On the Origins of the Tea Party Movement—Part IV-I—Ron Paul, The

Tea Party Movement, and the Centrality of Race, by James Scaminaci

III

Origins of the Tea Party Movement: Part IV-I – Paul And The Tea

Party: The Centrality of Race

Posted by James Scaminaci III on Mar 23rd, 2010 

http://politicalchili.com/2010/03/origins-of-the-tea-party-

movement-part-iv-i/

Introduction

Discussions of the centrality of racism to the Tea Party

movement range from not present at all, it is present but on the

fringe, to it is central to the movement.

All of these discussions suffer from two theoretical

flaws.

First, there is no discussion of race and racism and the

larger white nationalist or Christian nationalist movements which

is nearly synonymous with the neo-Confederate movement. The

conservative movement in general, no matter how you describe it,

has never come to terms with its racism and opposition to civil

rights.

Second, as I have shown in other sections Ron Paul has

actively promoted a neo-Confederate agenda that, though the latter

is racist, Paul pushes it terms best understood by the

Republican’s Southern Strategy—use abstract code words to enact

policies that have disproportionate negative effects on

minorities, especially African Americans. His original

explanation of his opposition to racism was originally a defense

of states’ rights as an immediate reaction to the controversy over

Trent Lott and his support for white supremacy. Subsequent

iterations of Paul’s view which is widely posted on websites by

his supporters is a sanitized version which omits Lott, white

supremacy, and states’ rights—but it is the same argument.

Third, many of these discussions, particularly that there

is no or just peripheral racism, are based on personal

observations and discussions with Tea Party participants. They

rarely probe beneath the surface to examine the policies. Nor, do

they take into social science research finding correlates between

authoritarian attitudes and race.

Nor do these reports take into account that Tea Party

activists are literally and figuratively plugged into pre-

existing, larger networks of ideology and information. Thus,

there is very little institutional analysis. Even if one assumes

that the Tea Party movement is independent of the Republican

Party, one cannot assume that the movement and its participants

are independent of the conservative ideology, or the neo-

Confederate ideology, or the Christian nationalist ideology.

These larger institutional structures and networks have a causal

influence on the Tea Party movement participants and

organizations. The fact that two separate Tea Party movements

were planned before any of the participants were mobilized

indicates how fallacious it is to discuss the Tea Party movement

without reference to any other larger ideological influences.

The Social Bases of the Tea Party Movement

For one thing, Tea Party activists or supporters are

drawn from a known pool of people who are politically Republicans

or Independents, or ideologically conservative, libertarian, or

moderates. Moreover, they are not very different from the social

bases of libertarians or early findings on the social bases of

Posse Comitatus and the Idaho militia.

For example, a CNN poll found that Tea Party activists

are 44 percent Republican and 52 percent Independent, though 87

percent would vote for a Republican candidate absent a third-party

candidate; and, 77 percent were conservative and 20 percent were

moderate. The CNN poll did not apparently ask about libertarian

views. And, 69 percent were between the ages of 30 and 64 years

old. Religiously, 68 percent were Protestant or other Christian,

with 16 percent Catholic. Tea Party activists tend to be male (60

percent); have either graduated from college (40 percent) or

attended college (34 percent); live either in rural (50 percent)

or suburban (41 percent) areas; in terms of income, they are

middle or working class with 34 percent having incomes greater

than $75,000 and 32 percent having incomes between $50,000 and

70,000; another 18 percent had incomes between $30,000 and 50,000,

and only 8 percent had incomes below that amount. They were 80

percent white with another 10 percent Hispanic. Geographically,

they were distributed in the South (31 percent), Midwest (29

percent), West (28 percent), and Northeast (13 percent).1

1 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation, “CNN Poll: Who are the Tea Party activists,”February 17, 2010, at http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/02/17/rel4b.pdf.

In terms of geographical distribution, it follows the

same exact sequence I described related to Ron Paul’s geographic

distribution of his presidential donors (see Part IV-G.

A Zogby poll that 32 percent of Tea Party supporters were

Independents and and 61 percent are Republicans.2

Wade Clark Roof examined a separate Zogby study conducted

in April 2009 on the correlates of those who believed that

“‘President Obama is moving the country in the right direction’”

in an article called, “I Want My Country Back! The Demography of

Discontent.” The Zogby poll found sharp partisan differences

between those expressing confidence that Obama was leading the

country in the right direction: 52 percent overall sample, 90

percent of Democrats, 48 percent of Independents, and 11 percent

of Republicans.

Roof found that those expressing a lack of confidence

tended to be the religious—tending to attend church weekly or more

than once per week; whites, especially those with less education

(but also Hispanics and Asians); and, the youngest and the oldest

in the survey. But, perhaps the most telling statistic is how

2 John Zogby and Zeljka Buturovic, “Boiling Tea,” The Huffington Post, February 5, 2010, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-zogby/boiling-tea_b_451306.html.

those who have low confidence that the country is heading in the

right direction self-describe where they live. According to Roof,

“[f]ifty-five percent among those expressing no confidence in the

president say they are from America, most of them actually

dwelling in small towns and rural areas. Forty-eight percent are

NASCAR fans and 53 percent report weekly trips to Wal-Mart, adding

to the profile of a constituency vulnerable to conservative

activists who often play to class and cultural resentment.”3

The California Field Poll found that 12 percent of

Californians identified with the Tea Party “a lot” and another 16

percent identified with it “some.” Of the Republicans, 28 percent

had “a lot” of identification and 24 percent “some.” Of the

strongly conservative, 46 percent had “a lot” of identification

with the movement and 18 percent just “some” identification. Of

the moderately conservative, only 13 percent had “a lot” of

identification and 24 percent had “some” identification with it.

By contrast, only 4 percent of Democrats and barely 1 percent of

3 Wade Clark Roof, ‘I Want My Country Back!’: The Demography of Discontent,” Religion Dispatches, September 30, 2009, at http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/1864/“i_want_my_country_back!”:_the_demography_of_discontent/.

liberals had “a lot” of identification with the Tea Party

movement.4

In 2006 Cato Institute researchers performed a secondary

analysis of several public opinion polls and described similar

correlates of who were libertarians: “They can be found in all

parts of the country and all demographic groups, but they are more

likely than the average voter to be male, well educated, affluent,

and living in the Mountain and Pacific West. They are more likely

to own stock than other voters, making them a central part of the

‘investor class.’” And while libertarians tend to vote

Republican, they noted that in 1992 Ross Perot garnered 32 percent

of the libertarian vote.5 On a methodological note, libertarians

in the Cato study were constructed from questions the respondents

answered, not their self-identifying as libertarians.

