PART 1: LINE IN THE SAND

It’s hard not to cheer the way Ron Paul is raising real issues when he discusses Iraq, Iran, and civil liberties in the Republican presidential race. He does it in a way that most of the Democratic candidates are not even doing, and he speaks clearly, forcefully, and eloquently against the united derision of his opponents. Indeed, there’s no reason NOT to cheer his raising these issues, and even to hope he does well enough in the primaries to raise them some more. It’s quite another matter to cheer Ron Paul.

Those of us whose memories stretch back a few years remember him as one of the most consistently right-wing congressmen in the Clinton and early W eras, before Bush’s fall from popularity transformed the political scene. Among the now-swollen ranks of the anti-war crowd, the young and the amnesiac at heart may not know this. Hence the alarming prospect of a candidate whose base of support continues to be ultra-right gaining traction, and perhaps even votes, from the progressive community.

But it’s not just the easily enthused who are catching the Ron Paul bug. No less sharp a mind than Glenn Greenwald has declared him a “principled conservative.” I’m not quite sure what that would mean–selling out the people to corporate interests the good, old-fashioned, Barry Goldwater way? Never disenfranchising without a constitutional rationalization? Jingoism with a conscience? Anyway, presumably being principled is supposed to exclude outright bigotry.

Unfortunately for those who crave to find something redeeming within the Republican party, Ron Paul has a history of vitriolic racism. Moreover, this history, far from being anomalous, is seamlessly enmeshed within a vicious Social Darwinism that is the basis for Paul’s whole worldview, of which his libertarian “principles” are no more than an eloquent expression.

In 1992, Ron Paul, then an ex-congressman, published a piece on the Rodney King riots in his 8-page monthly newsletter, a zine with roughly 7,000 subscribers. In rhetoric far more resonant with the “values” campaign of the Republican party four years later than with what most people associate with libertarianism, the piece gets going with this shot:

We now know that we are under assault from thugs and revolutionaries who hate Euro-American civilization and everything it stands for: private property, material success for those who earn it, and Christian morality.

As a result of the riots’ disruption of transit, the newsletter continues, “White people found themselves walking alone many blocks to get home, running the minefield of black gangs out for their blood. ” Perhaps, you say, the author is merely pointing to the existence of violently anti-white gangs among L.A. blacks at that time? But no, for the piece goes on to refer to “the anti-white ideology in the thoroughly racist black community.” Lest anyone think he only despises “underclass” blacks, the author later says this:

They wanted the cops jailed and the murderers, arsonists, and thieves set free. This came not from the underclass, but from middle-class blacks and black political activists, who hold opinions not markedly different from the Crips and the Bloods. But the Crips and the Bloods, it turns out, have been “misunderstood,” according to Ted Koppel who interviewed two of these animals. After spending several hours with them, he decided he liked them. Unfortunately, they didn’t pull him out of his stretch limousine. [In this and all subsequent quotations, emphasis is added.]

Throughout, the piece excoriates the media for taking the side of black people, criminals, and the welfare state–bizarrely enough considering where the media actually were in 1992, and today. But the author, with populist faith that the common people share his racism, continues optimistically:

Regardless of what the media tell us, most white Americans are not going to believe that they are at fault for what blacks have done to cities across America. The professional blacks may have cowed the elites, but good sense survives at the grass roots. Many more are going to have difficulty avoiding the belief that our country is being destroyed by a group of actual and potential terrorists — and they can be identified by the color of their skin. This conclusion may not be entirely fair, but it is, for many, entirely unavoidable.

…The [National Center on Institutions and Alternatives] reports that 70% of all black men in Washington are arrested before they reach the age of 35, and 85% are arrested at some point in their lives. Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the “criminal justice system,” I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.

…We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, but it is hardly irrational.

In conclusion, the author bewails the fact that

The riots, burning, looting, and murders are only a continuation of 30 years of racial politics…. Blacks have “civil rights,” preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black beauty contests, black tv shows, black tv anchors, black scholorships and colleges, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda.

