An Open Letter to Ron Paul - August 28, 2012

This is what I posted on my Facebook note, dated today, August 28, 2012.



Dear Ron Paul:





My name is Todd Andrew Barnett, and I'm the host of a talk radio show called Liberty Cap Talk Live on TalkShoe.com. It's a weekly show that becomes podcasted as soon as it goes off the air at 10 p.m. EST my time, although it airs precisely at 8 p.m. EST my time. It is currently on hiatus, and it will be back for its fourth season this upcoming November 10th. But that's not the topic of discussion which I wanted to speak with you. I am a former campaign supporter and activist who was involved in your presidential campaigns in 2007-2008 and 2011 and this year. Although I wasn't that actively involved in the campaign to the extent where I was hanging up signs every day to promote your cause, I did support you towards the end of last years as a Precinct Leader in the Michigan Ron Paul for President affiliate.



Earlier this year, just shortly prior to the primaries months ago (and that was this year at the end of winter/towards the beginning of spring), I was involved with several activists one day to canvass the neighborhood and urged residents, in the name of going door to door, to support your campaign at the height of the debates, especially while Newt Gingrich, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Rick Perry were in the debates with you and the presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney (who will be anointed at the GOP convention in Tampa either today or tomorrow as I write this). Although I did this kind of activism for a day, it was too much for me to do, as I have diabetes and cirrhosis, and my legs tire out due to lack of consistent physical activity, and it was hard for me to keep up with the other people involved in my group in that neighborhood.



The reason I left the campaign at the state and national level, and I made my decision on here on Facebook at that point, is that I was unhappy with the way things were going. It seemed like the campaign was making great strides for liberty, at least it did to me for a time. You weren't winning in the straw polls (although it appeared to me that you were originally), you weren't winning at the caucus states, and you weren't winning in other primary states at all. Although it seemed like you were poised to win at the national level on the night of the primary election within the first 20 to 30 minutes, that began to change when the rest of the votes came in. My heart broke when you were losing. Everyone I knew believed that the voting was rigged, and, while I was parroting those talking points myself, I started to realize that you weren't really winning politically. Your ideas may be winning in the minds of some people who were starting to wake up, but I didn't think you were winning at all.I suspected for a while that something was up. And then when I saw Adam Kokesh's interview with Penny Langford Freeman on his show Adam Vs. The Man, I began to realize that the light bulb started to go off. I knew that Jesse Benton, your campaign manager, is mostly the reason why the campaign was failing across the board.



But this is what hurts me the most, Ron. This is what perturbs me and distresses me the most, and I find myself so confounded, so angry, so bitter, so cynical, and so resentful about the campaign now that it has finally come to the point where I must say this to you.



I've lost a lot of respect for you. You, sir, have failed me and the movement. You let me - a former Ron Paul supporter - down. I believed in you when I shouldn't have - twice in a row, especially when it should have been against my better judgment. But it didn't. And that is my fault. I shouldn't have given you a second chance, despite my inner voice telling me, "Don't do it. He's gonna let you down."



But I did it anyway. And I now wish I hadn't. I should've known better, should've listened to that voice warning me outrightly, but I must learn to live with those mistakes and move on. Now I realize that I am a better man admitting my frailties and my mistakes that I have made, and now I've learned not to trust so easily because of those experiences.



You've let me down for the following reasons:



Lew Rockwell and his connections to and involvement with the campaign. Lew Rockwell, Walter Block, and their own operatives at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and largely, Lew Rockwell.com are responsible for promoting your campaign and employing it to attack principled libertarians such as Wendy McElroy, Stefan Molyneaux, or any lover of liberty who has made open, critical remarks about you in the past, even though they have not done so this nearly-over campaign season.



Walter Block has attacked Wendy by slapping what is arguably a "litmus test" on whether she is a libertarian or not (in his piece, she's not one) on Lew Rockwell's website in an op-ed he wrote recently, dated December 11, 2011.