The Cato analysis did not mention the 1996 Republican

presidential primary campaign of Patrick Buchanan. As I stated

earlier in Part IV-C, in the early primaries Buchanan won 37

percent of the vote in New Hampshire, 36 percent in Georgia, 32

4 Mark DiCamillo and Mervin Field, “The Field Poll,” Field Research Corporation,January 26, 2010, at http://www.field.com/fieldpollonline/subscribers/Rls2325.pdf.

5 David Boaz and David Kirby, “The Libertarian Vote,” Cato.org, October 23, 2006, at https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6735.

percent in Florida, 27 percent in Louisiana, and in Mississippi

Buchanan and Duke combined garnered 28 percent of the Republican

primary vote. In the Pacific Northwest, where Ron Paul would find

strong support in 2007-8, Buchanan pulled in 19 percent of the

vote in Oregon, 13 percent in Idaho, and 10 percent in Washington

State.6

Surely, in places like New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington

State, and Idaho Buchanan was drawing votes from libertarians, not

to mention also in the Southern states.

Daniel Levitas, an expert on Posse Comitatus, provided

some 1983 data drawn from the magazine Survival Guide and the Internal

Revenue Service showing a similarity between those attracted to

the Posse Comitatus and its extreme anti-tax message and current

day Tea Party protestors. According to Levitas, “the magazine

catered to an audience of skilled workers with annual incomes of

$25,000 or more. The IRS reached similar conclusions about tax

protestors. In one 1981 report examining the movement, the agency

found that roughly half of all protestors [refusing to file tax

returns] had incomes between $15,000 and $50,000, and another 17

percent earned between $10,000 and $15,000.” A separate analysis 6 Leonard Zeskind, Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2009: 280-2.

by the IRS of illegal protest returns in three district offices

less than three years earlier indicated that “58 percent of the

protestors were nonprofessional wage earners.”7

David Neiwert quoted from James Aho’s study of Christian

Patriots in Idaho which found that such persons “‘have on the

average spent more years in school than their more conventional

neighbors’” and ‘in general do not seem more socially alienated

from their communities than cross-sections of Americans or

Idahoans.’”8

Bearing in mind that the following data is drawn from

David Duke’s 1991 gubernatorial race in Louisiana in which the ex-

Klansman received more than 700,000 votes, the picture of the

correlates of support for Duke and for the Tea Party movement are

not that different. Zeskind reported that “Duke’s voters came

from a broad swath of the white working and middle classes,

regardless of whether or not they actually experienced declining

economic conditions.” White middle income voters ($30,000-50,000)

gave Duke 60 percent of their votes while those between $15,000-

7 Daniel Levitas, The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002: 203.

8 David Neiwert, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right, Sausalito, CA: Poli Point Press, 2009: 35.

30,000 voted for Duke at 63 percent. Among those with a high

school education, Duke received 68 percent of the vote and among

those with at least some college 48 percent. He received 69

percent of the vote among Christian born-again fundamentalists.

As Zeskind put it, “the most likely Duke voter emerged as a

financially stable, middle-class white male, with a high school

education and a born-again Christianity.”9

The social bases of the conservative-libertarian Tea

Party movement is not very different from the correlates of those

who are not confident in the direction of the country,

libertarians in general, probable Perot voters in 1992, probable

Buchanan voters in 1996, radical anti-tax protestors of the early

1980s, Idaho Christian patriots in the 1990s, or Duke voters in

Louisiana in 1991. They are not social misfits. They are

probably not suffering from any status anxiety. In general, they

have decent middle class or working class incomes, have attended

or graduated from college, are Protestant or Christian, very

religious in terms of church attendance, live in rural or suburban

9 Leonard Zeskind, Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream, New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2009: 273-4.

areas, tend to be probably strongly or very conservative, and

Republican.

Thus, Tea Party activists come to the movement with long-

standing attitudes, beliefs, opinions, or frames of reference of

varying degrees of coherence, saliency, and intensity. They are

not blank slates, even if they were not previously politically

engaged. Therefore, what constitutes the Republican or

conservative or libertarian worldview is highly relevant in any

discussion of Tea Party activists and the Tea Party as a social

movement particularly regarding the saliency and centrality of

race.

Racism—Not Here

Two African American conservatives have suggested that

“racism” is not the problem with the Tea Party movement—just gross

indifference from white conservative Americans.

Lenny McAllister, a frequent speaker at Tea Party

protests, noted his major observation of the Tea Party convention

in Nashville was the “dearth of African Americans visible in the

audience…was reminiscent of the 2008 Republican National

Convention.” He suggested that the Tea Party movement needed “to

embrace diversity,” address issue important to the African

American community with solutions that do not increase the size of

government, and co-celebrate Black History Month. He did not

believe that the Tea Party activists he interacted with “have a

love of America that disallows for there to be a co-existing

hatred for Americans based on skin color, gender, or religion. He

deemed “not acceptable” racist rhetoric by a small minority of Tea

Party-goers but claimed “This is not to say the Tea Party is

racist.”10

Michael Williams, the conservative running for U.S.

Senate in Texas and member of the Texas Railroad Commission,

complained that conservatives had yet to “‘show up’” and “‘have

that conversation with the African American community.’”

Williams complained that conservatives had not addressed “the

concerns of black voters, which he said included ‘the disparity

in education levels [with whites], and the lack of job creation,

particularly in low-income, predominantly African American and

Hispanic communities.’” The TPM correspondent noted that

organizers of CPAC, where he interviewed Williams, had about

10 Lenny McAllister, “Growing party’s populari-tea in Black History Month,” The Daily Caller, February 9, 2010, at http://dailycaller.com/2010/02/09/growing-partys-populari-tea-in-black-history-month/.

10,000 attendees that were essentially all white, including those

addressing the conference.11

David Brooks, conservative the New York Times pundit,

observed that the “mostly white” Tea Party activists at the 9.12

march on D.C. mingled easily with and bought food from vendors at

the Black Family Reunion Celebration. According to Brooks, “I

couldn’t discern any tension between them” and everyone was just

“milling about like at any sports area or sports arena.” Brooks

did note, however, that what motivated the Tea Party movement was

producer populism, in his words, “ordinary people” who are the

“moral backbone of the country” being “sucked off by condescending

manipulative elites” who distribute material wealth “to those who

don’t work.”12 In Brooks’ sociological insight none of producer

populism has ever had anything to do with race or ethnicity.

