Toons: Makin it with Mitt, Droppin the Ball, The End is Near and More. 12/28/11

[ellisonz]

7. It's getting real bad. They are insane.

I'm going to write a letter to the LA Times later tonight denouncing his closet racism.

One of my former political science professors is even defending his positions as having "been around for a long time and certainly don't merit the label "insane."

My response:

Paul, I apologize for the typo - "the" not "this." On Ron Paul, I understand his "libertarian" ideology and disagree with it vehemently. I think the time is fast approaching where we must stop playing this game of pretending that all sides of the debate are legitimate and have value at the table of discussion. His viewpoints reflect not disillusionment with the current political process but rather hostility to the valiant efforts of our predecessors to establish a democracy in which all afforded the basic rights and protections that are due to them as human beings and citizens of this country.

I do not believe Ron Paul when he justifies taking donations from operator of the White supremacist hate site Stormfront Don Black by claiming to PBS Now that accepting these donations "were a good thing because I got their money away from them." http://news.yahoo.com/white-supremacists-rally-around-ron-pauls-newsletter-scandal-211335526.html - This is not "libertarian" ideology in any pure sense. This is the willing acceptance of White supremacist ideas parading as such and I find it be despicable and worth contesting with any means necessary. This is deception and hypocrisy at its worst. Hatred and the enabling of it are "insane."

I sincerely do believe that we are living with a political movement that is the "worst in the history of the country" because unlike your examples, we know how dangerous and unacceptable such ideas are to our democracy. How long should we be silent about the danger of such selfish and threatening ideals as those of Ron Paul. Hindsight, and indeed history, tell us that permitting such ideas to be openly aired and accepted as legitimate. This is historical revisionism at its worst; there is no possible legitimate justification for judging them as anything but politics of the most odious sort. Have we learned nothing from the tortured history of our country? When we permit such wicked views to be expressed, we lay our collective humanity down to the mercy of tyranny.

On taxes, there is no legitimate debate about the Constitutionality of the 16th Amendment so long as it remains in effect. The Constitution clearly establishes a process through which it may be modified. To accept anything less is to permit nullification. Ron Paul is insane, and I am most worried about the health of our democracy should he be allowed to go undenounced by the good people of the United States of America. His views on state's rights are no different than those of the Southern states of the Confederacy which wished to withdraw from the Union and establish a slave empire in perpetuity. Edmund Burke judged in "Thoughts on the Cause of Present Discontents&quot 1770): "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle," no statement in the history of civilization could be truer.

I think we need to change the name of all "political science" department to "political studies" - there is nothing scientific about accepting such extremist positions as having a place in our political discourse.