Posted on 06/01/2005 5:55:15 AM PDT by veronica
Re: The "news" that former FBI agent Mark Felt broke the law, broke his code of ethics, broke his oath and was the main source for Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward's articles that helped depose Richard Nixon, a few thoughts.
Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POW's, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel's life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad?
Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable. He lied to protect his subordinates who were covering up a ridiculous burglary that no one to this date has any clue about its purpose. He lied so he could stay in office and keep his agenda of peace going. That was his crime. He was a peacemaker and he wanted to make a world where there was a generation of peace. And he succeeded.
That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker. He was a lying, conniving, covering up peacemaker. He was not a lying, conniving drug addict like JFK, a lying, conniving war starter like LBJ, a lying conniving seducer like Clinton -- a lying conniving peacemaker. That is Nixon's kharma.
When his enemies brought him down, and they had been laying for him since he proved that Alger Hiss was a traitor, since Alger Hiss was their fair-haired boy, this is what they bought for themselves in the Kharma Supermarket that is life:
1.) The defeat of the South Vietnamese government with decades of death and hardship for the people of Vietnam.
2.) The assumption of power in Cambodia by the bloodiest government of all time, the Khmer Rouge, who killed a third of their own people, often by making children beat their own parents to death. No one doubts RN would never have let this happen.
So, this is the great boast of the enemies of Richard Nixon, including Mark Felt: they made the conditions necessary for the Cambodian genocide. If there is such a thing as kharma, if there is such a thing as justice in this life of the next, Mark Felt has bought himself the worst future of any man on this earth. And Bob Woodward is right behind him, with Ben Bradlee bringing up the rear. Out of their smug arrogance and contempt, they hatched the worst nightmare imaginable: genocide. I hope they are happy now -- because their future looks pretty bleak to me.
Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer in Beverly Hills and Malibu, and author of "Ben Stein's Diary" each month in The American Spectator.
A must read.
Wow! Talk about putting things in historical perspective!
BINGO !!!
He didn't. His mistake was loyalty to his own.
Keeping on drinking the kool-aid!
Nixon ended the war that Kennedy utterly stupidly started.
JFK sent 14,000 ground troops to vietnam with no strategy whatsoever.
bookmarked
He said, arrogantly!
"wished to manipulate the 1972 election"? Rather odd choice of words. I disagree with the apparent conclusion you want us to reach concerning CREEP and its impact on the general election and the democratic nomination for President. The idea that CREEP helped influence the selection of McGovern as the Dem nomonee is pure conspiritorial nonsense.
Nixon was reelected overwhelmingly because the public supported his policies. In the ’68 campaign, Nixon favored a “negative income tax,” which became the earned income tax credit and an expansion of the welfare programs begun during the Great Society, creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with the Clean Air Act, dramatic increases in social service spending, and interventionist economic policies ranging from dollar devaluation to wage and price controls. During his presidency, many of these proposals became law, particularly those that could be accomplished without Congressional approval.
McGovern’s platform was unapologetically liberal: he campaigned on an immediate end to the Vietnam War, socialized medicine, and a guaranteed national minimum income. The radicalism of the 1972 Democratic platform was caused partly by a sense inside the party that its defeat in 1968 was caused by a failure to articulate adequately the differences between the Democrats’ agenda and that of then-candidate Nixon.
I think Mr. Stein said that Nixon made peace..not that it was his only goal in life.
It's true that Nixon took us out of Indo China and that he went to great lengths to open doors to China (I was the neighborhood at the time).
If you look as what former presidents DID rather than what's been said of them then Nixon wanted to see peace both foreigh and domestic and Kennedy et al appear less saintly than sinister.
Thanks for succinctly describing the reason for the msm's selective vile venom: "Nixon was a republican".
Oh how they love to hate Richard Nixon!
The 3rd in command who carried out the President's order was Robert Bork. The incident is known as "The Saturday Night Massacre".
I am reading Richard Reeves' book on Nixon as we speak. Nixon didn't really care a whit about domestic policy. Once he told Haldeman that he didn't read everything he signed. He had to be almost literally forced to meet with his domestic policy advisors.
That in and of itself was bad enough. He created more bureaucracy and not just by adding a few jobs but an entire agency. I could care less about Watergate. All politicians are questionable, no matter what side of the aisle.
Your sentence brought to mind Kerry's repeated ploy during the presidential primary debates of referring to "Nixon's war". Needless to say, he was never called on this assertion. He who went to Vietnam when LBJ was president.
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