Presumably, the fact that African-Americans sometimes get hired as TV anchors and sometimes get elected as mayors, that some TV shows have heavily black casts, and that most of the government officials in some mostly black communities are themselves black, strikes the author of this piece as grossly unfair…whereas the existence of white TV anchors, white mayors, and white-dominated TV shows and bureaucracies is perfectly fine. For the author, whatever whites have is prima facie evidence that they deserve it; whatever blacks have is prima facie evidence that they were given something they didn’t deserve.

Now, who WAS the mysterious author of this piece? On the face of it, it might seem very simple. The material appeared in the Ron Paul Political Report, a source acknowledged when it was preserved for posterity by a known white supremacist named Dan Gannon, who posted it on the web. No author is mentioned. Any reasonable person would conclude that Ron Paul was the author.

In 1996, when Paul was again running for congress, the Houston Chronicle exposed this piece. According to the Chronicle, Paul responded that “he opposes racism and that his written commentaries about blacks came in the context of ‘current events and statistical reports of the time.’” Furthermore, the Chronicle reported, “A campaign spokesman for Paul said statements about the fear of black males mirror pronouncements by black leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has decried the spread of urban crime.”

In other words, he copped to writing the piece, then tried to defend it as non-racist, hoping few people would bother to look at the nitty-gritty of its contents, which aren’t exactly reminiscent of Jesse Jackson.

In 2001, however, Paul told Texas Monthly that he hadn’t written the piece: “I could never say this in the campaign, but those words weren’t really written by me. It wasn’t my language at all. Other people help me with my newsletter as I travel around.” Based on this, Paul’s fans have rushed to exonerate him. “Don’t say he wrote that piece without knowing THE FACTS. The facts PROVE HIM INNOCENT!” Therefore, the whole issue can be dismissed, and the lovefest can resume.

This suggests a Monty Pythonesque courtroom scenario. “How do you plead?” “Not guilty.” “All right,” says the judge, “case dismissed!” According to the reasoning of Ron Paul’s exonerators, if you say you didn’t do something, that’s enough.

In actual fact, Paul’s 2001 denial has little evidentiary value. Given the potential harm to his political career if he admitted authorship, his word–like anyone’s word in a similar situation, and especially any politician’s–should be taken with a large grain of salt. In any court outside Monty Python’s jurisdiction, the judge takes your word for it if you plead guilty and doesn’t if you plead innocent. Not that Paul’s accused of any crime, but the same common sense that the law employs applies here perfectly.

Beyond basic skepticism, Paul’s denial is inherently implausible. He published the piece in his own newsletter in 1992, said nothing about it until confronted with it during a campaign, admitted at that time to having written it–while arguing that there was nothing wrong with it–and then…five years later, he said he didn’t write it. Furthermore, Paul to this day refuses to provide the media with copies of his old and now-unobtainable newsletter so that the rest of us could have a look at what all he had to say. Under such circumstances, his denial is not merely no proof, it’s presumptively a lie.

Paul’s explanation?

They were never my words, but I had some moral responsibility for them . . . I actually really wanted to try to explain that it doesn’t come from me directly, but the campaign aides said that’s too confusing. “It appeared in your letter and your name was on that letter and therefore you have to live with it.”

This is pretty far-fetched, if you ask me. Politicians blame things on their subordinates all the time. There’s nothing particularly confusing about the fact that something goes out under your name that you didn’t write. Who believes that politicians actually write all the things that go out under their names? Paul could easily have apologized for letting it slip into his publication while disclaiming the sentiments the piece expressed. Instead, he defended it and argued that it somehow wasn’t racist–precisely what you would expect from the worst kind of politically ambitious, right-wing racist.

There are only two reasonably economical explanations of the facts. The most economical explanation is that Paul wrote the piece, told the truth in 1996, and lied in 2001. The second-most economical explanation is that someone else wrote the piece and Paul edited and approved it. In this scenario, he didn’t see much point in claiming non-authorship in 1996 since he agreed with it anyway and was responsible for its content, so what good would it do him to point out that he didn’t actually write it? It would just make him look evasive. But by 2001 he wanted to politically reposition himself, so he tried to distance himself from it.

