[Spam] Re: [Vision2020] Mark Felt and Andreas Schou comments

[lfalen]

Nixon was his own worst enemy. If he had made a clean breast of it as soon as the story broke, If would have been forgotten within a week.
-----Original message-----
From: "Phil Nisbet" pcnisbet1 at hotmail.com
Date: Mon,  6 Jun 2005 07:22:38 -0700
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Spam] Re: [Vision2020] Mark Felt and Andreas Schou comments

> Andreas
> 
> Interesting analysis.
> 
> Thanks for posting the link.  The history I was pointing to was taken from 
> the staff reports to the Church committee and they are one heck of a read.
> 
> Felt was part of a corrupt organization, but that organization was not the 
> Nixon Administration.  The FBI of J Edgar Hoover was built like a secret 
> police organization and kept files on everybody.  They had used their powers 
> to dig up dirt and destroy people for years, regardless of who came to power 
> in the USA.  I think its clear that Felt was acting as he had been trained 
> through the years to act, in his and the FBI's best interests and not for 
> the better interests of the country.  Thats why he could make the statements 
> he did and break in to people's homes even post Watergate.
> 
> As for Nixon, he was a warped and corrupt man.  He was also an intellegent 
> person with some positions that would be at home in our current national 
> discourse.  In all though, I see no reason to attempt to burnish his 
> reputation, since his politics are not something supportable by the 
> principles of either the right or the left in our society.
> 
> Both Nixon and Felt committed acts that made us less free.  Nixon is dead 
> and discredited.  Felt will soon be dead and I would hope discredited for 
> the same reasons that Nixon was.  Making either of them a hero seems to me 
> to be saying to our kids that we think that the ends justify the means and 
> that breaking the law and playong dirty tricks on people we disagree with is 
> fine.
> 
> On a further note, you stated;
> 
> ">This is because "conservatism", as it's currently constituted, didn't
> >really exist during the late 60s and early 1970s other than in the
> >person of Barry Goldwater. Liberal dominance of the national discourse
> >was so absolute that anyone to the right of Nixon was entirely
> >unelectable. Then the Democrats got lazy and corrupt, had a run of bad
> >luck, and began a decline that's only just beginning to halt itself
> >today."
> 
> I am not sure that this was the case.  Conservative values were actually 
> spread across party lines in those years and it was not uncommon to see 
> conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans on the national stage.  The 
> GOP has always had its own Progressive wing and it also has its own 
> Libertarian wing.
> 
> As for Goldwater, I am not sure that he would be too happy about some of the 
> people currently claiming to be part of his legacy.  Barry Goldwater was not 
> a religioous conserative and in his later years was very alarmed at the 
> trend in the GOP toward lack of tolerance.  He saw the differences between 
> liberalism and conservatism as a divide between those who supported 
> individual rights versus those who support rights held as group rights.  It 
> is unfortunate that some who claim to currently be conservative are so 
> opposed to the rights of the individual and so drawn to collectivist 
> politics.  I see no differences between them and ztheir opposing numbers on 
> the opposite side of the divide, save perhaps who they want the groups 
> getting benefits to be.
> 
> Great discussion in any case and thanks for the informative post.
> 
> Phil Nisbet
> 
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