Nixon: God damn it, I do not think that you glorify on public television homosexuality. The reason you don’t glorify it John anymore than you glorify, uh, uh, uh, whores. Now we all know people who have whores and we all know that people are just, uh, do that, we all have weaknesses and so forth and so on, but God damn it, what do you think that does to kids? What do you think that does to 11 and 12 year old boys when they see that? …
I don’t want to see this country go that way. You know there are countries – You ever see what happened, you know what happened to the Greeks. Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo, we all know that, so was Socrates.
Ehrlichman: He never had the influence that television had.
Nixon: Do you know what happened to the Romes, Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags. The last six. Nero had a public wedding to a boy. Yeah. … You know what happened to the Popes? It’s all right that, po-po-Popes were laying the nuns, that’s been going on for years, centuries, but, when the popes, when the Catholic Church went to hell, in, I don’t know, three or four centuries ago, it was homosexual. And finally it had to be cleaned out. Now, that’s what’s happened to Britain, it happened earlier to France. And let’s look at the strong societies. The Russians. God damn it, they root them out, they don’t let them around at all. You know what I mean? I don’t know what they do with them. … Dope? Do you think the Russians allow dope? Hell no. … You see, homosexuality, dope, immorality in general: These are the enemies of strong societies. That’s why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing the stuff, they’re trying to destroy us. …
Now, this is one thing I want. I want a Goddamn strong statement on marijuana. Can I get that out of this sonofabitching, uh, Domestic Council? … I mean one on marijuana that just tears the ass out of them. I see another thing in the news summary this morning about it. You know it’s a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob, what is the matter with them? …
More here.
Reading that was painful.
He still crack me up.
It just gets more and more painful to read the longer it goes on.
You can listen to the original audio of some of these tapes on youtube.
Remember, conservatives are all about individual freedom! (So long as you stay clear of Bad Things According To Dickie)
You can’t have individual freedom to have gay sex without the personal responsibility to go to jail for it. Or something.
Nixon wasn’t much of a conservative. Chomsky calls him “the last liberal president.” Pat Buchanan says Nixon referred to conservatives in a detached, second-person kind of way, like “you conservatives”. I suppose the only argument would be some cultural conservatism. What still amazes me is this guy was raised more or less as a Quaker — in other words, a pacifist. Nixon has to be the worst excuse for a Quaker who ever lived.
I’d be proud to be bombed by a Quaker.
Check out the political picture of Nixon here.
That’s Paul Gottfried for you.
I love how Nero is (well, implied to be) one of the last emperors — rather than the fifth, out of like a hundred.