Note that this second scenario is fully consistent with his own denial. “Those words weren’t really written by me. It wasn’t my language at all.” “They were never my words, but I had some moral responsibility for them.” He doesn’t say he didn’t agree with the piece–he only denies composing the specific language. He doesn’t even say he wasn’t personally responsible for reading it and approving it for publication. Perhaps this is the “moral responsibility” he is referring to, though he no doubt uttered that phrase hoping folks would come up with a gentler interpretation.

For those who still want to believe that Paul didn’t know about the piece until after it was published, consider the logistics. Why would anyone put out an eight-page monthly publication under his own name and not bother reading the contents? If he was traveling around, he could have given a whole issue a quick read during a short plane trip and vetoed any article he didn’t like. He hadn’t given up on his political ambitions. Why take the risk of being tarred by someone else’s judgment?

A final point must be made, that even in the unlikely event that Paul neither wrote nor approved the piece, he had, in his own words, “moral responsibility” for it. If he really abhored its sentiments–if he felt towards virulent racism as does any decent human being–he would have had no choice but to disavow the piece in a subsequent issue of his newsletter. But if that had happened, he would just as certainly have noted the fact in 1996, when the issue came up.

His actual silence would thus, in even the most generous interpretation, indicate that he had no strong objection to what was written. It might not be the kind of thing he himself would say, it might not have been written in his style, he might even have disagreed with bits of it, but–he did not consider it abominable. And if he didn’t consider it abominable, he is a racist sympathizer.

But there’s no need to rely on this one piece of writing to find that out. His record, right up to the present, amply proves his sympathy for racist causes. Paul was apparently a fairly recent (August 2006) guest on “The Political Cesspool,” the aptly named unofficial radio show of the Council of Conservative Citizens. The Council of Conservative Citizens is the “new and improved” version of the Council of White Citizens that served as the “uptown Klan” during the long struggle against civil rights that consumed much of the white South in the 1950’s and 60’s.

I say apparently because phenry’s expose of Paul, on which this article is partly based, states that Paul is listed on the Cesspool’s guest list…but he’s nowhere to be found there. Given that phenry’s piece seems to be otherwise reliable, is this a mistake, or did someone delete Ron Paul from the list, perhaps to avoid embarrassing him? Very probably the latter, since his forthcoming appearance is also mentioned on a right-wing web page. “One of the only truly conservative Congressmen in office today, Ron Paul, will be doing a live interview on The Political Cesspool www.thepoliticalcesspool.org tonight…. No matter what your opinion of the Cesspool is you will not want to miss this interview.” That doesn’t sound like somebody who’s against Paul smearing him or repeating misinformation, especially since the other content of the site is consistently right-wing. Still another site by a self-described “Republican soccer mom from East Tennessee” who purports to dislike “both extremes” of the political spectrum also reports having seen him listed in the Cesspool guest list (see also this follow-up in which she notes his disappearance from said list).

The Council of Conservative Citizens has a big graphical link on the Cesspool’s website, as does the Institute for Historical Review, the leading holocaust denial outfit. Here’s a good example of what the Cesspool thinks is wrong with America:

The Political Cesspool 5/17/07 (TN)
BROWN VS. BOARD OF EDUCATION SPECIAL REPORT - James Edwards will be hosting a special program tonight when he is joined in-studio by local attorney Keith Alexander. Today is the 53rd anniversary of the disastrous Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education decision, one which ushered in an era of radical leftist ideology upon the American citizenry. Tune in and learn more about this decision as well as its harmful effects.

Brown v. Board of Education was, of course, the ruling that banned legally mandated segregation of the races in American schools.

Some might say that candidates appear in many forums, that their appearance is not an endorsement, and that candidates who start small, like Paul, have to get listeners wherever they can find them. This is all true up to a point, but candidates DO draw the line somewhere. The Political Cesspool is way beyond where that line would be for even most hard-right Republican candidates.

