Ron Paul rhetorically asks which other candidate would pardon all the non-violent drug offenders in federal prison -- a gruesomely disproportionate number of whom are black.
The War on Drugs is the worst program of systematic racism in our country, certainly in the domestic sphere. Whites are surely victims too -- and all individual victims deserve our sympathy. But racist prosecutors, racist cops and racist politicians love the drug war. Ron Paul's consistent record of opposing drug totalitarianism alone puts him in a unique category of statesmen. So has his authentic change of mind on the death penalty, which he says he realized he couldn't support upon realizing just how racist its implementation was.
Then there's foreign policy, of course. Americans are probably more bigoted in nationalistic terms than in any other, and for the last six years we have been bombarded with anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hysteria. Again, almost alone, Ron Paul has stood up for the dignity and humanity of all individuals -- including those who happen to live overseas. Would it be possible to find a more color blind and individualist politician? One who eschews racial collectivism of all kinds? I doubt it.
But, unlike the others, Ron Paul is a great man of the classical liberal tradition — the political tradition that, more than any other, points to way to true tolerance, racial and international harmony, individual dignity and social peace.