Racism—At the Margins

Lincoln Mitchell classified the debate over racism and

the Tea Party “serves little purpose” because [n]obody is going to

11 Evan McMorris-Santoro, “CPAC Day 2: Conservatives Still Struggling To Reach Out to African Americans,” Talking Points Memo, February 19, 2010, at http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/02/cpac-day-2-conservatives-still-struggling-to-reach-out-to-african-americans.php?ref=fpb.

12 David Brooks, “No, It’s Not About Race,” New York Times, September 18, 2009, at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/opinion/18brooks.html.

be convinced. Nor is anybody going to stop or change their

behaviors or accusation.” Mitchell did concede, however, that it

“reasonably obvious that some of the attacks on President Obama

will always be motivated by racism.”13

President Bill Clinton and former governor of Arkansas

observed that “‘some of the right-wing extremists which oppose

President Obama are also racially prejudiced and would prefer not

to have an African American president….But I don’t believe that

all the people who oppose him on health care—and all the

conservatives—are racists.’”14

Michael Tomasky, writing at the New York Review of Books,

argued that much of the “right-wing street protest at the 9.12

march on D.C. had “ideological rather than racial roots and

causes.” Ideologically, the protesters were “express[ing] a

genuine fury on the part of citizens who believe in limited

government and are opposed to the bank bailout, the auto bailout,

health care reform, the deficit, and other policies of the

13 Lincoln Mitchell, “The Pointlessness of the Racism Debate,” The Huffington Post, September 20, 2009, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lincoln-mitchell/the-pointlessness-of-the_b_292858.html.

14 Martina Stewart, “Bill Clinton weighs in on charges of racism against Obama,”CNN, September 21, 2009, at http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/09/21/bill-clinton-weighs-in-on-charges-of-racism-against-obama/?fbid=DAm3R7PQOdg.

administration.” Tomasky noted that because the Tea Party

protesters were 98 percent “everything these folks say about

‘their’ country being taken away from them has an inevitable

racial overtone.” Tomasky did concede, however, that President

Obama’s race probably accounted for “quite this ferocity” aimed

directly at the President.15

Sara Robinson, based on a discussion with Chip Berlet,

identified two groups of conservatives and the dynamic with the

Tea Party movement. There is a group, averaging 10 percent of the

population, who are “fundamentalists and nationalists and proto-

fascists.” A second group is slightly larger than the first group

and they are “conservative by temperament” and are “closer to the

political center-right.” The second group “embrace hard-line

conservatism if they’re under extreme social or economic stress.”

According to Robinson, the conservative-center-right group is

being “driven by the Tea Party movement, which is organizing the

core of this second slice.” Robinson sees the danger in this

rightward shift of the second group “forming stronger alliances

with the ultra-right ten percenters.” But, Robinson argues that

15 Michael Tomasky, “Something New on the Mall,” New York Review of Books, Volume 56 Number 16, October 22, 2009, at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23150.

this is not one contiguous bloc because “the ultra-right clings to

racism as an all-purpose explanation” and the “Tea Party folks…

have largely moved past racism.”16

Robinson based her claim on the Tea Party being “past

racism” on her assertion, without any evidence, that “The forty

years is up, and the vast majority of conservatives (with the

exception of a very small rump faction of perpetual racists and a

remnant of the over-70 crowd) have finally gotten over themselves

on the race issue. And their new inclusiveness is beginning to

win over African American evangelicals, who are conservative on

homosexuality, and Hispanic Catholics, who are conservative on

issues around family and contraception.”17 Therefore, Robinson

believes that the alliance of these two groups of conservatives

(center-right and ultra-right) “will be less grounded in racism

against the usual black and brown groups, and more deeply rooted

16 Sara Robinson, “State of the Union: A Status Report on the Far Right,” Our Future.org, January 28, 2010, at http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010010428/state-union-status-report-far-right.

17 Sara Robinson, “The futurist weighs in: The things we leave behind,” Our Future.org, January 24, 2010, at http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010010322/futurist-weighs-part-ii-things-we-leave-behind.

in mutual tribal agreements on the evils of socialism, liberalism,

and Islam.”18

Racism—Central to the Tea Party Movement

President Jimmy Carter and former governor of Georgia

raised the issue squarely: “I think an overwhelming portion of the

intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is

based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African

American….And that racism inclination still exists. And I think

it's bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many

white people, not just in the South but around the country, that

African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country.”19

Megan McCain reacted to Tom Tancredo’s implicit call for

literacy tests and his observation that Obama was elected by

people who “‘would not even spell the word vote’” as “innate

racism” from the older generation of conservatives.20

18 Sara Robinson, “State of the Union: A Status Report on the Far Right,” Our Future.org, January 28, 2010, at http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010010428/state-union-status-report-far-right.

19 Garance Franke-Ruta, “Carter Cites ‘Racism Inclination’ in Animosity Toward Obama,” Washington Post, September 15, 2009, at http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/09/15/carter_cites_racism_inclinatio.html?hpid=topnews.

20 ABC News Blogs, “Republicans vs. Republicans? Meghan McCain Rails at the Tea Party,” February 8, 2010, at http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/02/republicans-vs-republicans-meghan-

Earl Ofari Hutchinson observed the Confederate flags and

the Texas separatist flag at the 9.12 D.C. march. He concluded

that the “racist flags, symbols and signs, though, gave big lie to

their profuse denials. Racism was on full and ugly display on the

Capitol Mall.” Hutchinson attributed the racism to the well-honed

Republican tactic of the “artful twist of hidden race animus into

slogans such as ‘law and order,’ ‘crime in the streets,’ ‘welfare

cheats,’ and ‘absentee fathers.’”21

Rich Benjamin, writing at AlterNet, used Sarah Palin as a

figurehead of “white racial resentment.” Benjamin noted that she

and the Tea Party movement use “racial codes” to hide race under

“‘nonracial’ issues like health care reform, public spending,

immigration reform, and pointedly, taxes.” Benjamin argued that

the “Tea Party ethos is a direct descendant of the anti-tax

segregationist politics that swept the South in the 1950s and

1960s.” According to Benjamin, “Race is the subtext of now-potent

populist appeals to whites, who feel battered from a tsunami of

economic and cultural change. The Tea Party counterculture is

mccain-rails-out-at-the-tea-party.html.

