"The bigoted past of Ron Paul."

Look, I said it on Bloggingheads: The things Ron Paul has been saying made me suspect that his libertarianism was a cover for racism. Listen beginning at 8:07 [ADDED: You have to begin in the Ron Paul segment — here — and then go to 8:07]: "I feel like the people who are so enamored with those states' rights positions and that libertarian position... Coming from the South... an older person... who grew up in the segregated South... How do I know he's not a racist? ... I find it offensive, the positions he's taking, but maybe it's the pretty face that you put on the position that is, if not really racist, just insensitive about race?"

Now, James Kirchick has found the shocking evidence:

[L]ong before he was the darling of antiwar activists on the left and right, Paul was in the newsletter business. In the age before blogs, newsletters occupied a prominent place in right-wing political discourse. With the pages of mainstream political magazines typically off-limits to their views (National Review editor William F. Buckley having famously denounced the John Birch Society), hardline conservatives resorted to putting out their own, less glossy publications. These were often paranoid and rambling.... And a few of the most prominent bore the name of Ron Paul....

What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing--but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics....

Take, for instance, a special issue of the Ron Paul Political Report, published in June 1992, dedicated to explaining the Los Angeles riots of that year. "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," read one typical passage. According to the newsletter, the looting was a natural byproduct of government indulging the black community with "'civil rights,' quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black tv shows, black tv anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda." It also denounced "the media" for believing that "America's number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks."...

Such views on race also inflected the newsletters' commentary on foreign affairs. South Africa's transition to multiracial democracy was portrayed as a "destruction of civilization" that was "the most tragic [to] ever occur on that continent, at least below the Sahara"; and, in March 1994, a month before Nelson Mandela was elected president, one item warned of an impending "South African Holocaust."

Martin Luther King Jr. earned special ire from Paul's newsletters....

While bashing King, the newsletters had kind words for the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke....

Like blacks, gays earn plenty of animus in Paul's newsletters....

The rhetoric when it came to Jews was little better...

Paul's newsletters didn't just contain bigotry. They also contained paranoia--specifically, the brand of anti-government paranoia that festered among right-wing militia groups during the 1980s and '90s....

What's more, Paul's connections to extremism go beyond the newsletters....

Then there is Gary North, who has worked on Paul's congressional staff. North is a central figure in Christian Reconstructionism, which advocates the implementation of Biblical law in modern society...

Read the whole thing.

No word yet from Andrew Sullivan, who endorsed Ron Paul as the Republican nominee back here, with what now looks like exquisitely bad effusion: "[T]hese are principles that made me a conservative in the first place... He's the real thing in a world of fakes and frauds."

ADDED: Based on reading the comments here, I realize I need to stress what I was talking about in that Bloggingheads episode. You can listen to the whole segment. But I'm not saying that every older person who grew up in the South should be suspected of racism. I'm saying that a person who espouses the ideas that Ron Paul does — opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, blaming Abraham Lincoln for starting the Civil War and thinking it should never have been fought — makes me want to know more, and when he is also a man of a certain age from the South, that tweaks my suspicion up a notch. I don't think all libertarians or advocates of "states' rights" are racists, but I think some of them are, and many of them are insufficiently concerned about racial inequity (or they would care to make an effort to explain, when they take these positions, why they are willing to risk unfortunate consequences). Finally, I read in the comments that I grew up in the Northeast. This is not so. I grew up in Delaware, and, while I did not think of it as North or South — it was a border state in the Civil War — every black person I have ever talked to about this has assured me — sometimes after recovering from a laughing fit — that the South starts in Delaware.

UPDATE: Matt Welch collects the Ron Paul blowback. And here's Ron Paul's response:

The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.

In fact, I have always agreed with Martin Luther King, Jr. that we should only be concerned with the content of a person's character, not the color of their skin....

This story is old news and has been rehashed for over a decade. It's once again being resurrected for obvious political reasons on the day of the New Hampshire primary.

When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publically [sic] taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.

I don't quite understand. Writing went out under your name, but you didn't pay much attention to it? Why not? A casual conclusion is that you generally agreed and enjoyed having your name on it. Are you saying your name was appropriated and the whole thing was a fraud? It doesn't seem so.

AND: Andrew Sullivan says: "I also want to reiterate that those of us who supported the Ron Paul movement find these sentiments despicable." Why are you speaking for others, Andrew? You are not a native American. Why do you assume you channel the beliefs of others?