Ron Paul thus stands convicted by his own recent actions as at the very least willing to countenance a right-wing hate program as an acceptable forum. This further undercuts the pretense that the piece in his newsletter about the Rodney King riots expressed views he opposes. But that piece is not the only one in which his newsletter expressed anti-black racism. It is not surprisingly all but impossible to find print copies of this low-circulation, far-right zine from 15 years ago, and Lexis/Nexis holds no trace, but fragments of it have survived on the web. Consider these two gems culled by the Houston Chronicle:

We don’t think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That’s true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such.

What else do we need to know about the political establishment than that it refuses to discuss the crimes that terrify Americans on grounds that doing so is racist? Why isn’t that true of complex embezzling, which is 100 percent white and Asian?

These two quotations apparently came from the same issue as the Rodney King piece, but it should be noted that Paul’s newsletter is still listed by a Canadian neo-Nazi group called Heritage Front under “Racialist Addresses and Phone Numbers,” alongside such cozy bedfellows as Hammer Skin and the National Socialist White Americans Party. It’s unlikely that the Ron Paul Political Report earned its listing purely by virtue of the contents of one issue.

Here I have to ask: was Ron Paul unaware of nearly everything that went into his own newsletter? Are ultra-racist radio shows a legitimate place for a non-racist politician to court voters? Is attacking nearly the whole black population as a criminal class equivalent to responding to “current events and statistical reports of the time,” or to Jesse Jackson decrying the spread of urban crime?

To accept these things is to live in a never-never land in which distinctions blur away. Ron Paul simultaneously denies that he’s racist and makes clear that he doesn’t see anything unreasonable about racism. The rest of us need to draw a line in the sand:

No to racism…no to Ron Paul.

—— Part 2 of Ron Paul’s history of virulent racism,
“Racism and Libertarianism,” is forthcoming ——

_______________________________________________

Here is the entire original piece from the Ron Paul Political Report in 1992 (sorry for the sloppy formatting). It’s also archived by nizkor here. Warning–it takes a strong stomach to read this shit:

LOS ANGELES RACIAL TERRORISM

The Los Angeles and related riots mark a new era in American cultural,
political, and economic life. We now know that we are under assault from
thugs and revolutionaries who hate Euro-American civilization and
everything it stands for: private property, material success for those who
earn it, and Christian morality.

Ten thousand stores and other buildings looted and burned, thousands
beaten and otherwise seriously injured, 52 people dead. That was the toll
of the Los Angeles riots in which we saw white men pulled from their cars
and trucks and shot or brutally beaten. (In every case, the mob was not too
enraged to pick the victim’s pocket.) We saw Korean and white stores
targeted by the mob because they “exploited the community,” i.e., sold
products people wanted at prices they were willing to pay. Worst of all,
we saw the total breakdown of law enforcement, as black and white liberal
public officials had the cops and troops disarmed in the face of criminal
anarchy.

In San Francisco and perhaps other cities, says expert Burt Blumert,
the rioting was led by red-flag carrying members of the Revolutionary
Communist Party and the Workers World Party, both Trotskyite-Maoist. The
police were allowed to intervene only when the rioters assaulted the famous
Fairmont and Mark Hopkins hotels atop Nob Hill. A friend of Burt’s, a
jewelry store owner, had his store on Union Square looted by blacks, and
when the police arrived in response to his frantic calls, their orders were
to protect his life, but not to interfere with the rioting.

Even though the riots were aimed at whites (in L.A. at Koreans who had
committed the crime of working hard and being successful, and at Cambodians
in Long Beach), and even though anti-white and anti-Asian epithets filled
the air, this is not considered a series of hate crimes, nor a violation of
the civil rights of whites or Asians.

