In July, the neoconservative website Washington Free Beacon published an article with the headline “Rebel Yell: Rand Paul aide has history of neo-Confederate sympathies, inflammatory statements.” The subject was a peculiar one—a staffer for Sen. Paul (R-Ky.) who had worked as a radio shock jock with the nickname “Southern Avenger” while wearing a Confederate-flag wrestling mask.

The Southern Avenger had said some pretty atrocious things. He toasted John Wilkes Booth’s birthday each year and believed that Lincoln “would have had a romantic relationship with Adolf Hitler if the two met.” He worried about “racial double standards for white people” and that “a non-white majority America would simply cease to be America.”


That Rand Paul aide was me. I had written and said all of these things. They no longer reflected my beliefs by the time the Beacon article came out—and hadn’t for a long time. Some I had completely forgotten, like the John Wilkes Booth toast. The reporter had retrieved that one from an old long-defunct website.

“He expressed surprise when read his remarks about race, saying, ‘Hearing you even read that to me, because I just don’t speak like that, sort of bothers me,’” the reporter wrote. “He said his views had changed dramatically.”

They had changed. But it didn’t matter. There was no excuse for my comments. In fact, the Jack Hunter of 2013 would have condemned the Southern Avenger of 2003 for making them.

Two weeks after the story broke, I resigned.

***

For the previous three years, I had worked for Rand Paul and his father, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. I had helped Rand Paul write his 2011 book, The Tea Party Goes to Washington, and had worked to spread what I saw as his broadly appealing message of small government and personal freedom.

It was much more than a job.

I had a front-row seat for the war brewing between the Republican Party’s old guard and a new breed of libertarian conservatives who were causing headaches for the establishment. The Free Beacon article led to dozens of subsequent stories calling me a kook, a racist and a white supremacist. Suddenly, Paul couldn’t give an interview without being asked about me. “If I thought he was a white supremacist, he would be fired immediately,” Paul told the Huffington Post. I had become a distraction.

Sen. Paul had known that I used to wear a Confederate wrestling mask as part of an old radio shtick, and I still sometimes used the Southern Avenger moniker—it was my Twitter handle and appeared on my Facebook page. But he hadn’t known about the many stupid and offensive things I’d said. By the time I met him in 2010, I had changed my tone and many of my views.

The Free Beacon would eventually obtain a Southern Avenger CD in which I suggested that someone “whip” director Spike Lee, who had trashed Mel Gibson’s 2000 Revolutionary War film The Patriot as “whitewash.”

Whenever I put on that wrestling mask, I took on a persona that was intentionally outrageous and provocative. I said many terrible things. I disavow them.

I had forgotten about that, too. It was painful to revisit because it sounds awful to me today, so I could only imagine what it sounded like to African-Americans in 2000. I recall making equally insensitive comments about illegal immigrants and Muslims. Whenever I put on that wrestling mask, I took on a persona that was intentionally outrageous and provocative. I said many terrible things. I disavow them.

But let’s be honest: My commentary wasn’t all that different from what more mainstream conservatives were saying—at the time and still today.

"I said many terrible things," says Hunter. "I disavow them. But let's be honest: My commentary wasn't all that different from what more mainstream conservatives were saying—at the time and still today. " | Photo courtesy of Jack Hunter

Look at some of the popular conservative arguments of the last decade. Is our border-security problem really part of a La Raza takeover of the United States, as some have speculated? As I once speculated?

President Obama is unquestionably awful. But is it necessary to call him a food-stamp president? What kind of message does that send?

Do we need to portray Obama as a secret Kenyan-Muslim-communist consumed by anti-colonial rage? Would his policies be more acceptable if Obamacare and gun control were somehow proven to be all-American in origin?

I believe that conservatives’ limited-government arguments are the right ones. So why do we ever have to go there?

Most conservatives are not, and never were, racists. But many have displayed a disregard for minorities for a very long time and in a plethora of ways. I certainly did. Minorities think we don’t like them. Not enough conservatives have tried to convince them that’s not true. Some seem comfortable doubling down on the same old insensitivities as a matter of being more right wing-than-thou.

It’s a problem. It’s also a dead end for the GOP.

***

I grew up in the cradle of Southern secession—Charleston, S.C.—and came of age in the 1990s, a decade defined by racial tension. The Rodney King trial would lead to the Los Angeles riots, followed by the explosive O.J. Simpson trial. Welfare, carjacking and the “dangers” of multiculturalism were conservative talk-radio staples.

