Jack Ruby is a very peculiar character in Libra, emitting many different qualities that are difficult to analyze, which makes him a difficult person to read. He acts like he genuinely cares for his strippers, beating up men who touch them, yet he also seems to have engaged in sexual (harassment?) acts with some of the strippers, as well as going way too far in beating a man who touches on of his dancer's bottom to a pulp. The first thing I think of when noticing this kind of behavior is Rufus from Kindred. Rufus seems to mean well in his heart, yet always finds himself doing the wrong thing like raping Alice or something. Ruby seems to have fallen in similar situations, even when he lets the homeless into his club. When he lets these people into his club, his club loses "class", and he fails to receive loans, which plunges him further into debt.
I suspect this comparison to Rufus will continue to the end of the novel because, as we know, Ruby does kill Lee Harvey Oswald and spends the rest of his life in jail. Rufus gets killed by Dana even though he isn't being all that violent with her, and is just sort of admitting his feelings for her. He isn't doing anything as aggressive as we've seen him do before, but he isn't being extremely gentle either. Rufus had been extremely violent over the course of the book, which ultimately led to his demise. Ruby goes through a similar phase. He kills the man who killed the president. It is obviously justified to be extremely mad at Oswald, but walking right up to him and shooting him is going a bit far, just like Rufus went a bit far in showing his love of Alice and Dana (by raping them).
In the end, I believe that Ruby is as patriotic as it appears, because he does go as far as too kill the president's assassin. I also believe that Ruby is a softy in an unfortunate situation as a strip club owner. The owner of a strip club sounds like one of the roughest jobs out there, being in charge of controlling rowdy men, as well as who enters your club, and who the dancers are. Because of Ruby's gentle soul, he cannot refuse the poor beggar and welcomes into his club, knowing it isn't good for business. He also realizes the ugly side of stripping, and that his strippers live tough lives and don't make much money. He helps them when they need it and protects them against perverts.
Like Lee, Ruby is a paradox (in history as well as in the novel): he grew up in Chicago around gangsters, and he has a rough side (as his employees will readily verify), but he is, as you say, also a "softy." Even his killing of Oswald, in his own account, is a manifestation of this emotionalism--he's so overcome with grief and despair that he lashes out spontaneously against the one who allegedly did the crime. It's not all that different from his beating of the wandering-hands patron of his club--the heart is in the right place, perhaps, but there's an explosive temper there and a surprising brutality.
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