On the right
Nixon and resignation
By WILLIAM F. BUCKELY, JR.
I propose, on completion of these
words, to march them over to a printer,
shrink them to penny-postcard size,
and, wordlessly, to hand them out to
elevator men, Hollywood stars, and
corporation presidents who ask me, as
everyone is asked these days, the one
question: “Mr. Buckley, do you think
Nixon will resign?”
If there were time, I would answer
roughly as follows...
There are several Nixons.
The first Nixon is the one that comes
most readily to mind. About him the
cliche is: he will never quit. It is un
characteristic of him. He is a deter
mined, stubborn man who fought most
of his adult life to be President of the
United States. He likes being President.
He likes the power of the Presidency,
the usufructs of the Presidency, and the
romance of the Presidency. You won’t
drive that man out of the White House
until the limousine pulls up to the door
on Inauguration Day, 1977.
THAT IS NIXON ONE. Nixon Two
is the political realist. He is the man
who can cooly survey the political
situation and draw the necessary
conclusions, when there are necessary
conclusions. It was Nixon who having
expended himself at the Governor’s
Conference in Cleveland in 1964 trying
to organize a Stop-Goldwater
movement, recognized it wouldn’t
work Then, unlike the hapless William
Scranton who went on to try to stop
Goldwater and ended by looking like
Harold Stassen, Nixon Two drew back,
recognized Goldwater wasn’t going to
make it, and—supported Goldwater
lustily ’Hiat single decision brought
him the Republican nomination in 1968.
Otherwise it would have gone to—
Reagan; yes, Reagan And Nixon knew
that. This Nixon, the political realist, is
capable of judging whether there is
going to be impeachment plus con
viction , and of either a) acting to try to
abort the case against him by hard
political maneuvering; or b) accepting
the inevitable and resigning. He has not
at this moment concluded that the
political reality is that he will be
deposed.
There is Nixon Three. Nixon Three is
a withdrawn, moody, introspective
man who revels in a pain that is often
self-inflicted. It is a Nixon who works
even harder than necessary to get the
good grade, or to qualify for the football
team, or memorize the name of the
ward leader. It is the Nixon who will
make himself stay up all night before
deciding on a Vice-Prexidential run
ning mate, not so much because he is
thereby better equipped to pick the
man, but because he likes to be able to
say, “I stayed up all night worrying
about this one.”
IT IS THE Nixon who blurts out in the
prepared speech that he will continue to
work “sixteen to twenty hours a day,
seven days a week,” for his country.
The Nixon who feels that all the proper
people in the east resent him because
he did not go to an Ivy League college
and that therefore he will hew to the
rotarian company with which he feels
comfortable.
This Nixon feels that he is fated to
suffer, must suffer; that suffering is
good and that strength comes through
adversity. This is the Nixon whose mind
begins now to turn to the ultimate
suffering: resignation. If, for the man
on the make, power is an aphrodisiac,
for the man facing the end, martyrdom
is orgasmic. "Hiere is no other ex
planation for the smile on the face of St.
Stephen as the archers bent their bows.
And then, if you can stand it, there is
Nixon Four. This is Nixon the human
being. This week’s New York Times
Sunday Magazine has a million-page
rehearsal of the entire Watergate
business. One’s eyes fasten on a single
sentence. “He (Nixon) even deducted
$1.24 in finance charges from Gar
finckel’s Department Store.” Nixon
Four could prevail over Nixon One for
reasons entirely human. Shylock spoke
for the Jewish race. He might as well
have spoken for Nixon when he said
“hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew
hands, organs, dimensions, senses,
affections, passions? Fed with the same
food, hurt with the same weapons,
subject to the same diseases, healed by
the same means, warmed and cooled by
the same winter and summer, as the
Christian is? If you prick us do we not
bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
If you poison us, do we not die?”
And—the final line—“and if you
wrong us, shall we not revenge?”
NIXON FOUR IS visible walking the
sands of San Clemente and riding
economy class in the little jet and an
swering questions about did he deduct
$1.24 for finance charges from Gar
finckel’s. When Nixon Four and Nixon
Three, espying a joint opportunity, fuse
their vision, then Nixon will resign, not
only with honor, but with pleasure.
'URGENT? WHAT COULD BE MORE URGENT? YOU'LL TAKE YOUR TURN LIKE THE REST OF US!'
Letters
Accepts judgment
I am humiliated and sorry for you. Your
causitry regarding Solzhenitsyn would
evoke a raucous laugh from the Devil, if he
existed.
We should not try to “save” Solzhenit
syn, runs your argument, for fear of en
dangering “detente” with the USSR.
Not only do you buttress this argument
by wilfully misquoting and distorting
Buckley’s arguments (Buckley paragraph
10, your paragraph 2; Buckley para. 1,
your para. 4), but also you must fall back
on the old“we’re just as bad as they are”
ploy.
Very well, then, I accept your
judgement.
AT THE RISK of being stoned in
religious horror, then, may I politely ask if
“detente” between two equally evil
governments is a thing to be desired? If
our assistance to South Vietnam is ac
cepted as a crime, would not our
assistance to a government infinitely more
powerful, and capable of far more evil, be
far worse a crime?
True, we should try to first “save” our
own people. What does Attica prove? Well,
at least the Attica prisoners could revolt,
could seize hostages, could win world-wide
recognition of their suffering; buy
Solzhenitsyn...never mind, I see not that a
political freethinker must be as great a
criminal as...but never mind.