21 Earl Ofari Hutchinson, “Racism March at Taxpayer March,” The Huffington Post,September 13, 2009, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/racism-marched-at-taxpaye_b_285007.html.

waging a proxy war over race during America's rapidly shifting

economy and demographic makeup.”22

Peter Brimelow, writing in February 2010 at the white

nationalist VDare website, half-way endorsed Benjamin’s analysis.

According to Brimelow, “There is an unspoken race dimension to the

Tea Party Movement, as there was to Scott Brown’s Senate victory,

and the Palin phenomenon. It’s what you get when you try to

abolish a historic nation through immigration policy. Whites,

formerly known as ‘Americans,’ will band together, implicitly or

explicitly, to defend their interests.”23 Writing in October 2009,

Brimelow claimed “it’s still about race. It’s no coincidence,

comrades, that the backlash is overwhelmingly white. Whites in

America voted heavily against Obama….But to adapt Phillip Roth,

‘Let’s face it they [whites] are America’”24 (emphasis in original).

22 Rich Benjamin, “White Racial Resentment Bubbles Under the Surface of the Tea Party Movement,” AlterNet, February 5, 2010, at http://www.alternet.org/story/145560/flour_power:_white_racial_resentment_bubbles_under_the_surface_of_the_tea_party_movement.

23 Peter Brimelow, “The Tea Party, Tancredo, And The Implicit White Community,” Vdare.com February 6, 2010, at http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2010/02/06/tea-party/.

24 Peter Brimelow, “Yes, It Is About Race. Quite Right Too,” VDare.com, October 6, 2009, at http://www.vdare.com/pb/091006_race.htm.

And Leonard Zeskind, one of the leading researchers on

the white nationalist movement argued that the “defining slogan

‘Take Our Country Back’” is a “cry for the restoration of a nation

that does not exist. It is a ‘Christian nation…And it is a

‘white’ nation that does not dare speak its name.” According to

Zeskind, “the whiteness of the Tea Party’s imagination is assumed

rather than spoken. It is ‘their’ country they want back.”

Zeskind cautioned that “[a]ny response to the Tea Parties must

address the issue of race forthrightly.”25

Twentieth Century Libertarianism—Born Racist

To sort through these conflicting claims on the

centrality of race to the Tea Party movement it is necessary to

cover the following salient issues raised by some of the writers.

Is it true, as Sara Robinson asserts, that the conservative

movement has largely gotten over the issue of race? Is it true,

as Sara Robinson asserts, that the Tea Party movement is driving

the political center-right of conservatives toward the ultra-

right? To what degree has Ron Paul adopted the Southern Strategy

25 Leonard Zeskind, “What Not to Do About the Tea Parties & Some Hints About What to Do,” The Huffington Post, February 15, 2010, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leonard-zeskind/what-not-to-do-about-the_b_462829.html.

of abandoning the N-word racism and adopting the abstract and

race-neutral code words and public policies that still amount to a

defense of states’ rights and a defense of white supremacy or

white nationalism? To what degree is libertarian economic

philosophy inherently racist? And, finally, is this inherent

racism the reason why libertarian writers such as but not limited

to David Weigel and Glenn Greenwald still blandly refer to Ron

Paul as a “libertarian” and a champion of “individual liberty” but

prefer not to discuss his support for a white Christian

nationalist agenda?

To begin, we start with the conclusion that twentieth

century libertarianism was born racist and is inherently racist.

That conclusion rests on the authority of none other than

the late Murray N. Rothbard, co-founder of the Ludwig von Mises

Institute along with Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul. The Institute is

not only one of the main neo-Confederate think tanks—one of the

key components of the Ron Paul network—but also the primary

institution supporting Ron Paul and his Tea Party movement. The

Institute is also the home of the Christian Reconstruction

economic libertarian Gary North, who is also the informal

strategic adviser to Ron Paul.

In 1994 Rothbard published an article, “Life in the Old

Right.” Rothbard argued that the heyday of the “Old Right”

spanned from 1933 to 1955 and was the original opposition to the

New Deal. According to Rothbard, this coalition of opposition

consisted of “libertarian and individualist writers and

intellectuals;” “conservative states’ rights Democrats of the

nineteenth century, largely from the South, whose views were

almost as libertarian as the first group;” “conservative

Republicans…who largely came from the Midwest;” and, “former

progressives and statists” led by “former President Herbert Hoover

who…denounced the New Deal for going too far into ‘fascism.’”

According to Rothbard, this libertarian coalition was

hard-core regressive: “A few libertarian extremists wanted to go all

the way back to the Articles of Confederation, but the great bulk of

the right was committed to the United States Constitution—but a

Constitution construed so ‘strictly’ as to outlaw much twentieth-

century legislation, certainly on the federal level” (emphasis in

original).

Rothbard admitted in the article that he “embraced the

new states’ rights or ‘Dixiecrat’ ticket of Strom Thurmond for

president and Fielding Wright of Mississippi for vice president.”

As a student at Columbia University, Rothbard “founded a Students

for Thurmond group.” Rothbard’s hope was that the “States’ Rights

Party would continue to become a major party and destroy what was

then a one-party Democratic monopoly in the South. In that way,

an Old Right, Midwestern Republican coalition with States’ Rights

Democrats could become the majority party!”26

Although Rothbard did not mention the John Birch Society,

he gave a plausible reason why Robert Welch, a member of the board

of directors of the National Association of Manufactures (NAM)

since 1950, founded the Society in 1958. Starting in 1946,

according to Rothbard, the NAM had “sold out” and accepted the New

Deal.

According to Chip Berlet, “early Birch conspiracism

reflects an ultraconservative business nationalist critique of

business internationalists.”27 The Society was instrumental in

pushing the “‘constitutionalist’” and “‘producerism’” conspiracy

theories.28 According to Berlet, the “JBS simultaneously 26 Murray N. Rothbard, “Life in the Old Right,” LewRockwell.com, August 1994, athttp://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:2tZhqH04_SQJ:www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard45.html+site:www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us.

27 Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons, “John Birch Society,” Political Research Associates, 2000, at http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/jbs.html.

