It seems that a lowly reporter Ben Swann, at Reality Check, Fox 19, not the high-powered motor-mouths at the big papers, has got the name of the writer of that allegedly racist issue of Ron Paul’s old newsletter. It was..er..on the newsletter – what a shock, eh?

The writer is… allegedly… one James B. Powell.

The blog truthsquad.tv has done a nifty bit of research on the timeline. What it shows is that the only racist newsletters ever produced by Ron Paul were reports by Powell including the one Kirchik brings up, “How to Protect Yourself From Urban Violence,” written for The Ron Paul Strategy Guide, and was specifically about racial violence.

And, what’s even more interesting, he points out, is that James Kirchik, the gay New Republic writer who dug up the Ron Paul newsletter and made an issue of it four years ago, and made it an issue again recently, and yet again recently, has gone on record to said there was no name on that report (there wasn’t in the scans they published)…. even though there clearly was in the link provided at TNR.

Kirchik is a Fellow with the neoconservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, to which most hawks belong, including former presidential candidate Steve Forbes. Forbes has backed social conservative Rick Perry, not Ron Paul. In New Hampshire, one poll cited by the Washington Times shows Perry at 1% to Paul’s 24%.

And, even though Kirchik claimed not to have seen the name, many detractors of Ron Paul have tried to stick it to his supporters/associates. The detractors include David Weigel of establishment libertarian Reason magazine, allegedly in bed with the neo-conservative Koch brothers, and also Larry Kudlow of the popular financial show Kudlow & Cramer (that’s Jim Cramer, target of Patrick Byrne’s Deep Capture website on financial corruption). Both were ready to suggest the racist author was Lew Rockwell, the publisher of the popular Ron Paul-endorsing Lew Rockwell blog and the founder of the libertarian Mises Institute, which Ron Paul often cites in his books. Note that Cramer’s nemesis Patrick Byrne supports Ron Paul.

Lew Rockwell has several times denied being the author. So has Ron Paul. Still, that hasn’t stopped people from irresponsible smears. Some have even floated the notion that Murray Rothbard wrote the piece.

Rothbard, being dead, has not been able to say anything about the subject.

But those of us who aren’t dead would like to point out what a clear instance of intentional sliming this seems to have been. It really looks like Kirchik knew who had written the letters and yet publicly attached Paul’s name to them.

[Note added, 1/6/2012] Of course, offensive as the views expressed might be, they are in fact the views not of a minority in this country (although only a minority would publicly endorse them or apologize for them, I’m sure). They are, in my outsider opinion, the views of a majority of the country.

That’s the real reason for the hysteria. If those kinds of views weren’t widespread, a savvy newsletter writer wouldn’t use that language, now, would he?

But that leaves us with this to ponder –  why are democrats always so threatened by the demos?]

Here’s the analysis from truthsquad tv:

“Starting as far back as 1976, Congressman Paul published a newsletter. It has gone by several names. The Ron Paul Political Report, The Ron Paul Investment Letter, etc.

That newsletter was largely an investment newsletter, dealing with currency, gold and investments. That was the case from 1976 to 1988.

Over the course of those 144 editions, no racist content.

To understand this story, you have to look at the timeline.

In 1984 Paul gave up his seat in Congress when he made an unsuccessful run for the Senate.

In 1985 he went back to Texas to continue to practice medicine full time as an OB-GYN.

His return to politics as a Congressman was in 1996.

In 2007 when Congressman Paul was last running for president, a newspaper called The New Republic found copies hard copies of the newsletters, and these, they reported, were filled with racist, anti-homosexual and conspiracy oriented content.

So lets talk content.

In all, the Ron Paul newsletters were released on a monthly basis for 20 years. That means there were no fewer than 240 editions published.

There are a total of 20 editions of the Ron Paul newsletters, which have passages or sections of racist, bigoted, or anti homosexual language, as well as conspiracy theories.

Since the conspiracy theories, aren’t really the issue here, lets stay on focus and talk about the racist passages.

The way The New Republic newspaper stacks it, the total number of newsletter editions with racist passages is not 20 but actually 9 newsletters.

Lets look at those 9.

I told you that Congressman Paul was fully out of Congress at the beginning on 1985.

The first racist passage shows up in October 1990. The next month, in November of 1990 a reference to David Duke. The following month, in December, 1990, the author attacks Martin Luther King Jr. Then in February of 1991, another newsletter has passages trashing Dr. King’s legacy.

So what we have here, racist passages show up from October of 1990 to February of 1991. 4 out of 5 consecutive months.