My upper-middle-class parents voted Republican because they liked low taxes and keeping the government out of their business, but they weren’t very political beyond that. When my mother started listening to Rush Limbaugh the summer before I graduated from high school, my father complained that Limbaugh was too loud.

I, on the other hand, was hooked. Most of the political views I had heard up to that point came from the rock stars I idolized. By comparison, Limbaugh’s conservative ideas seemed fresh, even rebellious.

In the mid-90s I picked up Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind at Barnes & Noble. I bought it because it had “conservative” in the title, and I figured it was probably about how bad the Clinton administration was.

To this day, it’s the most important book I’ve read. Kirk acknowledges the South’s tragic past (not enough, in my opinion, but the book was published in 1953), but also tried to present a more positive history. “Despite its faults of head and heart, the South,” he wrote, “had hardihood sufficient for an appeal to arms against the iron new order which, a vague instinct whispered to Southerners, was inimical to the sort of humanity they knew.” At 20, I had thought of my region as so scarred by slavery and racism that any conservatism in Southern history had to be bad.

I soon got involved with a group called the League of the South, which was founded by college professors who advocated a Southern re-secession. They too were interested in Russell Kirk-style conservatism. Some of the professors even knew Kirk personally. I was fascinated.

Eventually I became the head of my small local chapter of the league (though I was never the organization’s chairman, as was reported by some outlets). The league would later be designated a “ hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, but I never saw, and certainly never participated in, any activities that could be fairly described as hateful.

The group consisted mostly of academics and literary and history buffs. They talked about secession as an idea but had no idea how to actually bring it about. It was something I supported in theory—the decentralization of power by divorcing from the central government.

We also spent a lot of time trying to explain why the Confederate flag was not really racist. We naively believed we could separate the states’ rights arguments of the 1860s from the issue of slavery. The battle to remove the flag from the South Carolina statehouse was fierce throughout the 1990s, with many conservatives, even outside the South, in favor of keeping it.

One night in 1998, I was watching pro wrestling in a sports bar with a friend who was a local rock DJ. I suggested he let me come on his radio show to discuss my political views, but in a rock n’ roll/pro wrestling fashion. It would be politically incorrect, it would be over the top and it would be tongue in cheek. He said yes.

I adopted my radio moniker as an homage to a popular 1990s African-American talk-radio host Ken Hamblin—“The Black Avenger”—a conservative who said things every bit as controversial as I did.

The station, 96 Wave (96.1 FM), was one of the most successful alternative-rock stations in the Southeast in the ’90s. I kept my identity a secret, but as the Southern Avenger I became a local celebrity, judging wet T-shirt contests, performing at comedy shows and playing guitar in the annual Christmas parade before thousands of people. For almost a decade, Charleston listeners heard the Southern Avenger talk about the news between Pearl Jam and Weezer songs. In addition to politics, we also discussed important subjects like getting drunk and chasing women. We did a daily “4:20” “surf update” (a marijuana reference) and lots of jokes about the University of South Carolina Gamecocks—emphasis on the word “cocks.”

It was about as politically incorrect and childish as you could imagine. That was the point. But while I was having fun, I often wished I could ditch the gimmicks and start over with a more serious tone.

I would soon get my chance.

***

In 2007, 96 Wave folded, and I landed a gig with a popular talk-radio station, 1250 AM WTMA in Charleston. I also began writing a conservative column for the Charleston City Paper, an alternative weekly.

I officially unmasked myself and started going by my real name but kept the “Southern Avenger” moniker. I toned down my rhetoric, even as I made many of the same arguments about illegal immigration and other issues. I began to focus on what might be done to rescue the Republican Party from the damage wrought by President George W. Bush, who put conservatives in the unfortunate position of defending unpopular wars and ignoring the largest government expansion in history.

And a small revolution within the GOP showed potential for a new direction. Libertarianism was not a new philosophy, but it seemed very new to many who were excited by the 2008 Ron Paul presidential campaign. Libertarianism wasn’t new to me. But the potential for limited-government conservatism based on constitutional principles that also promoted a more non-interventionist foreign policy? With broad appeal? This was brand new—and Ron Paul was doing it.

Many conservatives, including me, had spent years scapegoating Hispanic immigrants themselves. Paul never went there. He attacked government, not people.

