Don’t Compare Nixon to Hillary - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Don’t Compare Nixon to Hillary
by

Tuesday
So… Alex and I have been down here in Rancho Mirage, in what was once desert and is apparently about to be desert again if this drought doesn’t end. We drove down late Friday and were virtually comatose Saturday from the drive. When you are 70 years old, a high-speed drive on Highway 10, with thousands of other cars racing along next to you, is exhausting. Plus, when I got here, I had to watch “Cops” and “Lockup.”

These are important shows. They tell us there is a violent, anti-social criminal class among us, and we owe the police our lives, literally, our lives, for protecting us. There is a civil war going on in America. We have an immense criminal class, disproportionately nonwhite, committing terrifying crimes and even non-terrifying crimes, and the police are our first and last line of defense.

Every darned day, the police go out to confront the criminals. Every traffic stop, every service of a warrant, can turn into a knife fight, a gun fight, a huge, scary hopped up person attacking the police with his fists and feet and his head. While we are angry over waiting in line at a bank or a supermarket, the cops are risking their lives keeping a thin line between us and the criminals.

Then, when the police do their jobs and protect themselves from mad attackers, when the police do what they are trained to do and attempt to save their lives and take criminals off the streets, the troublemakers and the media seek to whip up hatred of the police. The police, who are the heroes, are made to be the villains by a media whose perversity is boundless.

On “Cops” we see the police in all of their glory, being restrained, helpful, intelligent, even often very funny. You get an inside view of the social chaos that threatens us every day and a decent appreciation of who we have to thank for such peace as we have.

On “Lockup” we see men and women in prison. Usually, they look fairly under control. They have committed crimes and they are paying their dues, but they are imaginative and even poetic at times.

But some of the inmates are genuinely terrifying. They brag about unspeakable acts of violence they have committed both on the streets and in confinement. Recently, I saw a man interviewed who had confronted another inmate who had done psychotically cruel sex acts to a young girl. The sex criminal was laughing about it, so the interviewee stuck his hand into the man’s lower intestine through his backside, ripped open his intestines, then choked the man. Am I grateful to the guards who keep an eye on that man in prison? You bet. Am I grateful to the people who make “Lockup” and show us what’s out there and how vital it is to keep the illness contained? You bet.

I am telling you, there is a civil war going on in this country and we owe the police and the prison guards and the whole law enforcement apparatus deep thanks.

Well, anyway… Saturday night we took some dear friends to a barbecue under a tent at our club. There was supposed to be “blues” music. Instead we got deafeningly loud meandering rock and roll. Way too loud to allow conversation.

It was all pretty grim until a man in late middle age appeared at the festivities with a much younger woman (middle-aged though) in a tight dress. She was dancing in a super sexy way in the midst of all of us sedate old people. It was a shock to see that. What can dancing at a college frat party be like today?

Sunday, we rested and I read the papers. I am dismayed when I see my idol, Richard M. Nixon, compared to Hillary in the matter of hiding unflattering and even incriminating documents. It isn’t that RN didn’t try to conceal his inappropriate remarks and actions. Clearly, he did.

Where the comparison breaks down is in who Richard Nixon was and who Hillary is.

Richard Nixon ended the war in Vietnam. He signed the first and most lasting strategic arms agreement with the Soviets. He created and signed the Clean Air Act. He created the Environmental Protection Administration. He caused the last holdout Southern school districts to be integrated.

He ended decades of hostility and isolation regarding the People’s Republic of China. This led eventually to capitalist reforms in China and the lifting of hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. He also surrounded the USSR by a de facto alliance with China, and that led to the eventual destruction of the USSR empire.

In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, he saved Israel from destruction. He sent high end anti-radar devices to Israel to allow it to maintain its air superiority over Egypt and Syria and their Russian-supplied advanced anti-aircraft weapons. He went to Defcon II (or was it III?) to counter the Russians’ nuclear threats against Israel as Israel crossed the Red Sea and was poised to annihilate the Egyptian army. Richard Nixon, whom the haters pretend was an anti-Semite, was literally the best friend the Jewish people ever had. He saved the Jewish state. He understood how precious it was and he saved it.

Nixon tried to hide documents, just as Hillary has. But Nixon, on the offset, had immense achievements. What on earth has Hillary accomplished besides self-promotion?

She brags that she has traveled a million miles around the world as Secretary of State — but without a single noteworthy accomplishment.

That is a big, big difference. Nixon and Hillary Clinton, both hiders. Nixon, statesman and soldier of peace. Hillary, super self-promoter.

I am tired now so I will write more tomorrow. This is a diary. I am allowed to write as much or as little as I want.

Meanwhile, the view from my bedroom here endlessly amazes. I hope that golf course can last.

Ben Stein
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Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes “Ben Stein’s Diary” for every issue of The American Spectator.
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