28 Chip Berlet, “Dances with Devils,” PublicEye.org, at http://www.publiceye.org/apocalyptic/Dances_with_Devils_1-01.html. Chip Berlet,

discouraged overt forms of racism [and anti-Semitism], while it

promoted policies that had the effect of racist oppression by its

opposition to the Civil Rights movement.”29

According to Rothbard’s retrospective, the Old Right was

crushed in 1955 by the National Review which “proceeded to purge

all rightwing factions that had previously lived and worked in

harmony but now proved too isolationist or too unrespectable.”30

Edward Sebesta, in an early article on “The Neo-

Confederate Movement,” established that Russell Kirk, “perhaps the

most prominent conservative of the 20th century,” “promoted the

values of southern conservatism and ultimately the neo-

Confederates.” Kirk was an early supporter of the Southern Partisan,

a leading neo-Confederate journal that attracted conservative

writers from across the country, not just the South. Kirk’s

considerable prestige, prodigious writings, and intellectual

support ensured that “the values of southern conservatism and

“Conspiracist Scapegoating and Right-Wing Populism,” PublicEye.org, at http://www.publiceye.org/apocalyptic/Dances_with_Devils_1-02.html.

29 Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons, “John Birch Society,” Political Research Associates, 2000, at http://www.publiceye.org/tooclose/jbs.html.

30 Murray N. Rothbard, “Life in the Old Right,” LewRockwell.com, August 1994, athttp://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:2tZhqH04_SQJ:www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard45.html+site:www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us.

admiration for the Confederacy, became accepted and not

peripheral, not sectional for conservatism.” Sebesta noted that

in 1958, at the start of the Civil Rights movement, Kirk

“dedicated an entire issue of Modern Age to defending the South as

it was.”31

Opposition to the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s was

not limited to Kirk and the neo-Confederate movement and the John

Birch Society. William F. Buckley and the National Review defended

the white supremacists. William Voegeli in article on “Civil

Rights & the Conservative Movement” noted that Buckley in 1957

wrote an article “Why the South Must Prevail” in which Buckley

asked “‘whether the White community in the South is entitled to

prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not

predominate numerically?....The sobering answer is Yes—the White

community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the

advanced race.’”

Nancy MacLean reported that Buckley and Frank Meyer, his

founding co-editor and “leading conservative movement builder in

the formative years…forged an alliance with the intellectual 31 Edward Sebesta, “The Neo-Confederate Movement,” March 1995, Temple of Democracy, at http://web.archive.org/web/20000919191637/http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/Essay1.htm#THE NEO-CONFEDERATE MOVEMENT.

architect of ‘massive resistance’ James Jackson Kilpatrick.”

Moreover, the National Review “traded mailing lists with this [White

Citizens Councils] avid white supremacist organization in 1958,

assuring its leader that ‘Our position on states’ rights is the

same as your own.’”32

Voegeli noted that Buckley “regularly” expressed “the

asymmetry of his sympathies—genuine concern for Southern whites

beset by integrationists, but more often than not, perfunctory

concern for Southern blacks beset by bigots.” Buckley’s views

resembled “that of the ‘Southern Manifesto’ signed in 1956 by

nearly every senator and representative from the South” which

accused the Brown v. Board decision of ‘destroying the amicable

relations between white and Negro races that have been created

through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both

races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been

heretofore friendship and understanding.’”33

32 Nancy MacLean, “The Scary Origins of Chief Justice Roberts’s Decision Opposing the Use of Race to Promote Integration,” History News Network, June 8, 2007, at http://hnn.us/articles/41501.html.

33 William Voegeli, “Civil Rights & the Conservative Movement,” Real Clear Politics, June 30, 2008, at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/06/civil_rights_the_conservative.html.

The Southern Manifesto was more than a manifesto. Part

of the white supremacist reaction was a reign of terror against

civil rights workers and any African American who could be made an

example of for disturbing the apartheid system. The other

reaction was the use of Tenth Amendment (states’ rights) to

nullify the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. For example, the

Florida and Georgia legislatures passed laws that with slightly

different wording stated, “‘decisions and orders of the Supreme

Court of the United States denying the individual sovereign States

the power to enact laws relating to the separation of the races in

public institutions of a state are null, void and of no force or

effect.’”34

Conservative opposition to all civil rights legislation

continued with Goldwater’s argument derived from legal advice

given by his legal advisers William Rehnquist and Robert Bork that

the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was “‘a grave threat’ to a

constitutional republic in which fifty sovereign states have

reserved to themselves and to the people those powers not

specifically granted to the central or Federal government.’”35 34 Edward Sebesta, “Racism,” Temple of Democracy, 1996, at http://web.archive.org/web/20000919191630/www.templeofdemocracy.com/RACISM.htm.

35 William Voegeli, “Civil Rights & the Conservative Movement,” Real Clear Politics, June 30, 2008, at

With all due respect to Rehnquist and Bork, the Ninth Amendment

gave all unenumerated rights to the people and none of these

unenumerated rights to the states.

Conservative and Republican opposition to all civil

rights legislation and the defense of states’ rights continued

under the GOP’s Southern Strategy—a strategy the Republicans have

never repudiated and continue to follow. According to the late

Lee Atwater, the essence of the strategy was to conceptually shift

the focus away from overt and explicit expressions of racism (the

N-word) to “say[ing] stuff like forced busing, states' rights and

all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're

talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking

about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is

[that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.” When candidate Reagan

went to Philadelphia, Mississippi, and said “‘I believe in states’

rights’” that Reagan “was elbow deep in the same race-baiting

Southern strategy of Goldwater and Nixon.” As Bob Herbert noted,

“When Democrats revolted against racism, the G.O.P. rallied to its

banner.”36

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/06/civil_rights_the_conservative.html.

36 Bob Herbert, “Impossible, Ridiculous, Repugnant,” New York Times, October 6, 2005, at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?

In January 1992, Murray Rothbard, who co-founded the

Ludwig von Mises Institute with Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul—the

three of whom would eagerly join Patrick Buchanan’s 1992

presidential campaign—authored an article on incorporating David

Duke’s libertarian economic platform into a

paleo-libertarian/paleo-conservative coalition. Essentially the

same as the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy, Rothbard wrote,

“there was nothing in Duke’s current program or campaign that

could not also be embraced by paleo-conservatives or paleo-

libertarians; lower taxes, dismantling the bureaucracy, slashing

the welfare system, attacking affirmative action and racial set-

asides, calling for equal rights for all Americans, including

whites: what was wrong with any of that?”

Rothbard’s plan for a coalition was couched in the John

Birch Society’s producer populism theory: “to tap the masses

directly, to short circuit the dominant media and intellectual

elites, to rouse the masses of people against the elites that are

looting them, and confusing them, and oppressing them, both

socially and economically.” Furthermore, the ruling elites are an

res=9C04E6DF1E30F935A35753C1A9639C8B63. Bob Herbert, “Righting Reagan’s Wrongs?,” New York Times, November 13, 2007, at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/opinion/13herbert.html?_r=1.

