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Nixon and RINO Progressivism

Ellis Washington - 6/10/2011

Prologue

Despite the fact that for the past two and a half years America has been run by a president who by every historical comparison and rational critique is a socialist with communist tendencies, yet the pathetic GOP cannot effectively mount a first-tier candidate to seriously challenge this diminutive Marxist professor. Why? Because for 40 years the GOP have used the rhetoric of conservative Ronald Reagan, but the tactics, strategies and policies of RINO (Republican in name only) Richard Nixon.

Indeed, Reagan is lionized by today’s GOP and has been for 30 years since his two successful presidential terms, yet it reminds me of the words of Christ rebuking the hypocritical, self-righteous religious and political leaders of his day—the Sadducees, Pharisees, Herodians, lawyers and scribes—And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say? In other words why does the GOP leadership like John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan and presidential candidates like Rudy Guiliani, John McCain, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, and Tim Pawlenty, all mimic Reagan’s words, but underneath the sheep’s clothing crouches the RINO republican wolf, Richard Nixon?
Hubris, imprudence and dangerous defines much of Nixon’s domestic and foreign policies which were based upon naïve progressive socialist notions like détente (appeasement), M.A.D. (mutually assured destruction), Keynesian economics, wage/price controls and Third Way geopolitics, the latter of which seeks what Richard Ely called the “golden mean” between free market capitalism and Marxist communism.

Nixonian consensus progressivism is what you get when you ignore natural law and separate morality from geopoliticts.

I wish Nixon and all of the RINOs (republicans in name only) both pre and post-Nixon would have considered the wise words of objectivist philosopher Ayn Rand, who said:

In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromise is the transmitting rubber tube.

While we readily accept Rand’s premise in the areas of religion, medicine or nutrition, why do most people ignore Rand’s logic on issues concerning history, politics, philosophy, law, science, education, economics or foreign policy?

Nixon’s Place in History

What were Nixon’s contributions to the marketplace of ideas? Historically, did his policies help or hurt the conservative revolution of Reagan?

In the late 1940s, early 50s Nixon was an upcoming star in the GOP much like JFK in the late 50s (who barely beat Nixon by ballot stuffing the presidential election of 1960). Nixon solidified his future presidency by making his bones as a Joe McCarthy anti-communist hero during his years in Congress (1947-52). For this the left hated Nixon as much as they hated ex-Soviet spymaster Whittaker Chambers for exposing American communist spies like Alger Hiss, Noel Field, Harold Glasser, Harry Dexter White and other high government officials.

President Eisenhower rewarded Nixon as his Vice-president (1953-61).

Democratic socialists would have their revenge and put Nixon’s name on their list of infamy (just below McCarthy and Reagan). Despite his anti-communism credentials Nixon had glaring character flaws: He possessed a quixotic mixture of poor self-esteem, eccentricity, duplicity, paranoia, and pathological arrogance, therefore, Nixon would spend the rest of his political career trying to both distance himself from conservative politics while desperately trying in vain to appease his Democratic socialist enemies and curry their favor.

Here are just a few of the major policy initiatives Nixon enacted during his tenure as president (1969-74) which I believe have caused America systemic harm:

• In a 1969 memo by liberal icon, Sen. Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), Nixon enacted the first U.S. policies to combat global warming;

• Nixon’s New Federalism transferred power from the federal government to the states which amounted to Marxist redistribution of wealth from the federal government to the states with no appreciable expansion of constitutional liberty to the people;

• In 1970, Nixon enacted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) and the Clean Air Act;

• In 1971 Nixon launched concurrent “wars” on cancer and drugs, 40 years later and hundreds of billions of government spending, both cancer and drugs abound;

• In Aug. 1971, Nixon took America off the gold standard followed by new economic policies which called for wage and price control which is the old Keynesian economic model of FDR which only extended America’s Great Depression 10 more years until World War II spending pulled the U.S. out of economic depression;

• In 1972, Nixon opened the door of the West to communist China becoming the first U.S. president to visit China, however, Nixon made virtually no demands on China despite its outrageous human rights record and communism’s pathological genocide upon its own citizens reaching over 100 million Chinese in the twentieth century alone;

• Nixon appointed three progressive, socialist justices to the Supreme Court: Warren E. Burger (1969–86 [Chief Justice]); Harry Blackmun (1970–94) and Lewis F. Powell, Jr. (1972–87) thus paving the way for Roe v. Wade (1973) which to this day has murdered over 50 million innocent babies. The wanton judicial legislation from the bench of the Burger Court (1969-86) together with the Warren Court (1953-69) has virtually destroyed natural law, the Constitution, the rule of law and perverted societal morality in American jurisprudence.

Gold has been the economic foundation of every great nation going back to biblical times. 40 years ago when Nixon took America off the gold standard he predictably condemned this country to decades of economic recession, depression, inflation, stagflation, deficit spending and catastrophic economic decline as gold prices rose to record heights on the domestic and international markets.

Nixon purposely devalued the American dollar on the false and failed Keynesian model of spending your way out of recession. Keynesianism failed in the 1930s, it failed in the 1970s and today under Obama it is tragically deteriorating America’s economy at historic levels.

Exploiting our failure to learn from history, China has for the past 10 years been aggressively buying all of the world’s available gold reserves by the ton. Also, China and Russia are assertively seeking to remove the dollar as the world’s currency in international markets by overvaluing the Chinese yuan while maintaining their trade surpluses with the U.S.

Epilogue

Nixon’s Achilles heel wasn’t the Watergate scandal, it was his progressive republicanism and trying to appease the Democratic socialists and convince them that he had renounced his anti-communism crusades of the 40s and 50s. That’s why Nixon tried in vain to appease Democratic socialists by enacting affirmative action, the Clean Air Act, EPA, OSHA, and gave draconian powers to the Department of Commerce; four extremely fascist bureaucracies that Democrats have used for decades to weaken America’s once vaunted economic hegemony in the name of Marxist redistribution of wealth. Nixon also didn’t like Reagan, or his brand of conservatism.

If you remain unconvinced about how far American society has devolved into socialism, a perfect example of RINO republican groupthink occurred a few weeks ago when Gingrich called Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget “right-wing social engineering” because it protected Medicare and added $5-6 trillion to America’s deficit over the next 10 years. In my opinion Newt was right in his assessment of the Ryan budget. However, the propaganda press (and the public) went ballistic against Gingrich because the World War II generation and their offspring, the baby boomers love socialism including unionism, Medicare, Medicaid, pensions and Social Security. Therefore, in 2011Newt speaking classical conservatism as Reagan did in his famous 1964 GOP convention speech (“A Time for Choosing”) has effectively ended his presidential campaign before he got started.

One of my WND colleagues, Robert Ringer recently wrote about both political parties being progressives (socialists):

At the end of the day, words and phrases that people like Jon Huntsman, Mitt Romney, Lindsay Graham, John Boehner and other progressive Republicans and RINOs love to babble about, such as "compromise," "reach across the aisle," "cooperation," "bipartisan consensus," "adult conversation" and "civil discourse," are nothing more than code for going along with progressives and their anti-liberty, big-government agenda.

Indeed, this is the tragic 40 year legacy of Nixonian consensus liberal progressivism … or to coin a phrase from Lenin — Western Marxism for useful idiots.