The criminals who terrorize our cities–in riots and on every
non-riot day–are not exclusively young black males, but they largely are.
As children, they are trained to hate whites, to believe that white
oppression is responsible for all black ills, to “fight the power,” and to
steal and loot as much money from the white enemy as possible. Anything is
justified against “The Man.” And “The Woman.’ A lady I know recently saw a
black couple in the supermarket with a cute little girl, three years old or
so. My friend waved to the tiny child, who scowled, stuck out her tongue,
and said (somewhat tautologically): “I hate you, white honkey.” And the
parents were indulgent. Is any white child taught to hate in this way? I’ve
never heard of it. If a white child made such a remark to a black woman,
the parents would stop it with a reprimand or a spank.

But this is normal, and in fact benign, compared to much of the
anti-white ideology in the thoroughly racist black community. The black
leadership indoctrinates its followers with phony history and phony theory
to bolster its claims of victimology. Like the communists who renounced all
that was bourgeois, the blacks reject all that is “Eurocentric.” They
demand their own kind of thinking, and deny the possibility of non-blacks
understanding it.

The insurrectionist and revolutionaries intended to destroy large
sections of Los Angeles. Why did the ghetto youths so furiously rage
together? Was it because they have been neglected? Hardly. Welfare has
transferred $2.5 trillion from white middle class taxpayers to welfare
programs in the last 30 years. And if we adjust that figure for 1992
dollars, the total is more like $7 trillion. Are blacks being denied
economic opportunity? The cities could have freer markets, but so could the
rest of the country, where there is no rioting and little streetcrime. Are
black killers and looters responding to racism? Japanese Americans were
treated far worse in California than blacks. They were even put in
concentration camps by Earl Warren, John J. McCloy, and Franklin D.
Roosevelt, yet Japanese-Americans have never rioted. Korean-Americans,
hated by blacks, never riot, and in fact are some of the most productive
people in America (the reason for black hatred).

The cause of the riots is plain: barbarism. If the barbarians cannot
loot sufficiently through legal channels (i.e., the riots being the
welfare-state minus the middleman), they resort to illegal ones, to
terrorism. Trouble is, few seem willing to do anything to stop them. The
cops have been handcuffed. And property owners are not allowed to defend
themselves. The mayor of Los Angeles, for example, ordered the Korean
storekeepers who defended themselves arrested for “discharging a firearm
within city limits.” Perhaps the most scandalous aspect of the Los Angeles
riots was the response by the mayors, the media, and the Washington
politicians. They all came together as one to excuse the violence and to
tell white America that it is guilty, although the guilt can be assuaged by
handing over more cash. It would be reactionary, racist, and fascist, said
the media, to have less welfare or tougher law enf orcement. America’s
number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass
blacks.

Rather than helping, all this will ensure that guerrilla violence will
escalate. There will be more occasional eruptions such as we saw in Los
Angeles, but just as terrifying are the daily muggings, robberies,
burglaries, rapes, and killings that make our cities terror zones.

The rioters said they were acting out their frustration over the
acquittal of four L.A. policemen accused of using excessive force when
arresting Rodney G. King, but in fact, they were looking for an excuse to
kill, burn, and loot. Nonetheless, it is important to understand why the
jury decided not to convict, whether or not we agree with their verdict.

The California highway patrol began chasing drunk driver Rodney King,
a black man with a long arrest record, and his two passengers on the night
of March 3, 1991. He was recklessly driving at speeds up to 115 mph for
almost eight miles. They raced on the highway until King turned off to
drive through traffic lights and stop signs on residential streets
(families could have been killed). The L.A. police department came to
assist in the high-speed chase with lights and sirens on. One of King’s
passenger s asked him to pull over. King initially refused, driving
faster, but he finally complied. When the cops approached the car,
suspecting armed criminals, the two black passengers immediately stepped
out of the car and fell flat on their stomachs with arms stretched out, as
instructed. They were handcuffed. King could have done the same. But he
chose a different route. He refused to get out of the car. He stalled for
a minute, and several times, stepped out of the car and then back into it.
The police wo ndered if he was searching the car for a gun. Once King
stopped this game, he was told by cops with guns pointing at him to put his
belly down on the ground with arms outstretched. Instead, King began to do
a crazy dance and laugh freakishly. He taunted the police and even the
helicopter buzzing above him. This is why the police thought he was on PCP.