A lapse of about a year goes by, 15 months to be exact.

Then, in June 1992, a “Special Edition on Racial Terrorism,” focusing on race riots in Los Angeles. One month later, in the very next edition he wrote about black rage. The final report where we see racist tones is 6 months later in a passage about the disappearing white majority.”

And this is what truth tv has to say about Kirchik:

I found, when researching this story that back in 1997 the original author of The New Republic article, James Kirchick, explained that most of the newsletters had no byline.

Specifically, none of those racist newsletters had a byline, says Kirchick, except for one.

One newsletter that contained the byline of someone else, not Congressman Paul.

But Kirchick fails to disclose two very important things: who’s name was in that byline, and which article they wrote.

He only states that the mystery writer wrote “One special edition” of the Ron Paul Report.

The only special edition I can find is the 1992 article, “A Special Report on Racial Terrorism.”

Why is that important? Because this edition of the newsletter that is most often quoted to prove racism.

So does that mean the most racist evidence in these newsletters actually has someone else’s name on it?

I don’t know, but I’d like to find out.

I have repeatedly tried for 2 weeks to contact The New Republic and James Kirchick to get an answer as to which special report had another author’s byline, I’m still waiting to hear back.”

Lila:

An editor’s note to the post at truthsquad TV claims that James B. Powell works at Forbes, but when I double-checked, it looked like they got the wrong person.

The Powell at Forbes has a career that doesn’t match the profile of our guy. More likely is the James B. Powell of  powellreport.com, although we’ll have to wait to confirm.

I think that’s why CNN has apparently pulled the original piece. Anyway, the page now returns an error.

[Correction, Jan 7, 2012:

While I need to get more details, a second look at the two resumes, shows some match ups. The Forbes director, whom I won’t link until I find out more, does include finance and science as his background.

The newsletter writer has a background in science and finance too.  The newsletter writer puts out an advisory for physicians. The Forbes director apparently has a background in medicine. More to follow.]

And here is James Powell’s website (or rather, the website for his current newsletter, Jim Powell’s Global Changes and Opportunities Report), which has an account of his career as a newsletter writer:

“Jim Powell has an extensive background in both the sciences and finance which has made his market analysis and timely stock selections highly valued among both private and professional investors for over 25 years. Before starting his current newsletter, Global Changes and Opportunities Report, Jim produced Growth Stock Alert and was the research director of the popular investment service, ValuTALK which was distributed worldwide on CD and audio cassette tape. Jim is also the founding editor of the investment newsletters, High Tech Investor, Technology Stock News, and the Physicians Financial Advisor.

Jim is the author of two books, The Dow Jones Irwin Guide to High Tech Investing and Super Investment Trends. He has also produced a number of Consumer Guides® for non-professional investors including, Best Rated Investments from $1,000 to $10,000 and the always popular series, Where To Put Your Investments In (current year). Additionally, Jim has contributed to many popular periodicals including USA Today, Business Week, Barron’s, and Time.

Jim Powell is a frequent speaker at the annual New Orleans Investment Conference where he presents his Top Picks For The New Year. He is the only speaker who consistently tells his audience how his previous stock recommendations performed..

In addition to his publications and public presentations, Jim Powell provides specialized investment services to private clients through his firm, James B. Powell and Associates.”

Lila: Note that the “New Orleans Investment Conference” is one of the best-known conferences of its kind.

It was founded by James Blanchard (of Blanchard Coins):

“Founded in 1974 by legendary entrepreneur James U. Blanchard III, the Conference is now in its 39th consecutive year. It ranks as the preeminent gathering of private investors and attracts wealthy individuals from all 50 states and over 35 nations.”

Contrary to misinformed opinion about pagan religions, Hindu ethics do not support abortion, and condemn it on similar, but slightly more nuanced, grounds than traditional Christian ethics. Thus Vasu Murty and Mary Derr write in “Abortion is Bad Karma”:

“Hindu scriptures refer to abortion as garha-batta (womb killing) and bhroona hathya (killing the undeveloped soul). A hymn in the Rig Veda (7.36.9, RvP, 2469) begs for protection of fetuses. The Kaushitaki Upanishad (3.1 UpR, 774) draws a parallel between abortion and the killing of one’s parents. The Atharva Veda (6.113.2 HE, 43) remarks that the fetus slayer, or brunaghni, is among the greatest of sinners (6.113.2). (4)

In modern times, India’s greatest apostle of nonviolence, Mohandas Gandhi, has written: “It seems to me clear as daylight that abortion would be a crime.” (5) The international periodical Hinduism Today acknowledges: “Across the board, Hindu religious leaders perceive abortion at any stage of fetal development as killing (some say murder)…and as an act that has serious karmic repercussions.” For example, Swami Kamalatmananda of the Ramakrishna Monastery in Madras, India, has said: “No human being has the right to destroy the fetus. If having a baby is economically and socially problematic, one can very well take precautions to avoid such unwanted birth rather than killing the baby. Precaution is better than destruction.” (6)

Life, per se, is not the reason. That is the materialist point of view, which apparently has been adopted by many Christians.