I didn’t work for the Paul campaign in 2008, but I sure sounded as though I did when I talked about him on the radio. When other GOP candidates like Rudy Giuliani and John McCain tried to portray Paul as somehow not a real Republican, I explained how the Giulianis and McCains were more like Bush-Cheney retreads, while Paul was far more in line with the limited-government philosophy that had long defined American conservatism.

I turned my radio commentary into YouTube videos and began attracting a national audience. As Paul’s popularity rose, so did mine. That’s how I first popped up on Ron Paul’s radar screen. When he came to South Carolina, the campaign invited me to introduce him at rallies.

Something else was happening to me around that time—as I listened to Paul, my worldview began to evolve. Paul was serious about border security, but unlike other Republicans, he didn’t seem angry or hateful. Libertarianism, after all, is based on the relationship between the state and the individual, often with little regard for culture or groups. I had always thought this was shortsighted, but I began to change my mind. Ron Paul blamed illegal immigration on government, not immigrants. “If we had a truly free-market economy, the illegal immigrants would not be the scapegoat,” Paul said at the third Republican debate in 2007.

Not the scapegoat? Many conservatives, including me, had spent years scapegoating Hispanic immigrants themselves. Paul never went there. He attacked government, not people.

Hunter was a big fan of Ron Paul in 2008. Here the two are pictured dancing on stage at a Paul rally. | Photo courtesty of Jack Hunter

I had opposed the federal government’s war on drugs for at least a decade, but Paul’s approach shifted my focus on that issue, too. “Blacks make up 14 percent of those who use drugs,” Paul said at a PBS forum in 2007. “Yet 36 percent of those arrested are black, and it ends up that 63 percent of those who finally end up in prison are black. This has to change.” Paul was alone among Republicans in talking about this issue.

At the 2009 convention of Young Americans for Liberty (formerly Students for Ron Paul, for whom I’ve worked), I was one of the featured speakers. During a question-and-answer session, a student asked if I still worried about illegal immigrants “taking over” parts of the country. I was caught off guard, because it was the first time I publicly said, “I’ve changed.” I was becoming embarrassed by some of the views I’d once expressed.

Most of my criticisms of Lincoln had nothing to do with race, at least in my mind. They were mostly focused on the suspension of habeas corpus, constitutional infringements and the targeting of innocent civilians as a war tactic—very similar to criticisms leveled against Presidents Bush and Obama in our time, concerning due process, civil liberties and drone policy.

I’ve learned, though, that it’s impossible to compare the uniquely evil circumstances of the Civil War to literally anything in modern politics. That those who use antebellum language to discuss contemporary issues have to spend half their time explaining why they’re not racist should tell them something.

The Free Beacon highlighted a 2009 column in which I said I still supported secession. My point was that our drug laws, marriage laws and many other issues should be decided at the state level. That column was inspired by Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s secessionist rhetoric over Obamacare. I wanted to show that I had been talking about secession long before he had. A childish reason, but that’s why I wrote it.

The Free Beacon quoted this line: “I’m still just as radical or crazy, depending on your perspective. In fact, I may be getting worse.” Given how bloated our government had become by 2009, yes, I had grown more “radical” in my opposition to it. Libertarian influence had a lot to do with that. In 1999 the national debt was $6 trillion. In 2009 it was $11 trillion.

At 25, I was trying to argue for smaller and more decentralized government by stupidly mixing it up with the Civil War. At 35, I was indeed more dedicated to shrinking government—while also becoming more tolerant, and hopefully more mature.

In October 2010, Rand Paul asked me to help him write his book. A few months after we finished, in May 2011, I became the campaign blogger for Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential run.

Many Republicans did not like Ron Paul. But they all wanted to know how he could raise millions of dollars in a 24-hour period. They wanted to know why he drew the largest and most enthusiastic crowds. Republicans eager to attract young people wondered how Paul did it—in droves. The most diverse Republican rallies were always Paul’s. The Republican candidate with the highest support among independents and Democrats was always Paul. Every election, Republicans grasp at how to grow their base. In the last two presidential elections, Paul broke through barriers other Republicans can’t dent. One million people voted for him in 2008. That number doubled to 2 million in 2012. Paul and other libertarians see tribal politics as passé. When it comes to “us vs. them”—libertarians won’t stand for that crap. They hate the state, but that’s where their vitriol ends.

During both of his presidential campaigns, Paul was haunted by racist material that appeared in newsletters he had published earlier in his career. But the candidate I came to know was no racist. Former staffers told me that Paul was distraught when he learned what had been published under his name. When parts of the South were still desegregating in the early 1970s, Paul, a Texas obstetrician, delivered a biracial couple’s stillborn child after other doctors had turned them away out of prejudice, the child’s father said in a super PAC-funded ad released in 2011. Paul told them not to worry about the bill.