Despite police orders, King continued to dance, grabbing his buttocks
to make lewd gestures at a female cop. Sgt. Koon approached him and warned
that he would be stung with a Taser gun. King got down on his hands and
knees, but refused to lay flat. He was again warned, but King refused.
Officer Powell put his knee on King’s back to get him down on the ground so
he could be handcuffed. King went down to the ground, but bounced back up,
shaking off all the police who were trying to get hold of him. Fina lly,
Koon stung him with the gun, delivering 50,000 volts of electricity, and
King fell to the ground again. But again he bounced up, prompting Koon to
deliver another 50,000 volts. King fell again, this time into the proper
position. Not a single baton blow had been delivered and the cops thought
everything was over.

At this point, the video camera started to tape the action. Officer
Powell approached King to put handcuffs on him, but King, weighing 250
pounds and standing 6′4″ tall, shocked everyone by springing into action
again from his flat position. Like a professional linebacker, he charged
Powell, who thought King was going for his gun. That’s when Powell started
using the baton. At one point, Powell thought King was subdued, put away
the baton and reached for the cuffs. But King started to stand up again.
Remembering how King rushed him before, he put away his cuffs and brought
out the baton again. One officer even tried to put his foot on King’s neck
to prevent him from getting up again so he could be cuffed.

In all, he was hit 56 times, and even in the end he refused to comply.
He had to be cuffed in an odd position that risked the lives of the cops.
The hospital reported that King had suffered an injury on the face from
when he fell to the ground and minor injuries to his leg. He was never hit
on the spine or the head, which would have violated regulations. And he was
not beaten nearly to death, as some have claimed. The jury concluded that
at every point of that night’s action, King was in control. He could have
complied at any time and stopped the beating. Whether we agree or disagree
with the juries verdict–that the cops did not use exxcessive force–it is
instructive to know what they saw and what the media still refuses to tell
us or show us. None of the major networks showed the video scene when King
rushed Officer Powell after the first Taser jolt. Only CNN showed it, one
time. And no major paper even mentioned it. Neither did any major paper or
network tell of the two passengers who complied and were peacefully
arrested. Why? We were shown the section of tape where the cops hit King
as a metaphor for white racism. Shown it again and again, we were supposed
to feel guilty.

Not long after this incident, King was found trying to pick up a
transvestite prostitute, and when caught, tried to run over the cops who
intervened. He was not arrested. This was not reported outside of L.A. He
was also not jailed for violating his parole (for armed robbery) or for
drunk and reckless driving or for violently resisting arrest. The verdict
was handed down at 3:15pm on April 29. For weeks we had heard threats that
the blacks would riot if the officers were not convicted. Taking that into
account, did the media or politicians defer to the jury (as they do when a
liberal-approved criminal is released)? Not at all. At 5:10 pm, liberal
black L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley said he was shocked and outraged at the
verdict. He denounced the jurors for approving “the senseless and brutal
beating of a helpless man.” As an afterthought, he asked the ci ty to
“remain calm.” With those words, he might as well have thrown a match into
a pool of gasoline. It was permission for the blacks to “express their
rage.”

Ten minutes later, the police got their first report of trouble.
Blacks were throwing beer cans at passing cars. When the police showed up,
the crowds had gotten much bigger. Cops tried to control them, but realized
they were outnumbered. Realizing that they could not use their guns or even
look cross-eyed at a black, a video recorded a policeman saying: “It’s not
worth it. Let’s go.” Indeed it wasn’t worth it. The cops could only have
put themselves on trial and had their lives ruined too.

Ironically, they were being filmed and are now denounced. But it was
the Establishment’s reaction to the Rodney King verdict that set the
precedent that black criminals always have the benefit of the doubt over
white police. At 5:45, the field commander in the area where the riots
began ordered that no police go into the area. “I want everybody out of
here. Get out. Now.” He wanted to protect his police force, which could
take no action without media criticism and legal action, from rioters who
vastly outnumbered them and were sometimes better armed. The blacks
started to attack cars driven by whites and light-skinned Hispanics with
crowbars, rocks, bottles, and even a metal traffic sign. At the last
minute, some police officers rescued a woman abandoned in her car and were
pelted by rocks as they left.