“unholy alliance of ‘corporate liberal’ Big Business and media

elites, who, through big government, have privileged and caused to

rise up a parasitic Underclass, who among them all, are looting

and oppressing the bulk of the middle and working classes in

America.”

In Rothbard’s formulation (and by extension Ron Paul and

Lew Rockwell), to attract social conservatives and their

opposition to “pornography, prostitution, or abortion” the “pro-

legalization and pro-choice libertarians” should use states’

rights to “end the tyranny of the federal courts, and to leave

these problems up to states, and better yet, localities and

neighborhoods.”37 As I demonstrated in Parts IV-D and –E, Ron Paul

has consistently followed this strategy in pushing opposition to

civil rights, the establishment of religion, same-sex rights, and

reproductive rights.

Voegile noted that in 2004 Buckley barely was able to

support passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Wrote Buckley in

an email exchange with Michael Kinsley, “‘I’d vote with

trepidation, however, for the obvious reason that successful 37 Murray Rothbard, “Right-Wing Populism,” LewRockwell.com, January 1992, at http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:RBsrhlHmwZEJ:www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch5.html+http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch5.html&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us.

results cannot necessarily legitimize the means by which they were

brought about.’” As Voegile put it, “Buckley never retracted his

limited government arguments against the civil rights agenda.”38

In other words, taking Buckley’s final position, the

continued efficacy of the Southern Strategy, Rothbard’s Duke-

inspired economic libertarianism as strategy for a paleo-

libertarian and paleo-conservative alliance, and Ron Paul’s

consistent positions there is no evidence that conservatives are,

in Sara Robinson’s term “past racism.” This is especially true at

the ideological and institutional levels of analyses.

But the problem is both deeper and broader than the

paragraph above suggests if one does not take into account—as all

the analyses in the preceding section do not—the ideology, values,

and organizational basis of the neo-Confederate movement, of which

Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty and the Ludwig von Mises Institute

are a part.

38 William Voegeli, “Civil Rights & the Conservative Movement,” Real Clear Politics, June 30, 2008, at http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/06/civil_rights_the_conservative.html.

I have previously noted that Russell Kirk used his

enormous influence and prestige to bring conservative Southern

ideas into the mainstream of conservative thought and he defended

the white supremacist South in 1958.

Emil Prague in 1996 wrote that the neo-Confederate

movement was already a national movement. Neo-Confederate writers

had a broad revisionist view of American history going back to the

American Revolution and the Civil War and that the movement

represented a regressive “alienation to modernity.” Steve

Wilkins, one of the co-founders of the League of the South, was a

Christian Reconstructionist theologian who promoted the idea of

the Civil War as a “theological conflict.” Prague argued that the

neo-Confederate view underscored how much of the “Religious Right

is underpinned by historical interpretation.” The neo-Confederate

movement and the Christian Right were opposed to civil rights for

minorities and women and gays, opposition to immigration, and for

a “Christian nation.” According to Prague, “the neo-Confederacy

is the historical ground which is tilled by these activists to

grow a viewpoint, a consciousness, a political ideology, for a

Confederate vision of America.”39

39 Emil Greenhalgh Prague, “How the Neo-Confederates Have Become A National Movement And The Opportunities It Gives Us To Fight Racism And The Right,”

Edward Sebesta also wrote that neo-Confederate ideas for

conservatives are a “core binding element of their political

beliefs.” Sebesta summarized the neo-Confederate view of American

history which has informed conservatives: “Essentially neo-

Confederates believe that with the Civil War, Lincoln was able to

expand the power of the federal government beyond constitutional

limits, and that with the defeat of the Confederacy the ideals of

states' rights were defeated. They believe that the 14th Amendment

was illegally adopted. To them this has resulted in the growth of

federal government into a Leviathan, a very large monstrous beast

in the bible….In this historical view big government, integration

and Brown vs. Brown, gay rights, civil rights, feminism,

minorities, taxes, FDR, and other issues can be viewed as the

result of the American Republic jumping the tracks during the

Civil War and being out of control.”40

Like the Southern Manifesto which claimed that relations

between the races during the Jim Crow era were “amicable” and

Temple of Democracy, May 22, 1996, at http://web.archive.org/web/20000919191550/www.templeofdemocracy.com/WhyfightNeoConfederacy.htm.

40 Edward Sebesta, “The Neo-Confederate Movement,” March 1995, Temple of Democracy, at http://web.archive.org/web/20000919191637/http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/Essay1.htm#THE NEO-CONFEDERATE MOVEMENT.

based on “friendship and understanding,” the neo-Confederate

movement sought to portrays racial relations under slavery as

highly favorable to the slaves and a burden to the slave masters.

A book written in the 1950s claimed, “‘No, the Southern planter’s

work was civilizing the poor, deluded Negro—the greatest

missionary work known to history….The institution of slavery as it

was in the South, so far from degrading the Negro was fast

elevating him above his nature and his race.”41

A survey of the slave conspiracy literature in 1993 noted

that many of these studies had the “‘felt necessity of refuting

the notion that American slaves were contented in their

bondage.’”42

Steven Wilkins and Douglas Wilson co-authored a 1996

book, Southern Slavery: As It Was, which claimed that “‘Slavery as it

existed in the South…was a relationship based upon mutual

affection and harmony….There has never been a multiracial society

41 Edward Sebesta, “Racism,” Temple of Democracy, 1996, at http://web.archive.org/web/20000919191630/www.templeofdemocracy.com/RACISM.htm.

42 Edward Sebesta, “Racism Part 2,” Temple of Democracy, 1996, at http://web.archive.org/web/20000919192658/www.templeofdemocracy.com/Part2RACISM.htm.

which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the

history of the world.’”43

Sebesta asked two pertinent questions which underlie the

“happy slave” narrative of the neo-Confederate movement: “Can a

being that would be content to be a slave really be considered

fully human? Can a person who would be content to be a slave

really be thought to have a soul, spirit, an intellectual

capacity?”44 The answers are obvious.

What is not so obvious is that this narrative, while it

is not the same, it is a lesser form of Holocaust denial. While

Holocaust deniers deny that the Holocaust took place, the neo-

Confederates acknowledge that slavery took place but the slaves

loved their masters, there was mutual affection, harmony, and

mutual intimacy.

Is it really any wonder why conservatives and

libertarians continue to work against implementing civil rights

legislation?

