The Richard Nixon Experience
It has been 50 years since the Administration of Richard Nixon. In that time, the left has waged a war on history to define Richard Nixon as a failure as President. For much of the half century Richard Nixon's name was synonymous with corruption and Government overreach. Podcasts, Documentaries, Cable Network specials have all controlled a narrative that cast Richard Nixon as the 20th centuries great American Villain.
But all of that has changed. First in 2013, Geoff Shepard, Richard Nixon's youngest Watergate Defense team member, petitioned the National Archives for access to sealed Watergate materials. What he found was a treasure of exculpatory material that has sent shock waves throughout the world of serious historians and legal scholars. Was there more to the story of Watergate? The documentation he exposed certainly seems to say so and that is not the only area where scholars are finding that there was way more to Richard Nixon's tenure than had ever been appreciated.
Richard Nixon worked to protect civil rights, advance women in government, protect the environment, set new higher standards for workforce safety, share revenues with local government, restructure the inner workings of the Federal Government, with plans to make it work more efficiently and more effectively and he even worked to provide a better healthcare and welfare system some 40 years ahead of his time. He opened up women's sports, lowered the voting age, ushered in an era of Judicial restraint, desegregated the Southern School system, poured millions into entrepreneurial programs for minorities, passed tough laws on organized crime, ended the draft and passed billions of dollars into cancer research that has led to most of the advances against the wide variety of deadly diseases we see today.
And that list does not even get into the Foreign Policy achievements we associate with his incredible five and a half years as President.
We thought it was time to tell that story and over the next year and half we will tell that story on this podcast. The story of the experience of a nation, at war in Vietnam, and often under siege, and at war with itself, here at home. An experience that created a great gash in the body politic that we are still healing from today. It is the story of the man who saved our Union from the growing disaster an upheaval experienced in this era.
The story of the experience of a nation as it wrestled with titanic changes in culture, the experience of a nation ripped from its foundations, and the experience of the historic leader that set that nation back on course to its rightful place as the beacon of light for freedom and prosperity to a troubled world . The experience of the late 1960's and early 1970's, the experience of the most divisive era in American history, other than the Civil War, the experience of the United States of America and the leader who fixed it all.
Welcome to "The Richard Nixon Experience" Podcast
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The Richard Nixon Experience
RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE, 1974 The Fall, Who was Fritz Kraemer, The man who influenced Conservative Foreign Policy for 50 years and counting ( Tape Series 6 Special Edition)
Fritz Kraemer, was a mysterious figure, here described in Wikipedia
"He was always flamboyant and eccentric. Kraemer wore a monocle and it became his trademark"
" Kraemer was described as the father of the neo-conservative movement in US foreign policy.[6] Kraemer was unswerving in his contempt for “provocative weakness,” warning that U.S. military weakness invites aggression by America’s enemies. He also railed against forsaking one’s principles through compromise or conciliation.[7] "
He was the mentor of Henry Kissinger, who turned on his student due to his belief that the policy of Detente was wrong , and that our departure from Vietnam showed weakness.
That rift, represented by the Kissinger and Kraemer wings of conservative foreign policy thought, has shown itself in the conservative movement, again and again, for over a half century. It was never healed when Kraemer died at age 95 in 2003.
In this episode , thanks to the scholarly work of Dr. Luke Nichter, we will get a full look at who Fritz Kraemer was, his influence which is still felt today, and finally we will hear him in a half hour meeting with President Richard Nixon as the two men talk about the foreign policy that Nixon was creating in the 1970's. It is a fascinating meeting.
Let's get to know him, shall we..
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