Posted on 08/10/2014 9:00:22 PM PDT by Steelfish
I would agree (to some degree) with everything you said except the paranoia.
Paranoia an unreasonable or illogical basis for thinking someone has it out for you.
There is no doubt at all that the liberals and the media had it out for Richard Nixon.
As for various other things, there is no single politician/president who is going to be perfectly aligned with the things that many of us on the right desire.
Even Reagan, who was, by far, the best modern president of the 20th Century, had his faults and missteps. Many of us on the right might fault Reagan for not laying waste to various parts of the Middle East, or for cutting and running from Beirut, or agreeing to immigration reforms, etc.
That said, your criticism of Nixon is valid with respect to China, though at the time it was seen by many (not only in the USA, but abroad) as the right thing to do. I happen to agree with you that China has never had to account for the bloodshed of their own citizens in “The Great Leap Forward”, which makes the Nazis look like pikers by comparison, and that our opening of ties with them the way it went down did allow them to sidestep all of that.
As for being the perfect leftist straw man, it is simply the left.
If a straw man or an object of hate doesn’t exist, they have to create one. After all, you can’t have a Two Minutes Hate without Emmanuel Goldstein. And liberalism must have its Goldstein, whether, Nixon, Reagan, Bush or anyone else, they must have one, and with the ready assistance of the media, they always get one.
We might say the same thing of Reagan and the Middle East. But I know what you mean.
What you summed up in your post is pretty much how I have always felt about Nixon and about how he ended up resigning.
It was the true beginning of what we see now, the leftist radicals in charge.
I agree that he had legitimate concerns, but I also believe he became obsessed to the point of irrationality. Yes, straw men are regularly manufactured, but unfortunately, Nixon gave them the basis for decades of propaganda.
I wouldn’t equate Reagan with Nixon. Reagan realized that he was in danger of letting mission creep draw the United States into a multi-sided Lebanese Civil War with no clear goal, so he put an end to it.
Nixon inherited the already raging Vietnam war and ran in 1968 saying that ‘new leadership will end the war’.
Nixon began by stopping the bombardment of North Vietnam and initiating peace talks in Paris. And he began reducing American military strength in South Vietnam in his “Vietnamization’ program.
It wasn’t until 1972 that Nixon allowed Operation Linebacker to begin. Linebacker was a continuous bombing campaign against supply depots and supply lines in Hanoi and Haiphong, the first since 1968.
The bombing was hard enough to get Hanoi to return to the peace talks, as if that were a big victory, but not hard enough to defeat them. The campaign was hamstrung by Henry Kissinger’s insistence that it not be allowed to jeopardize his ongoing Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the Soviets.
In my view Nixon was not much better than Lyndon Johnson. He allowed the war to sputter on at a high cost in American casualties without any plan for inflicting enough damage on North Vietnam to defeat them. For his first four years he allowed NVN’s supply lines to remain open. The peace treaty he eventually signed left a Communist field army operational in the south. At best he was shooting for a status quo ante like was done in Korea, which would have required an endless US presence to guarantee.
I understand what you are saying, but I wasn’t equating Nixon and Reagan, but pointing out that every President has had less than desirable outcomes.
Some, obviously, more than others, as the current President provides an example.
Well Obama is pushing Lyndon Johnson out of his spot as Worst Modern American President, assuming that we want to call Barky “American”.
Shoot, Barky is in the running for All Time Worst President. We should enjoy the show as the country and the world burn around us.
Sorry for not clarifying my comment. The Democratic Jewish who have been the majority of American Jews for most of my life hated Nixon. There have always been Republican and Conservative Jewish who reason with logic and are wonderful people.
Again, I am sorry for not being clear with my comment, and thank you for bringing that to my attention.
It is amazing. I never thought I would see this in my life.
Your post makes sense and I was pretty myopic myself. For some reason I have always been a defender of President Nixon. I saw him up close and differently than the image we all have been sold. The first date my wife and I had was to his first Inaugural.
We do live in privileged times. Sort of. Like being around to watch the collapse of Rome.
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