Nixon's Real Record.......and Why the Left Should Love the Guy

The fact that he a) created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, b) created the National Transportation Safety Board, c) created the Environmental Protection Agency, d) created the Consumer Product Safety Commission, e) quadrupled the staff of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, f) increased the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts by over 600%, g) convened a White House nutrition summit, h) declared a federal War on Hunger and a War on Cancer, h) campaigned for national health insurance and a government-run daycare program, i) instituted the first federal Earth Week and signed the Clean Air Act of 1970, j) imposed nationwide controls on wages and prices, k) created the Alternative Minimum tax, l) closed the "gold window' that had allowed the dollar to be converted to a precious metal standard, m) warmed relations with the Soviet Union, n) opened American ties with Communist China, o) negotiated and entered into an anti-ballistic missile treaty with the Soviet Union, p) negotiated and entered into a nuclear arms control agreement with the Soviet Union known as SALT 1, q) unilaterally renounced the use of biological weapons and negotiated a Biological Weapons Convention, r) increased federal spending by over 9% a year from 1969 to 1974, and s) negotiated an end to the Vietnam War (granted, that one's complicated). Yes, there was also Watergate BUT THAT WAS NOTHING COMPARED TO FDR AND LINCOLN (their abuses of power have been well chronicled here; Lincoln's closing down of newspapers, his jailing of dissenters, etc. FDR's widespread use of wiretapping, his internment of Japanese-Americans, etc., the targeting of civilians by both) . NOTHING!! The fact of the matter here is that Nixon's most unpardonable sin was that the dude was a 20th Century Republican whose last name wasn't Eisenhower or Rockefeller. Period, end of discussion.................................................................................................P.S. And, no, being a libertarian, I don't approve of a lot of what Nixon did. My only point was to show the rank hypocrisy and partisanship of some on the hard left. That's all.............Sources; Ira Stoll, Tom Wicker, Jodie T. Allen, David Greenburg, President Nixon himself.