Nixon Grew Government

Although Geoff Shepard in his article, “The Watergate Show Trial” (October 2024 Chronicles) makes a compelling case that Nixon was unfairly hounded from office, I can’t agree that Nixon “had substantial accomplishments” in domestic affairs. 

Let’s leave the discussion of Nixon’s foreign policy accomplishments for another day, and concentrate on his domestic policy. Nixon massively grew the federal government in many ways, including through the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Consumer Product Safety Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act establishing the Environmental Protection Agenda, expanding Medicare. He also implemented the first Affirmative Action plan, established the Office of Minority Business Enterprise, formed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and many more government policies and programs that haunt us to this day.

On the fiscal front, Nixon only balanced the budge for one year. He also cut the dollar’s last link to gold under Bretton Woods. This change, along with Nixon signing The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, paved the way for the massive increase in federal spending that continues to this day. Nixon’s imposition of wage and price controls was such a failure that only those on the hard left would even propose it today. 

Had Nixon vetoed some of this legislation he might have been overridden by Congress. However, Nixon didn’t try to use his massive re-election victory to thwart big government: he embraced it. 

—Fred Birnbaum 

Ivins, Utah

---

A Changed People

Jeremy Carl’s and other articles in the May 2024 issue (“The Rise of Anti-White Racism”)  should sound the alarm for many.  I remember the monstrosity of the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act. And I remember all the supporters of the bill saying that it would not change the demographics of America. Right!

The major reason many immigrant groups after a generation or so end up with higher median incomes and wealth than whites is because they support their own people. Dozens, even hundreds, of immigrant families pool their capital and lending to each other to start businesses. Products and services go out to the outside society and corresponding outside payments come in. But they do not invest in the wider society outside of their ethnic group. Jews, Irish, Italians, and others practiced this in the past, and Koreans did it so well that they ended up owning most liquor stores in southern California in the ’90s. They had virtually zero labor costs because they employed only their family members, and all worked long hours.

I often ask people who start spouting the benefits of “diversity” if they can name any diverse large nation or empire that was not held together by an authoritarian governing power, as happened in Rome, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. And as the Canadian philosopher Stefan Molyneux has stated, “Diversity plus proximity equals conflict.”

I am not sanguine about the survival of the West. Whenever a dominant ethnic group begins to decline, the sharks smell blood in the water. The West and its founding demographic stock is no longer admired, respected, or (most ominously) even feared. Whites and East Asians will be exposed to the coming depredations from the mobs. Those who live within or near major cities should get out now.

—Rick Johnson

Idaho