Here’s Ron Paul’s response to the TNR story. It strikes me as unpersuasive. He says “I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.” Which is the right thing to say. But where are the details that would make this credible? When was the author of those articles hired and how long did he work for Paul? If it was multiple bigoted individuals, how did Paul manage to make so many poor personnel decisions? If he really finds those words worthy of denunciation, shouldn’t there be an issue of his newsletter from the late 1990s in which he apologizes to his readers for inadvertently sending them bigoted articles under his name?

It’s quite possible that Paul does not, personally, harbor racist or anti-gay beliefs. But it appears that at the very least, he doesn’t seem to find such beliefs especially objectionable. He doesn’t appear to have made any special effort to avoid associating with hateful people.

The Paul campaign also points to Paul’s statement on racism as evidence of Paul’s commitment to equality. But this, too, is underwhelming. His basic message is that “the collectivist mindset is at the heart of racism,” which is certainly a respectable belief. Ayn Rand, who was certainly no racist, had basically the same perspective. However, as a response to charges of racism, the statement leaves a lot to be desired:

Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than as individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called “diversity” actually perpetuate racism.

There is, again, nothing wrong with this position. Certainly some of the policies promoted under the banner of “diversity” have been wrong-headed. But there are also still real, honest-to-goodness white racists in the country. Black churches still get burned down; black people still occasionally get assaulted by racist whites. (and vice versa, of course) However objectionable the advocates of affirmative action or hate crime laws may be, they’re surely not as bad as the actual, honest-to-goodness racists who commit these kinds of crimes. That Paul takes the time to complain about the relatively minor problems created by the modern-day civil rights establishment, without acknowledging the much more serious problems the civil rights movement was founded to address, doesn’t reflect well on him. Juxtaposed with the other evidence that comes to light, it gives a clear impression of a man who at least sympathizes with, if not endorsing, hateful ideas.