So, I've been reading up on Nixon a bit, and I'm fascinated with some of the things I've been finding. Say what you will about Watergate or his dirty covert actions in Cambodia or South America (and there's plenty bad to say there), but it's becoming a bit amusing to see the Left use Nixon as a punching bag for everything considering some of the things that he signed off on domestically.

I also read an alternate history that argues if Watergate never happened, the US could have been on the path to universal health care. Interesting.

http://wonkette.com/politics/richard-ni ... 227457.php

and this references a much larger article on the topic, which I won't post here because it'll get "tl;dr" remarks, but I'd recommend it.

http://www.nixonera.com/library/domestic.asp

Richard Nixon: America's Greatest Liberal

Isn't it time for a *real* liberal in the White House? Dig up Nixon! -

As we continue honoring the birth of Richard Milhouse Nixon, let’s take a look at his liberal credentials.

If you only know “Tricky Dick” for his dictatorial presidency that very nearly ended two centuries of American democracy and first elevated amoral criminals such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to the White House, then you’ll surely be surprised by all the stuff we’ve hidden after the jump.

Nixon also distinguished himself by these lefty actions:

* Saved America’s environment by creating the Environmental Protection Agency and Clean Air Act while approving the most sweeping environmental legislation in history.
* Simultaneously reformed welfare and brought in serious new civil-rights laws and agencies for minorities, women, the handicapped and children.
* Proclaimed the first official U.S. Earth Day/Earth Week in 1971.
* Totally reformed the government’s relationship with Native Americans, bringing new self-determination and civil rights to U.S. tribes while saving such Indian natural wonders as Pyramid Lake — the tribe even renamed its capital “Nixon.”
* Was even described as “the Abraham Lincoln of the Indian people.”
* Loved those Chinese communists.
* Spent more on social programs than defense!
* Fathered screaming ex-socialist lunatic Mojo Nixon.

There you go, hippies: Nixon was more liberal than Clinton.

You should read what Hunter S. Thompson said about Nixon.

I don't know any of the details, but Bush had a "Clean Air Act" two, which I would hardly characterize as leftish.



Nuh-uh! Shut up!

Environmental protection never became a liberal issue until Reagan deregulated business and his supporters vilified environmentalists as a threat to "progress."

Some of his influence on social policy was already in effect for decades and was already a prevalent issue during his time. His foreign policy, as I understand it, was sort of a mixed bag. Those reasons above are not necessarily good indicators of his political ideology or a liberal mindset.

Thompson on Nixon:

"(Nixon) could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time" and said "his casket [should] have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. [He] was an evil man—evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it."