The diverse group of young people Ron and Rand Paul have managed to mobilize represents the best hope for the Republican Party. If the GOP wants to attract more minorities, independents and young voters, it is libertarian-Republicans who can lead the way.

But there’s another faction in the GOP that’s determined to put a stop to the Pauls’ small-government revolution.

***

When Senator McCain was asked in July whom he would choose in a hypothetical 2016 match-up between Rand Paul and Hillary Clinton, he said it would be a “ tough choice.”

A tough choice?

It wasn’t long ago that Sean Hannity’s radio program began each day as the “Stop Hillary Express,” rallying conservatives to agree on at least one point: They had to stop the Clinton machine from getting anywhere near the White House. Again.

So why would the 2008 Republican nominee have a hard time deciding how to vote if the choices were Republican Paul and Democrat Clinton?

Because McCain fears libertarians more than he fears Democrats. As McCain said in April, “I feel that I have more in common on foreign policy with President Obama than I do with some in my party.” And he does.

Neoconservatives like McCain insist that we must intervene in Syria without congressional approval. They defend government spying on American citizens with each new revelation of overreach; when it comes to expanding executive power to “keep us safe,” they are always in favor of more government.

This neoconservative worldview is falling out of favor. Polls on a possible Syria intervention showed an overwhelming opposition across the political spectrum. Polls on the NSA surveillance programs show Americans worry more about the agency violating their privacy than failing to do enough to monitor terrorists. As libertarian-conservatism continues to gain traction, neoconservatives see a threat to their hold on the party.

Sen. Rand Paul asked Hunter to help him cowrite his book. | Photo courtesy of Jack Hunter

Back in 2010, when Rand Paul achieved a double-digit lead over his primary opponent, Trey Grayson, in his Senate race, the neocons raised an alarm. Cesar Conda, a former aide to Dick Cheney, sent an email to a group of prominent neocons: “Rand Paul is NOT one of us,” he warned. “It is our hope that you can help us get the word out about Rand Paul’s troubling and dangerous views on foreign policy.”

Cheney himself would later endorse Grayson. It was one of only two races the former vice president weighed in on that year. Said Cheney: “I’m a lifelong conservative, and I can tell the real thing when I see it.”

Cheney’s endorsement wasn’t enough to stop Rand Paul and secure the seat for Grayson. So what is the “real thing” conservative—whom Cheney felt would represent the GOP so much better than the interloper Rand Paul—doing now?

Today Trey Grayson is the head of a Democratic super PAC.

***

After the Free Beacon story broke, I felt as though nearly everything I cared about had been taken away.

Even worse than losing my job was the fact that the stupid things I’d said gave ammunition to Rand Paul’s enemies.

In September, Frank Rich wrote about my controversy in New York magazine, noting that former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson had “ argued that Paul’s harboring of the Southern Avenger illustrates why it is ‘impossible for Rand Paul to join the Republican mainstream.”

Photo courtesy of Jack Hunter

“That Gerson would hypocritically single out Paul for banishment in a party harboring so many southern avengers,” Rich wrote, “is an indication of just how panicked the old GOP gatekeepers are by his success.”

Instead of arguing that there’s no room in the GOP for Rand Paul, the Republican establishment should look at how he can lead the way in creating a broader, more diverse coalition of conservatives—including more minorities.

Liberals like Chris Matthews are absurd when they suggest that every disagreement with President Obama is somehow racist. But too many Republicans have dismissed the idea that racism is actually a problem. When I was Rand Paul’s social-media director, I noticed that whenever my boss would make a statement about racial injustice in our legal system, some conservatives bristled at the suggestion that our government was somehow mistreating African-Americans. The same conservatives who say they believe government treats everyone badly were not willing to see how that was true for black Americans. They either don’t see it or don’t want to see it.

I used not to see it. For that, I am very sorry. If Republicans are going to make inroads with minority voters, they had better open their eyes too.

Libertarian Republicans are changing minds and changing the party. They changed me.

Jack Hunter is an Alexandria, Va.,-based columnist for the American Conservative and the Daily Caller . He helped write The Tea Party Goes to Washington , by Sen. Rand Paul and Now or Never: How to Save America from Economic Collapse , by former Sen. Jim DeMint.