URL: http://lewrockwell.com/block/block188.html



Wendy's response came in a blog post on her website WendyMcElroy.com shortly after Block published his missive.

URL: http://www.wendymcelroy.com/comment.php?comment.news.4414



You could have stopped this by telling Block to back off from his attack, but you didn't, Ron. Wendy, yes, has criticized you in the past, but with good reasons, and I find it immensely impossible to argue against them. She has rightfully taken umbrage at your position on abortion, which she clearly spells it out while on the air on Stefan Molyneaux's podcast show Freedomain Radio (with Molyneux and fellow libertarian Brad Spangler on the phone as well).



Freedomain Radio Episode 953: The Anarchist RoundTable #1 features Wendy's position on abortion and her objections to you on the air as they are laid out.Podcast URL (from the Freedomain Radio Feed Burner at the FDR website (http://www.freedomainradio.com): http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/FDR_953_Freedomain_Radio_The_Anarchist_Roundtable_1_Ron_Paul.mp3



YouTube URL to FDR's YT Channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/stefbot): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEZsOZO5hmk&feature=plcp



iTunes URL to FDR feed: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freedomain-radio-total-feed/id276675528?mt=2



Lew Rockwell has even been instrumental in covering up the racist newsletter ruckus by having direct influence on your campaign, and you allowed it to happen, Ron. I have it on good authority from a reliable source (the former Chair of the Republican Liberty Caucus who got wind of this information by a former legislative assistant of yours) that you were about to expose the newsletter controversy in a press release early on in your 2008 bid, but then Rockwell, as I understand it, told you that, if you released that press release and came forward with it, he would no longer support you, he would tell his allies not to support you, and your campaign would not have any backing (financially, politically, or otherwise) from him whatsoever. You proceeded to tear up that letter and disposed of it, and it has never reached the light of day. EVER.



Even though your former campaign staffer Eric Dondero has come out and attacked you on the newsletter controversy and your positions and even though I despise him ideologically and politically, he is right to point out the hint of anti-Semitism that has been part and parcel of your campaign for years, thanks in large part to Rockwell and his cronies. (I did initially reject that, and I have a Facebook group called Ron Paul Haters Watch, which contained some members responding to Dondero's attacks, but I later felt that his statements were correct, despite his anti-libertarian views in the grand scheme of things.)



Even globs of anti-abortion rhetoric has been a large part of your campaign, in which you have come out against abortion entirely because your religious beliefs drive your goal to outlaw them in a politically-charged sense.



Even Wendy McElroy has noted that you have sidestepped and used a "states' right" tactic, which I regard as a means for political expediency.

URL: http://www.wendymcelroy.com/news.php?item.964



Lew Rockwell and his Operatives' Positions Influencing You to Vote in Their Favor. You've allowed Rockwell and his operatives' political and ideological positions to influence you, to the point where you have used them as the basis for your positions on issues such as immigration and abortion. This is even true when you have voted on congressional matters relating to spending appropriations, the congressional budget, and other affairs that have become top priorities for Lew Rockwell.Even the immigration issue that you've taken on has been a major disappointment.



In August 2007, Liberty Magazine, once a subscription-based magazine (which is now free on its website), did a spotlight position on you. The writer of the piece, Bruce Ramsay, in which he said the following:



"The envelope of a Paul fundraising letter sent in early June says, "Time for a real conservative!" The four-page letter inside uses"conservative" 13 times, all on the first page or the last, and "libertarian" not once. It uses the term 'truly pro-American foreign policy' rather than 'noninterventionist,' and it does not mention that he is for withdrawal from Iraq. It does mention that he is for the Constitution, that he would withdraw from the United Nations and resist the push to a 'New World Order' and a 'North American Union.' It also says he considers illegal immigration 'an invasion.' It all sounds as if it were aimed at the readers of The New American."