Rather, it is the presence of the human (developed) soul within life that makes killing especially abominable. Otherwise, the killing of plants and animals (which are also sentient lives) would be equally reprehensible.  Traditional Hindus, in fact, do consider killing animal life, especially certain forms connected with religious worship or the nourishment of human beings, to be heinous.

I consider this not to be indicative of the inferiority of pagan ethics, but in this instance, of their superiority.

The entry of the human soul, according to Hindus, occurs early in the development of the foetus, but not necessarily at the same moment of actual conception. It varies with the individual, according to astrological texts I have studied. The special consequences attaching to killing a human soul arise because of the greater scope it affords for the soul to realize its karma, free itself from its samskaras and attain moksha and not simply because of the presence of life in the physical body.

This again is in accord with the teachings of Jesus, who said to the Jews that God could make as many sons of Abraham as there were grains of sand, if he wanted. That is, creation of physical vehicles (genetic material) was easy enough. The attainment and development of the soul was something else.

A sample of the range of Hindu views is given at Hinduism Today

Brahma Kumaris

“The Brahma Kumaris view the body as a physical vehicle for the immortal soul, and therefore the issue is not “pro-life” or “anti-life” but a choice between the amount of suffering caused to the souls of the parents and child in either course, abortion or motherhood. They view existing legislation in America as fair and reasonable, with the proviso that abortion after the 4th month should be avoided except in medical emergencies, since in their view the soul enters the fetus in the 4th to 5th month.

Krishna Consciousness

ISKCON calls the 1.3 million abortions done in America last year “a kind of doublethink,” whereby people deny the status of humanity to the fetus. “According to Vedic literature an eternal individual soul inhabits the body of every living creature…The soul enters the womb at the time of conception, and this makes the fetus a living, individual person.” All forms of contraceptives, says ISKCON, and the act of abortion, “interfere with nature’s arrangement to provide a soul with a new body and are therefore bound to result in unfavorable karmic reaction…If you don’t want to suffer the reactions…then don’t have sex unless you want to have a child.

Vedanta Society

Swami Bhashyananda, President of the Vivekananda Vedanta Society of Chicago, says that “under no circumstances the jiva should be destroyed. That is uniformly stated, from the point of conception onward. When such questions are asked, we advise them not to perform abortions…One has to try one’s level best to save mother and child both. And beyond these efforts, whatever happens is God’s will. But we do not have any opinion on this matter in this country, nor do we get involved in it in India. If people seek our advice, we give our advice.”

A good general account of the flexible but generally anti-abortion stance of Hinduism is given in this BBC article:

“Hindu medical ethics stem from the principle of ahimsa – of non-violence.

When considering abortion, the Hindu way is to choose the action that will do least harm to all involved: the mother and father, the foetus and society.

Hinduism is therefore generally opposed to abortion except where it is necessary to save the mother’s life.

Classical Hindu texts are strongly opposed to abortion:

One text compares abortion to the killing of a priest
Another text considers abortion a worse sin than killing one’s parents
Another text says that a woman who aborts her child will lose her caste

Traditional Hinduism and many modern Hindus also see abortion as a breach of the duty to produce children in order to continue the family and produce new members of society.

Many Hindus regard the production of offspring as a ‘public duty’, not simply an ‘individual expression of personal choice’ (see Lipner, “The classical Hindu view on abortion and the moral status of the unborn” 1989).

In practice, however, abortion is practiced in Hindu culture in India, because the religious ban on abortion is sometimes overruled by the cultural preference for sons. This can lead to abortion to prevent the birth of girl babies, which is called ‘female foeticide’.
The status of the foetus in Hinduism

The soul and the matter which form the foetus are considered by many Hindus to be joined together from conception.

According to the doctrine of reincarnation a foetus is not developing into a person, but is a person from a very early stage. It contains a reborn soul and should be treated appropriately.

By the ninth month the foetus has achieved very substantial awareness.

