Bob Barr: Statist, abortionist, homophobe, and now racist

I have given Bob Barr every last possible chance to win my support. I have overlooked his part in the plot of smear Mary Ruwart. I’ve given him a semi-pass on his continued drug warriorism and love of big-government intervention. And I’m ashamed to say I even looked beyond his blatant homophobia.

But his July 4 press release in support of racist Senator Jesse Helms has pushed me over the line.

I will not vote for Bob Barr for president and, if by some miracle he wins the state of Michigan, I will not cast my electoral vote for him either.

It’s not just that Barr “sent condolences” to the family of racist dictator-lover Jess Helms. That would have been fine. No, Barr went so far as to call on ME to “give thanks to God” for the “life and work” — racist life and work — of Jesse Helms. That, I find completely outrageous and absolutely unforgivable.

Barr is a collectivist, anti-intellectual moron who does not understand that Communism was brought down under its own inefficiency — not the deficit spending and Fed-financed fascism of the disastrous Reagan administration. Barr is a pitiful disgrace to the Libertarian Party and libertarianism and I have diminished respect for anyone who continues to support him and call themselves a libertarian. Sorry.

Let’s take a look at Helm’s history:

Helms’s racist political activities began no later than 1950, when while working on a Democratic primary campaign, Helms helped create an ad that read, “White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.”

Thirteen years later, Helms had this to say of civil-rights protesters: “The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that’s thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men’s rights.”

That same year, Helms also wrote, “Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced.”

In 1960, Helms worked on the unsuccessful Democratic primary gubernatorial campaign of I. Beverly Lake, Sr., who ran as a supporter of racial segregation.

Helms became a Republican and in 1972 was elected to the U.S. Senate. He gave support to Ronald Reagan — Barr’s political idol — in 1976 during his insurgent run against incumbent Gerald Ford.

In 1983, Helms opposed making Martin Luther King a national holiday not on constitutional grounds — but on the spurious grounds that King has “communist ties.”

Helms once purposely sought to offend Carol Mosely Braun, an African-American senator, by whistling “Dixie” and singing a song about the “good life” during slavery. “Watch me make her cry,” he said to a colleague once Braun was trapped in an elevator with him.

Helms was also a hardcore interventionist. He had ties to Salvadorian death squads and was an outspoken supporter of fascist dictator Pinochet of Chile.

This is a man Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr considers to be “one of the finest, most courageous and deeply principled men to ever serve in the United States Congress.”

It is clear that Bob Barr does not want my vote or my support and he shall have neither. It is also clear that Bob Barr does want my antipathy — and the antipathy of others like me — and that he shall have. Although I will continue to run Independent Political Report in as objective of a manner as I can, I will no longer hold back in any other forum or setting in exposing Barr for the racist, homophobic, baby-murdering thug that he is.

Baldwin/Jay/Nader/McKinney ’08.