It turns out that it's been corroborated: Ron Paul did proof and sign off on the racist nonsense that was in the newsletters that went out under his name. Dave Weigel points out that Paul supporters don't seem to know or care, mostly because Paul is a protest vote.
I think this might explain a lot of the "yeah but he's against the drug war" arguments, which seem to rest hopes on the idea that if you cast a protest vote, somehow your protest will register and people will know what you meant.
I don't understand this thinking. There's no logical reason a vote for Ron Paul will be assumed to be a vote against foreign escapades, or against the racist drug war. For all anyone knows, it could mean you really, really grok von Hayek or think the gold standard makes sense, or, I don't know know, just agree with Rand Paul, and for that matter, me, that the TSA has no business touching your junk. It seems sort of like passive-aggressive voting, in a way. The Field of Candidates: "But what did we do?" Angry Voter: "Oooohhhh, YOU KNOW!"
But the answer is really: they don't know. The message voting is supposed to send is: this is the person I think would best fill the job I'm voting them in for, out of all the people whose names I could have gone for. So when a certain number of votes gets cast for a Ron Paul, there just isn't any way to tell if you identify with Stormfront or NORML. We have to guess that any or all of his ideas are legitimized to an extent. And that will include that really cheap, crappy, "profiting from racism and homophobia" stuff.
Sigh; but that's just my opinion. You all just do what you're going to do. It's a free country.
No comments:
Post a Comment