43 Mark Potok, “Taliban on the Palouse,?” Intelligence Report Spring 2004, Southern Poverty Law Center, at http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=376.

44 Edward Sebesta, “Racism Part 2,” Temple of Democracy, 1996, at http://web.archive.org/web/20000919192658/www.templeofdemocracy.com/Part2RACISM.htm.

Sebesta provided the key organizations of the neo-

Confederate. The League of the South had as two of its “founding

and charter members” Lew Rockwell, co-founder with Ron Paul and

Murray Rothbard of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and Jeffrey

Tucker, director of research at the Mises Institute.45

In addition to the Ludwig von Mises Institute, other

leading neo-Confederate organizations include the Council of

Conservative Citizens, Jared Taylor’s American Renaissance, Sons

of Confederate Veterans, and the Rockford Institute in Illinois.

There are many others.

In 2002, Sebesta reported that the League of the South,

Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Christian Reconstructionist

Chalcedon Foundation accept the Civil War theological thesis that

the war “was a theological war over the future of American

religiosity fought between devout Confederate and heretical Union

states” and that the Confederate “battle flag and other

Confederate icons are Christian symbols and the assertion that

opposition to them equates to a rejection of Christianity.”46

45 Edward Sebesta, “The Neo-Confederate Movement,” March 1995, Temple of Democracy, at http://web.archive.org/web/20000919191637/http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/Essay1.htm#THE NEO-CONFEDERATE MOVEMENT.

In previous sections (Parts IV-B and –E) I have already

noted that Christian Reconstructionist thought has strongly

influenced the Christian nationalist movement and that it is

directly linked to and influences Ron Paul who has responded by

supporting a Christian nationalist agenda.

I will close this section with but a few examples of how

racism and opposition to civil rights for minorities permeate the

white nationalist and Christian nationalist movements.

Health Care Reform as Slave Reparations

Fox Nation described health care reform as “‘affirmative

action on steroids, deciding everything from who becomes a doctor

to who gets treatment on the basis of skin color. President Obama

is on the record as being officially opposed to reparations for

slavery. But as with other issues, you have to sift through his

eloquent rhetoric…to get at what he really means.’”47 Glenn Beck

apparently introduced the reparations argument. In other words,

46 Edward H. Sebesta and Euan Hague, “The US Civil War as a Theological War: Confederate Christian Nationalism and the League of the South,” Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume 32 Number 3, 2002: , at http://gis.depaul.edu/ehague/Articles/PUBLISHED%20CRAS%20ARTICLE.pdf.

47 Peter Daou, “Right Wing Attacks Collide: ‘Racist’ Obama Using Health Reform for Reparations,” The Huffington Post, July 29, 2009, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-daou/rightwing-attacks-collide_b_246893.html.

Obama’s a racist who will kill white people by denying them health

care on the basis of race as a substitute for slave reparations.

Obama Waffles and the Conservative Movement

At the 2008 Values Voters Summit sponsored by Tony

Perkins’ Family Research Council allowed the sale of racist images

of “Obama Waffles” until the Associated Press pointed them out at

the tail end of the Summit. The boxes had racist caricatures of

then Senator Obama, the future First Lady, Reverend Jeremiah

Wright, of Mexicans, and Muslims.48

According to Max Blumenthal, Perkins headlined a “2002

fundraiser for the Louisiana chapter of America’s largest white

supremacist organization, the Council of Conservative Citizens.”

Moreover, Perkins also signed the check which purchased David

Duke’s mailing list for a Louisiana political candidate.49 Perkins

also chairs the weekly Christian nationalist meeting of the

Conservative Action Project that works with the Health Care

48 Chip Berlet, “Bigoted Obama Waffles; Bigoted Values Voter Conference,” The Huffington Post, September 15, 2009, at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chip-berlet/bigoted-obama-waffles-pac_b_126404.html.

49 Max Blumenthal, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party, New York: Nation Books, 2009: 131-2.

Freedom Coalition that works “extensively with tea-party

activists.”50

Interestingly, to those who would argue that the

Christian nationalists who supported the anti-immigration movement

or opposed health care reform are not animated by race or racism,

that view is not shared by Reverend Sammy Rodriguez, the hard-line

Christian nationalist who heads the National Hispanic Christian

Leadership Conference.

Inside the Christian Nationalist Movement—Race and Racism a

Deep Concern

Reverend Rodriguez has expressed concern that the

Christian Right’s involvement in the anti-immigration movement is

tinged with racism towards Hispanics, though he did not use those

words. Reacting to the formation of the Secure Borders Coalition

that included elements of the Christian Right and the nativist

extremist group Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, Reverend Rodriguez

said, “Before immigration came along, we were building an

50 Jerry Markon, “New media help conservatives get their anti-Obama message out,” Washington Post, February 1, 2010, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/31/AR2010013102860.html.

alliance…. Immigration threatens to become the definitive

divide.”51 The Washington Post quoted Reverend Rodriguez questioning

why other Christian Right groups were not supporting comprehensive

immigration reform. “‘Where we were you when 12 million of our

brothers and sisters were about to be deported and 12 million

families disenfranchised?’” complained Rodriguez.52 In 2007,

Reverend Rodriguez reacted negatively to the formation of the

Christian Right’s Families First on Immigration coalition which

was an attack on the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment guarantee

of birthright citizenship—an attack directly aimed at undocumented

Hispanic immigrants having so-called “anchor babies.”

RightWingWatch reported Rodriguez as saying, “‘It’s great that

white evangelicals are finally speaking out on this issue….But so

far, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with what we’re hearing.’”53

51 Alexander Zaitchik, “‘Christian’ Nativism,’” Intelligence Report Winter 2006, Southern Poverty Law Center, at http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=724.

52 Alan Cooperman, “Letter on Immigration Deepens Split Among Evangelicals,” Washington Post, April 5, 2006, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/04/AR2006040401606.html.

53 Kyle, “The Sudden Emergence and Disappearance of Families First on Immigration,” Rightwing Watch, May 22, 2007, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/sudden-emergence-and-disappearance-families-first-immigration.

In September 2009 the National Hispanic Christian

Leadership Conference, headed by Reverend Samuel Rodriguez, and

the Hispanic National Association of Evangelicals, supported

undocumented immigrants being able to purchase health care

insurance and opposed the requirement that persons needed to prove

American citizenship in order to get access to health care.

