- It's fascinating to watch the long knives coming out
for Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul, now that according to some mainstream
polls he has become the front-running candidate in the Jan. 3 GOP caucus
race in Iowa, and perhaps also in the first primary campaign in New Hampshire.
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- Remember, we're talking about a guy who has been in Congress
on and off for 12 terms, dating back to 1976. His views have been pretty
consistent, and because he has run for president several times, also pretty
well known. A practicing physician who claims to have helped in the births
of over 4000 babies in his career, the 76-year-old Paul is a free-market
advocate, an abortion opponent, an uncompromising defender of the Bill
of Rights and the Constitution, an opponent of government regulation, the
Federal Reserve and the IRS, and of big government in general--especially
big federal government.
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- What's interesting is what he's being attacked for: being
a racist, being "anti-Israel" and being an isolationist.
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- The racist bit is funny. After all, if we're honest,
the whole political infrastructure of the US is riven with racism. Just
check out the public schools in any urban area, where you'll find most
of the students are non-white, or check out the schools in rural
parts of the southeast in areas where most of the students are black --
compare the condition of those schools and the class sizes to schools in
the white neighborhoods. Check out the wildly different jobless figures
for whites and for blacks. Check out the (very pale) complexion of the
student bodies at just about any state university, check out the skin tones
of the judges on the US Supreme Court, or for that matter, the whole federal
bench. Check out the racial breakdown of the nation's jails,
and especially on the country's many death rows, where you'll find a wildly
outsized percentage of people with black or brown skin waiting to be killed
by the state.
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- Being a racist is clearly no disqualifier for national
political office. It's just that you are not supposed to say overtly racist
things, at least in public. It's fine to pass laws and push for enforcement
actions and "tough" judges that end up putting most young African-American
males in prison at some point in their lives. It's okay to promote a "War"
on drugs that ends up creating a whole new slavery in the form of black
men locked up in for-profit prisons. It's okay to shortchange minority
school districts. You just aren't supposed to say you're doing these things
on purpose...
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- For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!,
the new Project Censored Award-winning independent online alternative newspaper,
please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/979
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