News
Appeasement and Detente: Two VERY Different Things
The current on-going review of the history of APPEASEMENT during the 1930s and the lessons, if any, that can be applied to current geopolitics, has reminded some of the Nixonian philosophy of DÉTENTE. And there may appear to be a surface similarity. The argument goes...
Two 1968 Myths in One
In Time, Jay Newton-Small writes a sentence with a minor mistake and a major one: Richard Nixon practically perfected the transformation in 1968, initially building his "silent majority" of conservatives freaked out by hippie war protesters and inner-city riots before...
George Carlin RIP
It's probably a good thing that George Carlin didn't believe in an afterlife. Because if he had, he would be turning over in his grave as a result of being remembered and lauded in the precincts of The New Nixon. He had no use and great contempt for our namesake; he...
Rick Perlstein Replies To Sean Wilentz & Happy 1000th
This morning Nixonland author Rick Perlstein replies to The Age Of Reagan author Sean Wilentz at The New Republic's site, and what he has to say will take Roger Stone's mind off the question of which shirt to wear tomorrow, if only for a moment. The historian also...
“This Here’s Bonnie. I’m Clyde. We’re the New Left.”
Some weeks ago a commenter asked when I was going to complete my assessment of Rick Perlstein's Nixonland. Rest assured it will come in a few days. In the meantime here is an interview with Perlstein from the new issue of the libertarian journal Reason, conducted by...
Doughnuts To Dollars
In the next day or so I'll put up a post concerning dollars - that is to say, the estimated $300 million that Sen. Barack Obama may raise for his campaign, now that he has reversed his previous position and become the first major-party presidential candidate since...
Winston’s Way with Words
On the day that changed everything, September 11, 2001, then New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani seized the moment and guided that most unmanageable of all municipalities through its unsurpassed dark day. When the mayor reached the point of exhaustion in the early...
Still Scapegoating After All These Years
Republicans are comparing Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter. Stuart Eizenstat, Carter's domestic policy adviser, claims that Carter does not deserve blame for the malaise of the late 1970s. He says: “What led to the economic problems was the built-in inflation, which we...
Who’s Mr. Conservative: Reagan or Nixon?
That is the query Barron YoungSmith, an intern at The New Republic, poses at the magazine's website this week. (YoungSmith is a 2006 Brown University graduate, incidentally. And some people were amazed that 39-year-old Rick Perlstein was fascinated enough by the...
Conrad Black on “Nixonland”
Countering Rick Perlstein's Nixonland, RN biographer Conrad Black argues that RN won in 1972 not because he was a good polarizer but because he was a good President: It is not mentioned that only Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in more daunting...