Was some of this stuff taken out of context?

Derek

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I'll be the first to admit I haven't read through the newsletters as a whole (i.e., looked at the scanned documents). I did read the excerpts on TNR, and frankly I felt sick to my stomach, although I completely believe what Paul has said about this and stand behind him.

I'm curious though -- is it possible some of those TNR quotes were really taken out of context? I've been following this closely on reason.com, and someone pointed out that the quote "The country is overrun with terrorists, and we can recognize them by the color of their skin" wasn't even the complete sentence written. The author left off the first part of the sentence, which said something to the effect that "some people will start to conclude that ..." That, of course, changes the meaning of the sentence entirely. And if that's true, this is clearly nothing but a hit piece.

Someone also pointed out that most of the truly objectionable comments all come from two or so newsletters, and were NOT spread out over "20 years" as the author claimed on Tucker.
 
The simple reality is that TNR has no proof Ron Paul wrote any/all of it. They've admitted that much. They are merely speculating that he did. They have no solid evidence. All they have are documents that have already been debunked many years ago.

If any of the documents had any merit and could be proven to be Paul's, these forums wouldn't even exist. There would have been no Ron Paul revolution. He would have been eaten alive years ago in his runs for Congress.
 
We can't use the context line because the campaign already issued this statement-
“The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.”

If they denounce them as small minded thoughts, we can't say they were just taken out of context, we have to keep with the campaign's approach.
 
We can't use the context line because the campaign already issued this statement-
“The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.”

If they denounce them as small minded thoughts, we can't say they were just taken out of context, we have to keep with the campaign's approach.

I know, but my point is -- did the TNR writer take some of the statements out of context? (see the example I gave above) Even if Paul didn't write it and didn't edit the newsletter, it seems to me we shouldn't be ignoring efforts TNR made to make some statements appear more inflammatory than they actually were.
 
Come on guys. It does not matter if Ron Paul personally penned these words. The fact is that articles in this tone went out for years in a newsletter using his name. Not once was a single word printed repudiated in a subsequent issue. The length of time this material spans suggests that ron Paul had a habit of letting overtly racist writers express their views in his newsletter.
 
Come on guys. It does not matter if Ron Paul personally penned these words. The fact is that articles in this tone went out for years in a newsletter using his name. Not once was a single word printed repudiated in a subsequent issue. The length of time this material spans suggests that ron Paul had a habit of letting overtly racist writers express their views in his newsletter.

Unless they are fakes by TNR.
 
Come on guys. It does not matter if Ron Paul personally penned these words. The fact is that articles in this tone went out for years in a newsletter using his name.

I've heard that most of the quotes come from only two or three newsletters.
 
I thought many of the quotes were removed from their context thus changing their meaning - like the one you identified. And yes we can still use the context argument even though most were not written by RP. The author simply did that to make his "case" that the offensive material was for a longer period than RP has claimed. If those filler quotes and examples can be shown to have been manipulated by the author, then RP's original defense still holds - nothing new here.
 
Unless they are fakes by TNR.


I know you're hurting but really, drink some reality juice. The campaign has confirmed that the newsletters are genuine, indeed copies are held in numerous records offices should you want to go and dig them out.
 
I've heard that most of the quotes come from only two or three newsletters.

I should update, up until yesterday, yes we only heard about a couple of newsletters, but TNR yesterday released a lot more. Initially they just used pull quotes, then after the campaign released a statement did they release the scanned (faked?) copies.
 
I've heard that most of the quotes come from only two or three newsletters.



Yes, but only because these happen to be the copies the person who wrote the article had access to. I doubt he's even uncovered the most damaging stuff. I certainly don't think these particular issues are an exception, and I think you would find very damaging stuff in almost every issue of his newsletter. Indeed I expect more copies with even more damaging quotes to come out of the woodwork.
 
Yes, but only because these happen to be the copies the person who wrote the article had access to. I doubt he's even uncovered the most damaging stuff. I certainly don't think these particular issues are an exception, and I think you would find very damaging stuff in almost every issue of his newsletter. Indeed I expect more copies with even more damaging quotes to come out of the woodwork.

I disagree. I'm not sure why he would have been able to get access to those newsletters that had the most offensive material and not any others. My guess is he had access to the entire archive of newsletters and found the most offensive stuff he could.
 
I disagree. I'm not sure why he would have been able to get access to those newsletters that had the most offensive material and not any others. My guess is he had access to the entire archive of newsletters and found the most offensive stuff he could.

The link is down now but there are at least twelve more newsletters in that list. Most of these are before the Internet, so finding copies could be hard.
 
I disagree. I'm not sure why he would have been able to get access to those newsletters that had the most offensive material and not any others. My guess is he had access to the entire archive of newsletters and found the most offensive stuff he could.



That isn't the case. The archive from which he sourced the material only had a subset of the published editions. There could well be worse stuff out there yet to be reported.
 
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