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Entry: Ron Paul, the Birchers, and the Delicate Sensibilities of David Weigel Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/ron_paul_the_birchers_and_the_delicate_sensibilities_of_david_weigel#22631 Post contents: Reading None Dare Call it Conspiracy 33 years ago changed my life in 1975. I had no idea that the book had anything to do with the JBS and all I "knew" about the JBS at the time was the general cultural imprint that they were some kind of Klan-like group that was hated by liberals and commies. I'll never forget getting to the part at the end where Gary Allen says something about how you can learn more about this stuff at the John Birch Society. At that moment my heart sank because I instinctively knew that despite all of the fascinating things I had just read, that it must have all already been thoroughly dismissed by the establishment by that point. But I didn't let that scare me and used Allen's book and much of its source material for a "Communism vs. Americanism" paper that we were all assigned for my high school "Problems of the American Democracy" class. Sure enough, the hated pompous authoritarian retired Army Colonel who taught the class (who was actually pretty interesting compared to the civilian teachers at this public high school) smeared red ink all over my paper that I had worked so hard on. All I specifically remember now were the red words "Pure Birch!!" on the top of the first page. I think he either gave me the lowest grade or no grade at all and the paper led to meetings with him and the other teachers in his office. Later in that school year Colonel Blimp taught us about the Federal Reserve System and he wasn't able to respond to new personal discoveries I was making on my own about the illegitimacy of fractional reserve and central banking either. However when I wrote my final term paper on the history of jury nullification, the Colonel gave me the highest grade and lauded my research. I wonder if he knew that some of my references were from the revived "American Mercury" of the 1970's which I think was equivalent to the Liberty Lobby and the Spotlight and would later find out was not allowed to be mentioned in public either because they even admit they're racists, don't they? 33 years later nothing has changed. The cultural imprint of Libertarianism = "Pure Birch" = racism is deeper than ever. In None Dare Call it Conspiracy I remember Allen doing the rhetorically right thing and going out of his way to entertain objections up front and pointing out that there were those out there who claimed that the "conspiracy" is a purely jewish conspiracy and that he did not believe that. And I think the JBS is famous for bending over backwards this way and I've always thought that this was good policy because ITS TRUE!: The conservative libertarian movement is riddled with racists all over the place. If Obama can admit that his grandmother was a racist, then we can admit that there are some racists in our movement. But unlike Obama we shouldn't be afraid to highlight our points of agreement with these racists. Like it or not, I was turned on to the works of Lysander Spooner by an article in a racist magazine psuedonomously authored by a guy named "Johnny Reb". This decades long psychological operation of smearing libertarian ideas with racism (both authoritarian and libertarian/voluntary racism) is promoted by concealing it, rather than owning up to it. Contrary to what poster lester wrote on the previous Welch/Reason thread, Ron Paul's 8% score in NH was a direct result of the Racist Newsletter issue. If we have the balls to do as Doug Casey has suggested and call upon the U.S. government to not only withdraw its military from 130 countries, but also to apologize for its crimes, can't libertarians apologize when they've clearly allied themselves with or adopted the authoritarian positions of racists? For example, Lew Rockwell could start by apologizing for his previous support for police beatings. Sent at: 2008 08 21