November 20, 2007
At long last the ADL has pinpointed Ron Paul’s “extremist” associations. According to ADL’s assistant director of civil rights Steve Freeman, Dr. Paul’s campaign was reckless enough to accept the donation of Don Black, the owner of a white supremacist website, Stormfront. The candidate then refused to return the gift and, in an interview with Reason magazine, he dared to opine that “if people hold views that the candidate doesn”t agree with and they give to us, that’s their loss.” Mr. Freeman, whom we are to believe is a consistent defender of political moderation, feels obliged to go public about the Congressman’s obstinate refusal to give back Mr. Black’s money. He notes how readily Mayor Giuliani returned a mega- donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Tala, earmarked for the relief of 9/11 victims, because of the anti-Israeli politics of the Saudi government. The ADL thereafter bestowed generous praise on the New York mayor, who is now (incidentally) running in the same presidential race as that friend of “extremism” Ron Paul.
Although I for one would return what is probably a piddling donation, in order to avoid further fallout, I can fully understand Ron Paul’s reluctance to get in with this particular tar baby. The ADL is about as interested in “extremism” as was the Soviet Communist Party. One very prominent libertarian spoke the truth in jest, saying that Ron Paul “shouldn”t meet with the ADL because it is extremist.” Abe Foxman and his employees have never found a leftist cause they would consider “extreme,” unless it opposed the Israeli side in an international dispute. Needless to say, I wouldn”t hold my breath until the ADL, or the Southern Poverty Law Center, investigates the “extremists” in Obama’s black-nationalist church in Chicago (an association that I have seen disclosed in a full-length article, by Steve Sailer in The American Conservative.) Perhaps the ADL, for the sake of balance, could tell us about Democratic candidates who have taken contributions from the Black Panthers or from the Hispanic ethno-centrists in Aztlan and La Raza. Of course I know why they don”t do so from researching a book on the current European Left: Extremists are supposedly only found on the right and they”re proof that Hitlerism is alive and well in the still fanatically Christian West. Thus when Abe Foxman and the New Statesman depict Congressman Paul as a raging anti-Semite or as someone who cultivates neo-Nazi friends, they are doing what comes natural to those on the antifascist Left, looking for those outside the liberal-left-mainstream who can be saddled with the “fascist” label. In Dr. Paul’s case, such guilt by association is particularly easy, since he adds to the sin of wanting to dismantle an administrative apparatus committed to massive social engineering the equally grave misstep of wanting to cut off foreign aid (to Israel among other past recipients of American government subsidies).
Even more important, there is no way to stop the blackmailing carried out by the victimological Left once it begins. Who’s to say that if Congressman Paul or his campaign manager were to return the donation to Mr. Black that the harassment would not continue? It’s like what happened to Pope John Paul II who after apologizing for the medieval Church’s expressions of anti-Semitism soon found himself inundated by demands that he also apologize for the Holocaust. Since the late Pope had lost his own father to Poland’s efforts to keep Hitler’s army out of his country, and since the Church’s role in opposing the Nazis was in most places far from shameful, I”ve no idea what he was supposed to apologize for”save for his indiscretion in yielding to the victimologists in the first place. When they smell fear in their intended prey, these types go into a feeding frenzy. Such a feeding frenzy does not occur, however, in the presence of those whom the Left approves of ideologically. Thus the media did not try to push Al Gore, a certified member of the Democratic Left, into returning bribe money he took from tobacco companies while running as an anti-cigarette presidential candidate.
It is entirely possible that once Ron Paul or his staff gave back the money to Mr. Black with an accompanying public statement disavowing something or other, he would then immediately be served with a new non-negotiable demand. A USS Liberty Memorial Website, maintained by survivors of the naval vessel sunk by the Israelis in 1967, has posted articles targeting the Israeli government for deliberately sinking their vessel; as a result of this act, whether or not it was intended, 44 crewmen lost their lives. Although the USS Liberty Memorial Website will not accept any funding from known racist or anti-Semitic organizations, according to one of the ship’s survivors connected to the website, he and his comrades are already taking heat from the usual suspects. According to my correspondent, who is a fervent Ron Paul backer, the website participants may soon qualify because of their view about the sinking of the USS Liberty as members of the “extremist” persuasion.
In any case, there is no reason to believe that Congressman Paul’s antifascist or overly zealous Zionist critics would leave him alone, no matter what he returned, unless he also started imitating Rudy or Hillary or Obama. A Jackie Mason videotape that I”ve just heard condemns Ron Paul not only for opposing foreign aid and foreign wars but also for having voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. On that issue Congressman Paul took the same side as two other “extremists” who are not mentioned on the tape, George Bush, Sr. and the future neoconservative hero Ronald Reagan. Apparently only certain people who voted against the now hallowed 1964 bill qualify as “extremists.” It is those elected officials who are insufficiently warlike and who make fun of “chicken hawks” at the Weekly Standard..
