1

The real clue as to the nature of the campaign Rothbard envisions is his list of the campaign's basic themes. First and foremost is: "(1) opposition to taxes. Specifically, as 'the only fair tax,' abolition of the income tax, and the passage of the Liberty Amendment."

Incredibly, the number one issue of the Libertarian Party's 1988 campaign is to be the Liberty Amendment, the Birch-sponsored right-wing "mass movement" of the Fifties which never really got off the ground. For years Robert Welch exhorted his followers to put the Liberty Amendment at the head of their agenda; in the JBS Bulletin, it always appeared near the top of the Leader's long list of things members ought to be doing. Welch's latter day followers are still at the old stand, trying to get their panacea approved by have before us a rare and remarkable state legislatures. This is "the old cause" that opportunity to seize the moment," fantasizes Rothbard and Ron Paul hope to resurrect—a "mass movement" that has been stalled for decades.

What this strategy makes crystal clear is that Rothbard & Co. have decided to write off the vast majority of the American people, and instead focus on the fringe, specifically members and sympathizers of the John Birch Society and the rest of the right-wing fever swamp.

The rest of Paul's agenda fits in nicely with this central theme; in addition to "ultra­hard money" (i.e. the gold standard) Rothbard lists: "(3) personal liberty. That means opposition to the draft, to draft registration, to drug laws, sodomy laws, or ... gun control." In other words, we will hear about nothing but the evils of gun control and, on occasion, the draft. Number four is "all-out opposition to foreign intevention", which means abolition of foreign aid and an explicit call "to bring the boys back home." Naturally there is to be no mention of nuclear arms control-that would turn off the Liberty Amendment crowd (remember, the Liberty Amendment is to be the top priority). Besides, the Old Right didn't have to deal with nuclear weapons and hi-tech horrors like Star Wars-which is why Paul is able to graft support for SDI and opposition to all arms talks onto his peculiar brand of "isolationism."

Paul's foreign policy pronouncements exude a distinctly nativist undertone, because xenophobia permeates his entire worldview. In his Farewell Address to Congress, he rhapsodizes on the glorious future that awaits us if only we can reduce Federal spending by 80%. "The budget will be immediately balanced and the debt repaid. No more wealth will be transferred to the poor, the rich, the foreigner, the bankers, or the arms manufacturers." [emphasis added] For shame.

What emerges from Rothbard's call to support Ron Paul is the unmistakable yearning for some kind of mass influence, no matter what the cost to principle. "Libertarianism does not have to be a small movement, confined to a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand people. We have to realize that... libertarianism was a mighty mass movement, commanding the allegiance of a large number, often a large majority of the population.” If he has to settle for the Birchers, and the denizens of the nativist American Right, then so be it.

Satan's words in Paradise Lost—"Better to reign in Hell then serve in Heaven"--certainly characterize not only the spirit of Rothbard's politics, but also the politics of the Paul campaign. Both are a prescription for disaster.

1. Rothbard discontinued his Reason column when editor Bob Poole refused to publish his paean to Kohl. He submitted it to Libertarian Vanguard. where the editorial board chose to kill it rather than nm it alongside a response from one of the editors.

Our notes: This analysis of Ron Paul was written prior to the Ron Paul newsletter scandal. It accurately laid out the numerous themes that Ron Paul and his newsletter would promote for the next several years. More importantly it laid out how the Ron Paul team planned a "libertarian populist" theme to appeal to the nativist elements in America. After the scandal with the Ron Paul newsletters and their various bigoted and conspiracist themes Reason magazine went back into history and showed how this "populist" agenda was actively planned out. It should be noted that these "populist" themes that Paul pushed began a transformation of libertarianism away from its original classical liberal principles and toward a Right-wing conservative worldview that often clashes violent with genuine libertarianism. The author of the article is now associated closely with Lew Rockwell and is attacking people who says things similar to what he originally said in this piece.

For the Reason article detailing the plan by Rockwell, Rothbard and Paul to reach out to the extreme Right go here.