At 6:45, a white man was dragged from a delivery truck and thrown to
the ground and beaten, as black assailants yelled, “That’s how Rodney King
felt, white boy!” Another white truck driver, Reginald O. Denny, pulled
into the area and five blacks beat him nearly to death. One threw a fire
extinguisher at his head as he lay unconscious, breaking nearly every bone
in his face. A white boy was pulled from his motorcycle and shot in the
head. All this happened less than an hour and a half after the mayor had
denounced the verdict. Rather than call for even minimal standards of
justice, the Establishment coalesced into its excusemaking mode, justifying
black terrorism in various ways. It was caused by poverty, frustration, “12
years of neglect,” etc., but never evil. The fires burned out of control as
firemen were attacked by the rioters as well, in one case with an axe.

All banks within the vicinity of rioting, meaning nearly all of
central L.A., were immediately shut down. People who wanted to cash checks
or make deposits were shocked to find them closed. They were also stunned
to find city transit not running. Taxicabs were nowhere in sight. White
people found themselves walking alone many blocks to get home, running the
minefield of black gangs out for their blood.

Many people tried to buy guns to protect themselves. But, whoops,
California has a 14-day waiting period. And then, just to make sure honest
Californians could not get ammunition for the firearms they already owned
(poor ragefilled youth might be shot), Mayor Tom Bradley ordered all gun
and ammo shops closed, a great help to criminals who had stocked up
earlier, or who could simply break in and loot.

Another group that had stocked up were Korean merchants, many of whom
defended their places with guns, and later were arrested for illegal use of
firearms. As one told the L.A. Times, “Two looters entered my store; one
left.” These Korean immigrants were the only people to act like real
Americans, mainly because they have not yet been assimilated into our
liberal culture, which admonishes whites faced by raging blacks to lie back
and think of England. White reporters and photographers who entered the
riot zone were dragged from their cars and beaten. A freelance reporter for
the Boston Globe was shot five times. The anti-white hate crimes
accumulated.

In the midst of the rioting, Jesse Jackson and Congresswoman Maxine
Waters (D-CA) spouted the pro-terrorist line that it was all justified
because blacks “can’t get no justice.” The newsmen of the major networks
interviewed them and lovingly bemoaned the “plight of the inner-city youth.”
Liberal statist Jack Kemp weighed in with a victimological line similar to
Jackson’s, saying we need more federal programs for the cities. As the
Establishment promised to spread more white taxpayers’ money around the
inner city, the killers and looters spread their violence to Hollywood,
Beverly Hills, Fairfax, and Westwood. A mall in Compton burned.

The Violence wasn’t limited to the L.A. area. It extended to Long
Beach, Cal. (where more than 500 Cambodian-owned businesses were torched);
Seattle, Wash.; Eugene, Ore.; San Francisco, Cal.; San Jose, Cal.; Las
Vegas, Nev. (where it still lingers); Madison, Wis.; Birmingham, Ala.; and
Atlanta, Ga. Terrorism swept America. In Las Vegas, for example, a white
man was pulled out of his car and severely beaten by blacks breaking up
from an anti-white rally at l0:30 pm. The blacks shouted racial insults as
the police carted him away to the hospital. The crowd then pelted SWAT
teams in armored vehicles with rocks and bottles. Someone in the crowd of
blacks shot a gun and the police responded with tear gas. I’m sure that
there were many more incidents of looting, fires, and violence that we
haven’t heard about for the simple fact that the media doesn’t want us to
know about them. Newsmen and editors are protecting us from the truth.

Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to
pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. The “poor”
lined up at the post office to get their handouts (since there were no
deliveries)–and then complained about slow service. What if the checks
had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the
welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the
violence subsided.