According to the Garbha Upanishad, the soul remembers its past lives during the last month the foetus spends in the womb (these memories are destroyed during the trauma of birth).

The Mahabharata refers to a child learning from its father while in the womb.”

As a libertarian, my own pro-choice position doesn’t stem from believing that killing a late-stage foetus is not murder in a moral sense. It comes from my belief that as long as it is within the mother’s body (and in my opinion, even for a year later), it is not a matter for the state to judge.

It is a matter, first, for the conscience of the mother and father, and then for the entire family, including the grandparents, since genetic material from them is involved, and since very often the grandparents’ resources and time have gone into nurturing the mother or father specifically for the continuation of the family.

Terminating the pregnancy, thus, is a moral decision, with the mother and father, at the forefront, but the grandparents, especially, fully involved. But politicizing the matter, as the west does, is also counterproductive.

Moreover, the Hindu notion of marriage is I believe closer to the original position taught by Jesus:

YOGIRAJ SWAMI BU of the Indo-American Yoga-Vedanta Society writes:

“According to Hindus, if a man is married once in his lifetime, he is considered married the rest of his life. The death of his wife, or divorce, or living separately from his wife would not alter his marital status. Such a man is no longer considered a brahmachari or a celibate or unmarried. For Hindus, there is no such thing as “a man was married but is not married now.”

This seems to be very close to the attitude of Jesus. Recall the time when he encountered the Samaritan at the well and asked her to bring her husband.

She said she didn’t have one. Jesus responded by telling her that she’d had five husbands, not one, but that she was correct to say she didn’t have one, because the man living with her when they spoke was not her husband.

In other words, Jesus, like Moses, didn’t recognize the woman’s divorces/separations, but counted as her husbands all the men she’d lived with.

Joseph Sobran:

“But the most intense persecution of Christianity occurred not in the Roman Empire, but in the twentieth century, especially in the Communist world. A large part of this story, hidden and ignored, is told in a new book by Robert Royal, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century (Crossroad Publishing).

It is hard to tabulate or even estimate the number of Catholics and other Christians murdered by modern tyrannies. The figure certainly runs into the tens of millions, though it isn’t always easy to distinguish between those killed specifically for their religion and those killed for other reasons, ethnic and social. But contrary to recent slanders, the Nazis as well as the Communists regarded the Catholic Church as their mortal enemy.

After World War II, Communism’s triumph in Catholic Central Europe – the bitter fruit of the Anglo-American alliance with the Soviet Union – brought ferocious assaults on Catholics. Yet, as Royal observes, surprisingly few renounced their faith even in the face of torture and death.

The measure of these Catholics’ courage is suggested by part of one Jesuit’s summary of the tortures they suffered in Albanian prison camps:

Most of them were beaten on their bare feet with wooden clubs; the fleshy part of the legs and buttocks were cut open, rock salt inserted beneath the skin, and then sewn up again; their feet, placed in boiling water until the flesh fell off, were then rubbed with salt; their Achilles’ tendons were pierced with hot wires. Some were hung by their arms for three days without food; put in ice and icy water until nearly frozen; had electrical wires placed in their ears, nose, mouth, genitals, and anus; burning pine needles placed under fingernails; forced to eat a kilo of salt and having water withheld for 24 hours; boiled eggs put in their armpits; teeth pulled without anaesthetic; tied behind vans and dragged; left in solitary confinement without food or water until almost dead; forced to drink their own urine and eat their own excrement; put in pits of excrement up to their necks; put on a bed of nails and covered with heavy material; put in nail-studded cages which were then rotated rapidly….

As Royal, a Dante scholar, remarks: “The sorrowful litany shows an inventiveness in torture surpassing the punishments that Dante, one of the great human imaginations of all time, displayed in writing his Inferno.” No less horrible than the sheer conception of these torments is the fact that men were found who could be paid to inflict them without fainting.

Yet the martyrs not only died willingly, but often died forgiving and blessing their killers, in the very spirit of Christ. Royal recounts similar stories – amazing, sickening, inspiring – from Russia, Ukraine, Mexico, Spain, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Latin America, China, Korea, Vietnam, Africa, and elsewhere. Christ’s warnings are still being borne out.

Why hasn’t all this been told before? It’s not surprising that the liberal Western media should ignore it; what is very surprising is that American Catholics have ignored the plight of their brethren. But prosperous American Catholics are a self-absorbed lot, too obsessed with contraception and women priests to spare much thought for those who are far worse off.

