Posted on 06/30/2009 9:04:38 AM PDT by presidio9
I wonder sometimes whether the Nixon tapes really will just continue to be the gift that never stops giving. I was in college when Richard Milhous Nixon was first elected president, and I can still remember the profound sense of loathing and disgust that I experienced at the mere sight, let alone the sound, of him and of his most especially repellent sidekick Henry Kissinger. Wiser and older people tell you that the passions of your youth will dry up and that a more sere and autumnal condition will overtake you as maturity advances, but the thought of the Nixon gang in the White House still infuses me with a pure and undiluted hatred and makes me consider throwing up things that I don't even remember having eaten.
Just take a look at the most recent harvest from the tapes that the Nixon Presidential Library has released from the early months of 1973. The impressive thing is that even in the smallest details, the obsessive nastiness and criminality of the bigger picture is further delineated. The foulness of Nixon's mind was not "compartmentalized" between one issue and another. For example, like most "family values" Republicans, he was distressed by the Supreme Court's finding in Roe v. Wade. But, like almost anybody, he could imagine an exception where abortion might be excusable or even desirable. "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape." The association of ideas between the first mental picture and the second one is so clear as to be—if it were not so hideous—pathetically laughable in an individual, and really quite alarming in a president of the United States.
As so often, his remarks about black Americans are crude and often sexual,
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Chris must have written this on another of his lost weekends
“[I can still remember the profound sense of loathing and disgust that I experienced at the mere sight, let alone the sound, of him] Funny, that’s how I feel about Obama.”
Hahahahaha...I was just thinking, now I know how the DUmmies felt for eight years with Bush...except a thousand times worse and with solid reasons, not twisted emotions...
Shhhhh... as long as the Republican party remains without a leader assclowns like Hitchens have no choice but continue attack men who haven’t been in office for 35 years.
True Republicans spoke in 1976 when Ronald Reagan won most of the South in a primary against Nixon’s sitting incumbant succesor. Ford won the Northeast in a landslide, but they never got to California before Reagan bowed out. It is instructive that Ford chose Bob Dole as his VP candidate.
Yes, but why would the author have a problem with it?
I do not know; except that it further “justifies” his hatred of the man.
Bullseye!
Nixon was a ultra liberal rino from the Rockefellar Rino Collection (a gift that keeps on giving).
He actually imposed socialistic price controls. He apparently despised Jews, and here he shows his affinity for democrat George Wallace's way of thinking.
...and DEAD for more than 15 years...
Bullseye!
Nixon was an ultra liberal rino from the Rockefellar Rino Collection (a gift that keeps on giving).
He actually imposed socialistic price controls. He apparently despised Jews, and here he shows his affinity for democrat George Wallace's way of thinking.
The author is describing a reaction that began when he was still in college and Nixon had just become president. In other words, he had nothing to base this judement on. Sounds a lot like prejudice to me.
I think if he were alive today to run for president, he would most likely run as a democrat.
To whom? The couple hundred people on FR who read this article? As far as his intended audience is concerned, no abortion can ever be wrong.
Nixon took us off the gold standard, and created health care ‘benefits’ deduction for employers.
You dont buy your homeowners insurance or your car insurance from your employer, but why buy health insurance from them?
I am convinced it was a plan from day 1 to creep towards socialized medicine
I was referring to the racist aspect of the comment.
Nixon is a mixed bag.
He was a “conservative” only in the sense that he was anti-communist and made his bones stopping communist subversion on the part of Soviet agents.
In terms of economics and the role of government, he was not conservative at all. He was responsible for the EPA and his way of getting control of inflation was his infamous wage and price freeze, which naturally did not work and broke down rather quickly.
He is of course famous for the Watergate breakins and was eventually forced from office over them. He did not order them, his crime was in covering for his men once he did find out. But its good to remember that their purpose was to uncover Democrat perfidy of the time. As happened under Bush 43, classified information kept turning up on page one of the New York Times, and he put together a team of operatives whose job it was to find the source and plug it. When they got in trouble, he tried to cover for them. Should he have? In retrospect, no, but at the time it seemed unfair in his eyes that they should take a fall while the Dems would get off scot free. So he tried to cover for them and the rest is history.
There is more to it, but thats the short version.
Hitchens can blame Nixon for his conduct of the war, but the war was a disaster when he inherited it from the Democrats. He forced an end to it. Then he was removed from office, the Democrats scuttled the agreement and probably 3 million people died as a result. Peaceniks got to congratulate themselves for ending the war, guys like Hitchens can ruminate in their nausea at the thought of Nixon, but it is the Democrats who have the blood of millions on their hands.
Nixon (and Kissinger’s) goal was to end the war in a way that left South Vietnam and Cambodia independent, and Thailand safe from subversion and attack. The Democrats (having lost interest in the war) wanted to end it whatever it cost, and never counted the cost of the millions in Asian lives that their abandonment cost.
I have never met any aging hippie yet who understood that driving Nixon from office and abandoning the Vietnamese brought on the genocide that followed. For them there is no genocide. If a tree falls in the forest, and it isn’t on the evening news, did three million people really die?
Yeah, they did. Good job. Like Hitchens, you’ve got a lot to be proud of.
Nixon also took the U.S. dollar off the gold standard, with the result that our paper money is backed by nothing but the willingness to print up more money.
I would think that Nixon's history before he became president (congressman, senator, Vice-president, and losing Republican presidential candidate, the Checkers speech, the "kitchen debate" with Khrushchev, the JFK debates, his decades long anti-communism crusade, his HUAC investigation that eventually convicted Alger Hiss, etc.) might have let some form an opinion of him.
He wasn't exactly a "community organizer" stepping into the job after a cup of coffee in congress.
This is a journalist reminiscing about the reason he became a journalist. Nixon made stars out of formerly anonymous newspaper reporters resulting in narcissistic leftists with ivy league college degrees entering the profession and destroying it.
And what exactly would your hero Margaret Sanger’s words tell us about eugenicist ghouls such as yourself, Christopher?
Have another belt of scotch and give it some thought.
Well most intellegent people do mature and grow up to become atleast a moderate. There still are the perpetually immature and we call them liberals. :)
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