Several days after the violence ended, we learned that there would
have been blacks on the King jury–if the NAACP hadn’t engaged in jury
tampering by telling potential black jurors that it was their racial duty
to convict the cops. The blacks admitted this to defense lawyers, and were
rightly excluded from jury. This is a serious crime, but the NAACP will not
be prosecuted.

Imagine the irony. Blacks have whined endlessly that letting the cops
off was “all white” (even though the jury included an Hispanic and an
Asian). But it was the leading “civil rights” organization that is at fault
for this.

What did Bush say about the riots? First he promised to have the Justice
Department see if it could retry the cops for violating Rodney King’s
“civil rights.” But what about the constitutional prohibition of double
jeopardy? No one cares. Then Bush promised an immediate payoff of $600
million to L.A. gangsters. When the liberals called this a “token”, he
raised the amount to $1.2 billion. He has vacillated between pretending to
be a tough guy and condemning the rioters, and taking up the Jack Kemp line
that inner-city “despair” can be fixed through more federal programs. But
this is capitulation to terrorist demands. The advice some libertarians
give—”don’t vote, it only encourages them” applies here. We must not
kowtow to the street hoodlums and their sanctimonious leaders.

At a Washington, D.C., rally two weeks after the L.A. attempt at
revolution, many poured out to lobby for more money to be given to the
cities. The most commonly held sign was: “Justice for Rodney King. Free all
the L.A. prisoners.” Now, consider for a moment what this slogan implies.
Were they upset by the murders, the burned buildings, and the $1 billion in
property damage? Not at all, except to use it as an excuse to get more
cash. They wanted the cops jailed and the murderers, arsonists, and thieves
set free. This came not from the underclass, but from middle-class
blacks and black political activists, who hold opinions not markedly
different from the Crips and the Bloods. But the Crips and the Bloods, it
turns out, have been “misunderstood,” according to Ted Koppel who
interviewed two of these animals. After spending several hours with them,
he decided he liked them. Unfortunately, they didn’t pull him out of his
stretch limousine.

Regardless of what the media tell us, most white Americans are not
going to believe that they are at fault for what blacks have done to cities
across America. The professional blacks may have cowed the elites, but good
sense survives at the grass roots. Many more are going to have difficultly
avoiding the belief that our country is being destroyed by a group of
actual and potential terrorists — and they can be identified by the color
of their skin. This conclusion may not be entirely fair, but it is, for
many, entirely unavoidable.

Indeed, it is shocking to consider the uniformity of opinion among
blacks in this country. Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5%
of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market,
individual liberty, and the end of welfare and affirmative action. I know
many who fall into this group personally and they deserve credit–not as
representatives of a racial group, but as decent people. They are,
however, outnumbered. Of black males in Washington, D.C, between the ages
of 18 and 35, 42% are charged with a crime or are serving a sentence,
reports the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives. The Center
also reports that 70% of all black men in Washington are arrested before
they reach the age of 35, and 85% are arrested at some point in their
lives. Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the “criminal
justice system,” I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males
in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.

If similar in-depth studies were conducted in other major cities, who
doubts that similar results would be produced? We are constantly told that
it is evil to be afraid of black men, but it is hardly irrational. Black
men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings, and burglaries all out of
proportion to their numbers.

Perhaps the L.A. experience should not be surprising. The riots,
burning, looting, and murders are only a continuation of 30 years of racial
politics. The looting in L.A. was the welfare state without the voting
booth. The elite have sent one message to black America for 30 years: you
are entitled to something for nothing. That’s what blacks got on the
streets of L.A. for three days in April. Only they didn’t ask their
Congressmen to arrange the transfer.

Blacks have “civil riqhts,” preferences, set-asides for government
contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black
mayors, black curricula in schools, black beauty contests, black tv shows,
black tv anchors, black scholorships and colleges, hate crime laws, and
public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda.

Two years ago, in a series of predictions for the 1990s, I said that
race riots would erupt in our large cities. I’m now predicting this will be
the major problem of the 1990s.

Taken from the Ron Paul Political Report, 1120 NASA Blvd., Suite 104,
Houston, TX 77058 for $50 per year. Call 1-800-766-7285.