Posted on 08/10/2014 9:00:22 PM PDT by Steelfish
A PEACEMAKER WHO NEVER HAD IT EASY In the room with President Nixon, 40 years ago.
By Ben Stein – 8.9.14
So, now it’s forty years since Richard Nixon resigned. The Peacemaker. Humiliated. Spat on by people not worthy to empty his bedpan. Disgraced for rumors of rumors of rumors. Even now, forty years on, a genuine genius, a man of character, George Will, an American icon of intelligence, gets roped into repeating the hoary chestnut that Nixon purposely prolonged the war in Vietnam before he was elected in 1968 to deprive Hubert Humphrey of the prize. There’s no story there except that even so brilliant a prize as Will repeats pool hall gossip about Nixon that has been disproved a million times, most recently in Pat Buchanan’s superb new book on the 1968 campaign, The Greatest Comeback.
The seductiveness of urinating on the grave of a historic figure of peace is apparently overpowering.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
I think this is a little too rosy, but in the overall scheme of things perhaps Nixon deserves some comments that are a little too rosy after all these years.
He wasn’t a perfect man or president. I certainly respect the man more any all but one president since.
I can dislike Richard Nixon for things like the EPA, but when he sent B52s against Hanoi and Haiphong, he had my admiration and respect.
Well said.
Every time he had Hanoi on it’s knees, and he truly did, Congress would step in and demand a cease fire. It’s the same old dog-n-pony show they now pull on Israel vs Hamas.
It would have killed them to have an honorable end to the war, after Johnson failing to conduct the war as it should have been conducted.
So stick it to “Tricky” Dick, and the nation as a result.
I respect Ben Stein so much, I’m willing to consider it.
he ordered the bombing of Cambodia which bought the end to the Vietnam war. my buddy in crypto at the time loved nixon cause he did that. my buddy probably translated the orders.
Nixon saved Israel.
Richard Nixon had a number of mental issues, including some rampant paranoia...although given his childhood and a number of forces around him during his presidency determined to destroy him and this nation, much of that paranoia might have been justified.
Nixon was strong in the area of foreign policy, as opposed to the current occupant of the White House.
All in all, Nixon had his problems, but given a choice between Nixon and any Democrat president, particularly the current one, I’d still prefer Nixon.
President Nixon was brilliant and he was a patriot. He was constantly hunted by the commie libs who never forgave him for the Alger Hiss case. They finally got their hooks into him and never let go with Watergate. He was a patriot and he resigned for the good of the country. Hillary was in on that in a minor way as a young lawyer, and what she and her husband have done since that time make Watergate look like a candy bar theft at the corner store.
I’d have been impressed, if he had bombed them into rubble and had done it the first year of his Presidency.
He was elected while we were in a full-on war in Vietnam, with an enemy of more than 2 million effectives, over 10,000 miles away. The predecessor did everything he could to lose the war and then handed it off to him. We had an all-consuming Cold War with the Soviet Bloc and China at the same time, with JFK taking us to the absolute brink of holocaust at least twice - and zero progress defusing that mess. We had a hot war going on between Israel and Egypt, Syria. Iraq and Jordan, we had a multi-billion dollar space race to the moon, the Civil Rights crises and riots, assassinations of RFK and Martin Luther King, sweeping inflation and a well-organized and effective pro-enemy Leftist counterrevolution going on called an "antiwar movement" actively backed by the media and only three TV stations giving us the "news".
Into all of this, Nixon jumped in without excuses and took the world on:
- He knocked the North Vietnamese back to the half step and would have won the war conclusively if he had stayed in office (which of course, was the reason the Left had to get rid of him).
- He opened up the process of defusing the Cold War through unprecedented direct meetings with the Chinese and the Soviets and brought about the process that ended the Cold War during Reagan's presidency. We could finally stop looking for desks to hide under when the missiles began to fly.
- He signed the Civil Rights Act into law while also dealing with violence directly and firmly.
- He saved Israel during the '73 war when Israel was not only under successful attacks by the Egyptians and Syrians by immediate re-supply of the lost aircraft and tanks but more importantly, facing down Brezhnev when the Soviets were moving their own parachute infantry and shipping nukes and chem weapons to Cairo to support them as they began to lose.
-We made it to the moon, huge pricetag be damned.
-He had to fight the inflation and then the Arab Oil Embargo and some of the methods he used didn't work. So what, he was at least involved.
At the end, his Leftist adversaries won. They built the myth of Nixon's "corruption" even though he never made a dime through any of his connections and as far as anyone can actually find, never knew about the Watergate break in until long after it happened. The war in Vietnam ended because Nixon had been removed and because a Demcrat/Leftist Congress cut all funding and support for our ally.
