Posted on 03/11/2013 10:32:50 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Few presidents in modern times have been as interested in gun control as Richard Nixon, of all people. He proposed ridding the market of Saturday night specials, contemplated banning handguns altogether and refused to pander to gun owners by feigning interest in their weapons.
Several previously unreported Oval Office recordings and White House memos from the Nixon years show a conservative president who at times appeared willing to take on the National Rifle Association, a powerful gun lobby then as now, even as his aides worried about the political ramifications.
“I don’t know why any individual should have a right to have a revolver in his house,” Nixon said in a taped conversation with aides. “The kids usually kill themselves with it and so forth.” He asked why “can’t we go after handguns, period?” …
(Excerpt) Read more at bigstory.ap.org ...
One way or another they were children of the New Deal, the Great Depression, and the World Wars, so they were more in favor of big government than people are today. You aren't going to find Republicans today professing as much support big government as Nixon (or Ford or Eisenhower).
But the question and the objection is whether in practice, as opposed to rhetoric, the party or the country ever got very far away from that, even with Reagan. No Republican is going to propose or do the things that Nixon did or proposed -- wage and price controls, a guaranteed national income, an handgun ban -- but nobody is seriously going to "dismantle the New Deal" (whatever that might actually involve).
Nope, it was JFK who did that.
Are they quoting a paranoid control freak as their rationality for gun control?
So, Nixon was another Republican that didn’t get it? Surprise!
who cares what nixon thought? nixon was wrong on a great many things, that’s all that proves.
Liberals were in search of another talking point. They’re counting on low-information voters to not recognize Nixon as a liberal due to his party affiliation.
However, Nixon did nail Alger Hiss, and for that, he deserves kudos.
Spiro Agnew was a Nelson Rockefeller man until Rockefeller dropped out of the presidential race early in 1968. When he dropped back in again later in the year, Agnew had become a Nixon man. It is said that during his vice presidency, Agnew was reading National Review and other conservative publications, so his views may have been evolving.
Conservative?
Anyone remember his wage and price controls?
He should have been impeached for imposing wage and price controls.
No wonder he and Clinton got along so well.
The Dems would never have regarded charges like that as worthwhile to pursue.
JFK was the man who destroyed America, without his election America would have survived, and would still be relatively healthy today, instead of being in an advanced stage of the process of it’s people being replaced.
Archie Bunker was right, “This country was ruined by Franklin Delano Roooosevelt.”
JFK was a mediocre President, who is only lionized because he died in office.
Aren’t Quakers pacifists, in general?
Roosevelt ruined it, the election of JFK, killed it.
This guy was the ORIGINAL RINO.
I won't argue with a word of that, Lazamataz, though I'll go so far as to state I always regarded Nixon as a representative of the Democratic [sic] party in all but name.
We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatever; this is our testimony to the whole world. The Spirit of Christ by which we are guided is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil, and again to move unto it; and we certainly know, and testify to the world, that the Spirit of Christ, which leads us into all truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this world.Not practical if you are a head of state, though, charged with protecting the rights of the people.
Nixon was nowhere near a conservative by our standards today, but when you compare him to the candidates and platform of the Dems back then, he was Edmund Burke.
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