BY YOUR LOGIC, World War II need
never have been fought; the US should
simply have established “detente” with
Adolf Hitler—for if we are no better than
the Soviet Government, then Hitler was no
worse; and they set us the example,
remember? Walter J. Wentz
Senior, Journalism
Solzhenitsyn fan
I’m writing in response to the Emerald’s
editorial “Saving Solzhenitsyn—and
looking good” in today’s paper. It seems
the writer speaks from a double standard:
atrocities committed by other than
Western powers are internal affairs not to
be meddled with, even though the West is
to be the champion of human rights. Do we
have to wait until the U.S. is a perfect
society before we cry out in compassion
for the suffering of millions in the Soviet
Union and elsewhere? Do we first have to
ascertain “the truth behind the
demoralization of the football staff’’
(adjacent Emerald editorial on sports)
before we will stand up for a man of
inimitable courage in the person of
Alexander Solzhenitsyn?
THOSE AMERICANS who cry for
Solzhenitsyn and the suffering masses are
really concerned with civil rights and
human dignity. They do not deem it right
that the Soviet Union (or China) continues
to forge an empire, with sanctions from
the West. The Western television, radio
and newspaper commentators have
thoroughly clouded the issue by avoiding
facing and reporting the cruel facts of
existence behind the Iron Curtain. If they
dared to tell the truth, I, at least, believe
there would be more Americans who
would cry for the suffering masses. Even
though it has become a cliche to say this,
we do live in a world community. How can
we claim to champion human rights if we
turn our backs on Alexander Solzhenitsyn
and the millions for whom he speaks?
Mara C. Reynolds
School of Librarianship
Thanks to Emerald
Higher education is useful!
Thanks to the Emerald I now understand
Governor McCall’s gas distribution plan.
While the local newspapers, TV and
radio stations obscurely talk about even
and odd numbers, and even and odd
calendar dates, the Emerald gives the
answer: even numbers are 0-2-4-6-8, and
odd numbers are I-3-5-7-9.
NOW EVEN people connected with the U
of 0 know when to buy gas.
Rolf Burkhart
GTF, German
-Viewpoint—
Tibetans suffering under Chinese rule
By STEPHEN REYNOLDS
The long article in Monday’s Emerald
by Mr (I presume) T.D. Allman appeared
at first glance to be about Tibet. On closer
reading, it proved to be about something
slightly different: what Mr. Allman heard
about Tibet from such authorities as “non
Communist sources with access to
Lhasa,” “one Asian visitor,” “those with
first-hand knowledge," and “those in a
position to have seen for themselves
Such sources are cited about ten times,
making it unnecessary for Mr. Allman to
say much of anything on his own authority,
or even to claim to know much about Tibet.
Through Mr. Allman, “they” convey the
overall impression that “life is now much
better than it was.” The Chinese allow
Tibetans to use their own language; they
tolerate flirting, and they build roads.
Very liberal, they are.
GIVEN ENOUGH SPACE, one could
easily enough take care of the more
blatant falsifications—the assertion that
the Potala was not shelled, that shrines in
Lhasa were not desecrated, or that much
of the old jewelry and treasures were
“carried off by members of Tibet’s 200
noble families when they fled to India with
the Dalai Lama” (one wonders how the
Khamba nomads who actually ac
companied the Dalai Lama would react to
that fiction)—but, as is usual with
apologies for totalitarianism, the real
misrepresentation is not so much in what
is stated as in what is not stated and what
is presupposed.
Who would guess from Mr. Allman’s
article that a war of national liberation, in
which tens of thousands of Tibetan
guerillas are pitted against a Chinese
occupation army of hundreds of
thousands, has been raging for two
decades, and continues now, while gullible
western readers are lulled by the butter
smooth words of “those in a position to
have seen for themselves?” Since this
little detail was omitted from the picture,
there was no room for the canard used by
other Beautiful Mouths, that the war was
invented by the C.I.A.; so at least we were
spared that.
THE TOTALITARIAN left must either
ignore the fact of Marxist-Leninist im
perialism, or else whitewash it. This
screen of deceptions and lies is attractive
to the uninformed. It is intended as a
sporific. It fits nicely into that convenient,
consistent, and radically false view of the
world that imagines that economic
systems cause or prevent oppression.
Massive governmental, academic, and
journalistic indifference and irrespon
sibility now work in its favor.
Fortunately, the tools are available for
anyone who wants to discover the truth.
Books such as Chogyam Trungpa’s Born in
Tibet, Noel Barber’s Land of Lost Content,
and George Patterson’s Tibet in Revolt
have done much to provide the Tibetan
side of the story. Michel Peissel’s book (to
which I called attention in the Emerald
last spring) is now out in an American
edition, under the title The Secret War in
Tibet (Little Brown, 1973); it is probably
the best of all, and is available at the
University Bookstore.
THE SAFE, ANONYMOUS “visitors”
behind whom Mr. Allman hides are con
vinced that the Tibetans ought to like
Chinese rule. As always, the totalitarian
left is generous with the liberty, lands, and
lives of others. The Tibetans, by fighting
an interminable war of national liberation,
have given them the lie. Our loud
mouthed, self-proclaimed liberationists
reveal their true nature by preferring the
easy excuses of anonymous “visitors” to
the hard facts of courageous writers like
Peissel.
The Czechs are right: “learn to hate
intelligently.”
Reynolds is an associate professor in the
Dept, of Religious Studies.