As the brave Romanian Bishop Iuliu Hirtea put it before his death in the 1970s: “It is not we who keep silence here. It is not we who are the Church of Silence, but the members of the Church in the free world who are the real Church of Silence, for they do not speak on our behalf.”

Christian Science Monitor:

“The GOP nominee, whether Romney or Santorum, will be staunchly in favor of a military option, if needed, to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon … He or she will be opposed to slashing defense,” wrote conservative Jennifer Rubin on her Washington Post blog, Right Turn, in a piece titled, “Credit Santorum with sinking Ron Paul.”

That said, Paul’s clearly going to remain a factor throughout the race, perhaps all the way to the GOP convention in Tampa, Fla. It’s possible he’ll be a force shaping the GOP going forward. That’s his follower’s dream – and perhaps Mitt Romney’s (or Rick Santorum’s, or Newt Gingrich’s) nightmare.

“If Ron Paul comes to the convention with 100s of delegates – he can veto the veep pick, shape the platform, cause a ruckus in Tampa,” tweeted ABC political reporter Terry Moran on Tuesday night.”

Comment:

Rubin, who has a column at Human Events, comes out of the school of  neo-conservative hawks.  That being the case, her support of Romney has led her into bizarre contradictions of her past positions, notes Jonathan Chait at New York magazine. Whereas she now suggests moderation on both the issue of moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, as well the pardoning of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, she was a strong advocate of both before, says Chait:

“Here she is last year praising the Jerusalem Embassy Act, and lauding Marco Rubio for pledging to move the embassy to Jerusalem. Oh, and you can read her here, here and here writing approvingly of the movement to pardon Pollard. You can only imagine how she would have responded if, in 2008, Obama had given the same remarks Romney made yesterday.”

The intellectual contortions have annoyed Jeffrey Lord of The American Spectator:

“…to pretend that Rubin’s continual swipes at others (Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Perry) are anything other than her inability to control a serious case of Establishment-media approved Romneyphilia is not something that will be allowed by her readers.”

Apparently, actual conservatism is not needed to be a conservative candidate. The only thing really essential to this kind of contentless “conservatism” is support for imperial might, we’d guess.

And so it is. Hunting around, we came across a piece in Salon that explains Rubin’s position on defense.

The Salon piece notes her endorsement of a singularly revolting rant by Rachel Abrams, who is the wife of Eliot Abrams of Iran-Contra fame, the step-daughter of leading neoconservative thinker Norm Podhoretz, and a Board Member of Bill Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI). The rant Rubin retweets goes in part like this:

“Then round up [Gilad Shalit’s] captors, the slaughtering, death-worshiping, innocent-butchering, child-sacrificing savages who dip their hands in blood and use women—those who aren’t strapping bombs to their own devils’ spawn and sending them out to meet their seventy-two virgins by taking the lives of the school-bus-riding, heart-drawing, Transformer-doodling, homework-losing children of Others—and their offspring—those who haven’t already been pimped out by their mothers to the murder god—as shields, hiding behind their burkas and cradles like the unmanned animals they are, and throw them not into your prisons, where they can bide until they’re traded by the thousands for another child of Israel, but into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose.”

So that’s why Jennifer Rubin thinks US defense should never, ever be cut…

The Guardian reported on Jan. 2, 2011:

“The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has lost his high court appeal against extradition to Sweden to face rape allegations.

Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Ouseley on Wednesday handed down their judgment in the 40-year-old Australian’s appeal against a European arrest warrant issued by Swedish prosecutors after rape and sexual assault accusations made by two Swedish women following his visit to Stockholm in August 2010.”

Ron Paul Dominates The Iowa Youth Vote, Nextgen.com

“At Tuesday night’s Iowa caucuses, Mitt Romney won by a narrow eight votes over Rick Santorum, but Ron Paul dominated among the youth. In fact, of the 18,000 Iowans under the age of 30 who participated in the GOP Caucuses last night, Paul earned the support of 48%, according to data collected by CIRCLE. Rick Santorum came in second with 23%, while Romney gathered just 14% support.

According to those numbers, roughly 8,800 young people caucused for Ron Paul last night. And while that’s still far less than the estimated 30,000 young Iowans who supported Barack Obama in the 2008 caucus, it’s very substantial. Young voters supported Ron Paul in a much higher percentage than any other age group supported any candidate.”

Comment:

I think this confirms quite thoroughly my long-held suspicion that one of Ron Paul’s largest bases is young people. It’s only natural. Young people are still young enough and idealistic enough to be attracted by purist consistency and repelled by the nature of war. And, of course, the economic situation they inherit has the largest effect on their lives for the longest time.