Liberty's URL for a .pdf of the print issue can be found here.URL: http://www.libertyunbound.com/sites/files/printarchive/Liberty_Magazine_August_2007.pdf



Even you have made some various anti-immigration statements over the years, which have been collected and displayed in great detail at Issues2000.org.

URL: http://www.issues2000.org/tx/Ron_Paul_Immigration.htm



Lew Rockwell Using Your Campaign to Attack Libertarians Who Do Not Follow Your Ideology. Rockwell has allowed his stalwarts (such as Walter Block) to attack Jewish Libertarians like former LP member/now libertarian Republican Aaron Biterman who has taken you to task on your position on Israel. While I have disagreed with Biterman's actions regarding his successful attempts to sabotage three Ron Paul Facebook groups (and he has been attacked by various pro-Ron Paul elements for doing so), Ron does come off as anti-Israel (as opposed to anti-Israel's government or anti-corrupt Israeli government).



Here's evidence of Biterman's attack on pro-Paul groups supporting you.

URL: http://libertarianpeacenik.blogspot.com/2012/05/aaron-biterman-sabotages-ron-paul.html



Even your pal Rockwell has attacked Gary Johnson on his "Political Theatre" blog and his current blog LewRockwell.com. While it is true that Gary isn't ideologically pure, you are, Ron? You get a free pass, yet your competitor Gary gets slammed by your cohort Bob Wenzel (who is a sloppy interviewer) for not being libertarian enough.



URL: http://www.lewrockwell.com/politicaltheatre/2011/04/gary-johnson-the-next-ron-paul/

URL: http://www.lewrockwell.com/politicaltheatre/2012/06/how-libertarian-is-gary-johnson/



If that's the game we need to play, fine. But it's a horrible game to play.



Lew Rockwell, His Compadres, and You Have Turned A Blind Eye to Jesse Benton and Trygve Olson's Actions In The Movement. Here's another horrible thought here, Ron. Rockwell, Block, and you have turned a blind eye to what Jesse Benton and Trygve Olson (a Republican plant who was brought in by Benton) have done to ensure that your son Rand will inherit your legacy and run for the presidency in 2016. That's what I find objectionable. That's what I find repulsive.



Thanks to Benton's outlandish behavior calling so many heartbroken and disillusioned Ron Paul supporters who have since Friday fled the Republican Party because the Maine GOP have plainly and successfully lobbied for the Ron Paul delegation not to seated in favor of voting for you, many of them will not come back. Many of them have quit altogether. Some have decided to join the Libertarian Party and support Johnson.



And where were you, Ron? Why didn't you publicly denounce it? Why did Benton call the attendees at your festival "ragamuffins" and "fringe"?



I've been told by a good source from the Republican Liberty Caucus that anything Jesse Benton does, you approve. Is that true? If it is, and if you approved of Benton's latest actions, then shame on you, sir. Shame on you for doing what you did. Many of those activists spent days, hours, and minutes pouring blood, sweat, and tears into your campaign, giving their time and money to you so that you can advance your most crucial cause. And what did they get in return? An outright dismissal. How appalling and repugnant! How arrogant and condescending! How smug and detestable!



There's more, but I think we all get the point.



In conclusion, Ron, I will no longer be supporting you. I am supporting Gary Johnson for President on the LP, despite his shortcomings.



I don't wish you any harm or the worst now that you are retiring in your golden years. But I do wish you will think of this: you blew it. You had an opportunity to win when you said you couldn't imagine yourself in the Oval Office, that you weren't running to win. And yet the libertarian movement has been corrupted.....because of you.



Goodbye, Dr. Paul. Enjoy your life and live it well. I, for one, will not miss it.



Please, I urge you not to run for 2016. It's time for you to let go and make your last years the best.





Sincerely and in Liberty,



Todd Andrew Barnett

Host of Liberty Cap Talk Live

Publisher and Editor of Let Liberty Ring