Ron Paul Invites Neo-Confederate to Testify About Federal Reserve Before Congress

Ron Paul has long dodged allegations that he (or at least his staffers) has connections to white supremacists. (I have expressed some reason to be skeptical about this notion, but at the very least he's extremely careless in terms of whom he chooses to associate with.)

Anyway, that makes this little exchange, flagged by Oliver Willis, all the more interesting:

The ranking Democrat on a House panel overseeing the Federal Reserve on Wednesday accused a witness invited by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) of being affiliated with a “hate group.” 

The first meeting of the House Financial Services Committee’s subcommittee on domestic monetary policy had a tense moment when Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) questioned the background of Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo. 

Clay went after DiLorenzo, an economic professor at Loyola University invited to testify by Paul, for his connections with the League of the South, which has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “neo-Confederate” group. The league identifies DiLorenzo as an “affiliated scholar” of its League of the South Institute for the Study of Southern Culture and History. 

“After reviewing your work and the so-called message you employ, I still do not understand you being invited to testify today on the unemployment situation,” Clay said. “But I do know that I have no questions for you.”

Oliver adds some background:

The League of the South is a neo-Confederate group that advocates for a second Southern secession and a society dominated by “European Americans.” The league believes the “godly” nation it wants to form should be run by an “Anglo-Celtic” (read: white) elite that would establish a Christian theocratic state and politically dominate blacks and other minorities. Originally founded by a group that included many Southern university professors, the group lost its Ph.D.s as it became more explicitly racist. The league denounces the federal government and northern and coastal states as part of “the Empire,” a materialist and anti-religious society.

Maybe the GOP should re-brand itself as the Confederate Party.