[bananamogul]

"NIXON" (also known plainly as Nixon) was "far right?"

You must be joking.

By any measure, and in every poly sci department, Nixon is viewed as moderate or even slightly left wing.

He created the EPA, signed the Clean Air Act, created OHSA, signed NEPA, monkeyed with wage and price controls, signed a breath-taking number of anti-discrimination and affirmative-action orders, pushed school desegregation in the South...Nixon would be called a "progressive" today.

I know. Your baby boomer grandparents thought anyone who wasn't McGovern must be Hitler, but...Nixon was pretty liberal. Regan ran against him in the 1968 primaries just for this reason.

[Eyeland0]

By policy standards you could say Nixon was the last truly liberal president. Does this mean that Nixon himself or his cabinet was liberal? Nixon and the types of people surrounding him were not liberally minded. Nixon's 'southern strategy' serves to demonstrate the contradiction in his administration's policy versus internal beliefs.

This is important because if Nixon's administration wasn't ideologically liberal, why pass liberal policy? The reason has to do with the political environment of the 60's and early 70's, which had enough populist solidarity that it could effectively pressure the administration. Compare he Privacy Act of 1974 - what the was in response to - to the insane privacy violations going on today, yet we aren't capable of passing an updated privacy act because we lack populist solidarity on the issue. The populism of today is apathetic and fragmented compared to the movements of the 60's and 70's, so consequently it exerts less political pressure.

[shimman]

I think you need to look into the history of Roger Ailes, this is 50 years in the making. Maybe a 100 if you want to include the John Birch society.

[datsci_est_2015]

Yeah just gloss over all of his aggressive geopolitics in order to make your point lol. Next you’re going to tell us that Kissinger was a communist.