Reverend Rick Garza, the Conference’s chief operating officer

complained that requiring “‘immigrants to prove citizenship in

order to purchase Health Care coverage stands as a defacto

endorsement of racial profiling and continues to exacerbate the

anti-immigrant sentiment currently embedded within the immigration

reform debate.’” Garza added that excluding 12 million Hispanics

from health care coverage is “‘deportation via attrition or better

yet, some may label the scheme as Xenophobic Health Care

Reform.’”54 Garza’s terminology—‘deportation via attrition’—is

probably a reference to the white nationalist John Tanton’s

strategy of conducting a “war of attrition” against Hispanic

immigrants so that they deport themselves.

54 Kyle, “Will The Freedom Federation Support Health Care For Illegal Immigrants?,” RightWingWatch, September 21, 2009, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/will-freedom-federation-support-health-care-illegal-immigrants.

In October 2009, Reverend Rodriguez warned conservative

Republicans (and by implication Democrats who had joined in

barring undocumented immigrants from access to health care

insurance) that it is “‘impossible to win national elections

without Hispanics’” and “‘impossible to win Hispanics without

immigration reform.’”55 Following the electoral victory in

November 2008 of Proposition 8 in California against gay marriage,

Reverend Rodriguez proclaimed, “‘White evangelicals by themselves

cannot preserve a biblical worldview or a biblical agenda within

American political and public policy arena. It is impossible.

2008 said it is over.’”56

Christian Nationalists Re-Affirm Racist Sharon Statement

In February 2010, just before the Conservative Political

Action Conference, 80 leading Christian nationalists groups re-

affirmed their support for William F. Buckley’s 1960 “Sharon

Statement” and issued a new theocratic, neo-Confederate, John

Birch Society “Mount Vernon Statement.” The top conservative

55 Kyle, “Will Immigration Reform Fracture The Freedom Federation?,” RightWingWatch, October 21, 2009, at http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/will-immigration-reform-fracture-freedom-federation.

56 Bruce Wilson, “Proposition 8: A Proving Ground For The New ‘Rainbow’ Right,” Talk2Action, April 4, 2009, at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2009/4/4/192333/9543.

leadership pledged themselves to “Constitutional conservatism” and

“first principles” in order to reign in a federal government that

“ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly

dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant.” In addition to “limited

government” and the “rule of law,” they professed their desire to

“establish true religious liberty.”57

The blogger MoneyMaker at BullFax pointed out the context

of the Sharon Statement. It was the founding document of Young

Americans for Freedom who in 1962 gave its ‘Freedom Award’ to

Strom Thurmond.58

Somehow re-affirming a document that itself was a defense

of white supremacy does not indicate that much has changed.

And, let us not forget, Richard Balmer’s original

research in his book Thy Kingdom Come based on interviews with the

late Paul Weyrich and corroborated by Ed Dobson, the late Jerry

Falwell’s associate, that the “Religious Right arose as a movement

57 “The Mount Vernon Statement,” February 17, 2010, at http://www.themountvernonstatement.com/.

58 MarketMaker, “The Sharon Statement,” Bullfax.com, February 17, 2010, at http://www.bullfax.com/?q=node-sharon-statement.

for the purpose, effectively, of defending racial discrimination

at Bob Jones University and at other segregated schools.”59

2010 Conservative Political Action Conference—Birchers and

Birthers

Of course, the 2010 Conservative Political Action

Conference had as one of its co-sponsors with a double booth

exhibit space the John Birch Society. It was the first time the

Society had been a co-sponsor. They are still opposed to civil

rights legislation—but it is just so “constitutional.”

Also at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference

the birther conspiracy—the racist claim that President Obama is

not the legitimate president because he is not a natural-born

citizen—was given time for a major presentation. It is not a

fringe conspiracy as Weigel likes to characterize it—they are

prime time in the big tent. How else can you explain that Joseph

Farah, head of WorldNetDaily, which pushes the birther conspiracy

was given a major speaking role at the Tea Party convention in

Nashville?

59 Randall Balmer, “Book Excerpt: Thy Kingdom Come,” National Public Radio.org,

June 23, 2006, at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5502785.

That does not seem to suggest that there has been much of

a change in conservative thinking.

FreedomWorks: Slavery Was a Voluntary Lifestyle Decision

Finally, Dick Armey, the head of FreedomWorks which works

closely with Tea Party groups around the country uses an African

American former radio personality Mason Weaver to tell the “almost

entirely white” Tea Party activists that it is ok to oppose Obama,

your ‘slave master’ and that if you do not rise up you will be

“‘slaves.’”

According to the report published in the New York Times

Magazine, “Weaver repeatedly referred to the government as ‘master’

and warned his audience that America’s first black president wants

to enslave them. ‘You’ve got to decide if you’re free or you’re a

slave’…You see, slavery was a choice. The master didn’t lock

those slaves up at night. There was no ball and chain. They stayed

because they thought like a slave.’”60

Now, that is a novel explanation for slavery coming from

an African American—it was a voluntary lifestyle decision.60 Michael Sokolove, “Dick Armey Is Back on the Attack,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, November 4, 2009, at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/magazine/08Armey-t.html?_r=1.

Final Thoughts

Is it true, as Sara Robinson asserts, that the

conservative movement has largely gotten over the issue of race?

No, it has never gotten past its racism and race-baiting.

Is it true, as Sara Robinson asserts, that the Tea Party

movement is driving the political center-right of conservatives

toward the ultra-right? Yes, but only if the real driver is

identified as Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty and his network of

white nationalists.

To what degree has Ron Paul adopted the Southern Strategy

of abandoning the N-word racism and adopting the abstract and

race-neutral code words and public policies that still amount to a

defense of states’ rights and a defense of white supremacy or

white nationalism? Completely.

To what degree is libertarian economic philosophy

inherently racist?

It was born racist in the 1930s in opposition to

President Roosevelt’s New Deal and has only changed its vocabulary

and sheets for pinstripe suits.

And, finally, is this inherent racism the reason why

libertarian writers such as but not limited to David Weigel and

Glenn Greenwald still blandly refer to Ron Paul as a “libertarian”

and a champion of “individual liberty” but prefer not to discuss

his support for a white Christian nationalist agenda?

I do not honestly know. I have made clear his agenda.

There are no “smears or distortions.” If they continue to defend

Ron Paul and do not confront the inherent racism in the movement’s

libertarian economic philosophy, well, I guess they agree with it.

In the next and concluding section I will discuss the

apparent militia-ization of the Tea Party movement and Ron Paul’s

connections to that process.