Nothing wrong with that.

However, it does mean that if Ron Paul wants to win over more adult voters, he has to make a more persuasive case than he’s made so far that he would be able to roll-back empire without playing into the hands of those who have an agenda to undermine the country, not merely limit government/empire.

At LRC blog, support by Pimco’s Bill Gross for Ron Paul, is being taken as a good thing, because, supposedly, it shows he’s changing the establishment. My response to that is a bit more circumspect. Hmmm. There are some people you’d rather have opposing you, so extensive is their history of carrying water for the establishment.

Likewise, Paul’s uncritical support for Wikileaks, Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, and  OccupyWallStreet, probably brought him a lot of support among young anarchists and gave him a boost in visibility. But just as likely they lost him the support of more cynical adults who don’t see these leakers, hackers and occupiers (trendy masks, anarchist rhetoric and all) as quite the unadulterated forces for good the media deems them to be.

It’s the embrace of facile positions like these, among other things, that have made me distinctly ambiguous about Paul since 2008.

Only the passage of the horrible NDAA has made me change my stance, although none of my misgivings. Even so, I wonder at the timing of the NDAA – its coincidence with the sudden discovery of chat logs that prove that Assange helped Manning hack into military computers….and some other coincidences I’ll not mention for now.

There are layers of deception here. Let’s just say there are no messiahs on white horses, even in the case of this likeable southern gentleman-politician.

And then, there’s the rigidity of thinking that frequently goes along with naivete of perception.

Not that I think non-interventionism, or, if you prefer, isolationism, is necessarily a naive position. Not at all. Far better to stick with what you know and avoid meddling in matters you know nothing about. But that’s not the situation that presents itself in American foreign policy at this point. We have already meddled...and meddled…and meddled. The real question now is how to successfully extricate ourselves both from our meddling and from the consequences of our meddling. That is an entirely different thing, both analytically and morally.

But in a time and place where appearances count for everything and people are eager to hear what they want to hear, I don’t expect anyone to either note such nuances or care much about them.

More’s the pity.

Butler Shaeffer:

“Ron [Paul] is doing quite well for a candidate who, one statist  twit warns us, only opposes federal policies because he wants to establish, at the state level, a male dominated religion that will stone gays to death!”

Mike Whitney in Counterpunch:

“It’s a question of priorities, right? So, what’s more important; ending the bloodletting or some potential threat to Social Security?

Paul will stop the killing. We should use our vote to do the same.”

Neo-Hindu medical guru Deepak Chopra:

“The highest form of intelligence you can have is to observe yourself. Let it go at that. You don’t need to judge, you don’t need to analyze, you don’t even need to change. This is the key to life: the ability to reflect, the ability to know yourself, the ability to pause for a second before reacting automatically.”

“The worst thing you can do is be a conformist and buy into conformity. It’s the worst possible thing. It’s better to be outrageous…better to hang out with the sages, the people open to possibilities, even the psychotics. You never know where you’ll find the geniuses of our society.”

WHAT RON PAUL REALLY MEANS FOR AFRICAN AMERICANS

This is a clip from 2008, but the reasons she cites have only multiplied and become more powerful:

Ending the war on drugs – Ending the war on guns – Ending the prison-industrial complex – Returning the schools to the people – Ending welfare dependency – Ending unjust foreign wars – Truth – Freedom – Coming together.

Ron Paul Brings People Together
(while the media divides them)

Speaker (African-American woman who supports Ron Paul):

Black people, African Americans, people of color, whatever you want to call yourself, don’t be afraid. We cannot vote for people based on the color of their skin. We cannot vote for people based on their gender. We have to look at the truth.

This war on drugs is killing our children, it’s killing our families, it’s killing our communities.

This war on guns is killing our children, it’s killing our families.

There are too many of our men sitting in prison.

There are too many black women without husbands because young black boys are struggling in school.

We need the education system turned back to the states. And we need to get rid of these federal (not clear).

So we can build our families back, and love each other and take care of each other.

Don’t be afraid. Take a stand. Believe in the truth.

I just heard Barack Obama is going to send a 100,000 more troops.

He said that I think in March. I am really against the war. I have a 12 year old son who is brilliant. I come from a family of veterans so I have no problem with people fighting for your country.

But we need to fight in just wars.

Nobody matches Ron Paul in telling the truth as they know it.

I don’t want to call them liars. We want to be tasteful here.

But freedom is popular.

Freedom is truth and truth is power.