We lost part of our soul when we let the slimiest parts of our country take down a good and effective President. In effect, we ended up with trash like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and Barry Obama just because we allowed ourselves to fall when we took down Nixon.
He was elected while we were in a full-on war in Vietnam, with an enemy of more than 2 million effectives, over 10,000 miles away. The predecessor did everything he could to lose the war and then handed it off to him. We had an all-consuming Cold War with the Soviet Bloc and China at the same time, with JFK taking us to the absolute brink of holocaust at least twice - and zero progress defusing that mess. We had a hot war going on between Israel and Egypt, Syria. Iraq and Jordan, we had a multi-billion dollar space race to the moon, the Civil Rights crises and riots, assassinations of RFK and Martin Luther King, sweeping inflation and a well-organized and effective pro-enemy Leftist counterrevolution going on called an "antiwar movement" actively backed by the media and only three TV stations giving us the "news".
Into all of this, Nixon jumped in without excuses and took the world on:
- He knocked the North Vietnamese back to the half step and would have won the war conclusively if he had stayed in office (which of course, was the reason the Left had to get rid of him).
- He opened up the process of defusing the Cold War through unprecedented direct meetings with the Chinese and the Soviets and brought about the process that ended the Cold War during Reagan's presidency. We could finally stop looking for desks to hide under when the missiles began to fly.
- He signed the Civil Rights Act into law while also dealing with violence directly and firmly.
- He saved Israel during the '73 war when Israel was not only under successful attacks by the Egyptians and Syrians by immediate re-supply of the lost aircraft and tanks but more importantly, facing down Brezhnev when the Soviets were moving their own parachute infantry and shipping nukes and chem weapons to Cairo to support them as they began to lose.
-We made it to the moon, huge pricetag be damned.
-He had to fight the inflation and then the Arab Oil Embargo and some of the methods he used didn't work. So what, he was at least involved.
At the end, his Leftist adversaries won. They built the myth of Nixon's "corruption" even though he never made a dime through any of his connections and as far as anyone can actually find, never knew about the Watergate break in until long after it happened. The war in Vietnam ended because Nixon had been removed and because a Demcrat/Leftist Congress cut all funding and support for our ally.
We lost part of our soul when we let the slimiest parts of our country take down a good and effective President. In effect, we ended up with trash like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and Barry Obama just because we allowed ourselves to fall when we took down Nixon.
Nixon was certainly better than what we have today, but he was no conservative. The EPA, 55 MPH speed limit, going off the gold standard were all bad ideas, but his worst action was legitimizing the world’s biggest murderer and spitting on the graves of uncounted millions who died under Mao.
His paranoia and stupidity gave the left its raison d’être and allowed them to appropriate mantle of moral superiority even while they set about destroying the very basis of true morality.
He was the perfect leftist straw man: a man who can be blamed for criminal abuse of executive power and yet can be concurrently held out as the “nuanced” politician willing to engage the communists without regard for the blood of innocent people.
And yet the American Jews still hated him. And he hated them right back. I watched some of Woodward and Berstein with Bob Sheiffer yesterday. They acted like the bigoted language from the tapes was like seeing XXX porn. Back in the 1970's, everyone was comfortable their own race/religion/nationality/state/county and city more than any other, and as long as you weren't public about it, no big deal.
“Leave it to Ben to defend statist heroes (like he does when he gets dragged out of obscurity by Fox Business).”
Where have you been napping? Ben Stein has never been obscure, no matter how many people would like to believe otherwise. He has written many books, been an actor, a comic, an economist, a University Professor, a speechwriter for a president of the United States, and a friend, of mine and countless others.
“And yet the American Jews still hated him.”
And you say that he hated them back? Golda Mier called him “My President”, Ben Stein was a Jew and his father, Herb Stein, Chairman of Nixon’s Council of economic advisors, was obviously a Jew as well. Henry Kissinger was a Jew. Ben Stein was a very close friend of the Nixon family, and he and Julie were especially close. I know this because Ben Stein and I shared many meals in the White House dining room during those gloomy days leading up to the President’s resignation.
JFK was a good man who almost led us into thermonuclear war at least twice, had out-of-control sex and drug habits, several reputed connections to the Mafia, etc., etc. - but he's remembered as a wunderkind, thanks' to his doting press. LBJ was a drunk and utterly corrupt and no clue on how to deal with the world - or our domestic problems - yet he's seen as a "great politician". Carter? Don't get me started about Carter!
He achieved victory in Vietnam,only to have the Democrats in the house cut off funding for the Vietnamese army, leading to their defeat. History does repeat itself.
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