>Various presidents have used their office to mold the nation. George Washington was known as "The Father of His Country." Andrew Jackson was seen as the champion of the small American against moneyed interests. Abraham Lincoln guided the nation through one of its severest tests. Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt molded the presidency into an instrument of social justice.>Nixon did none of these things. His actions as president were purely in self-interest, his belief that the president was an emperor above the rule of law. Clearly he had no respect for the careful system of checks and balances our founders laid down. Yet Nixon could hardly have acted alone; he was not the disease but merely a symptom of it. During the post-World War II years, the body politic in America was becoming increasingly rotted from within, the ideas of integrity in government slowly diminishing. During the worst times of corruption in the Gilded Age, honorable men such as Rutherford Hayes and Grover Cleveland rose to the Oval Office and stood above the masses of dishonest machine politicians. The idea that corruption and willful ignorance of the rule of law would come to the White House had not yet appeared.>Postwar Americans were increasingly accepting of corruption in government, arguing that it was the norm and something to be joked about rather than be disgusted at. There was also increasing lack of respect, whether accidental or deliberate, of the Bill of Rights and basic civil liberties. After all, our nation had survived its first 150 years without an FBI, a CIA, security clearances, domestic surveillance, and presidential enemies' lists, and it had done quite well for itself.
>>18661246No one disrespected the Supreme Court more than Lincoln. I do agree with your faggy essay's last paragraph though, the postwar federal government has been a disaster that brought us desegregation and erosion of Christian identity.
>>18661253>No one disrespected the Supreme Court more than LincolnWhen patriots win Roger Taney has to be one of the first guys to have their image rehabilitated.
>>18661246there was no FBI or security clearances until Wilson invented them
>>18661246>The idea that corruption and willful ignorance of the rule of law would come to the White House had not yet appeared.Oh, my sweet summer child. Soon, you'll be back in undergrad, surrounded by wokeness.
>>18661246t. LBJfag
>>18661246If you think government corruption, favoritism, or acting in self-interest started with Nixon, you know nothing about the history of American politics.
>>18661246>honorable men such as Rutherford Hayeslol. lmao even.
>>18661246Nixon privately at least claimed to believe that Kennedy and Johnson had been at least as bad as him. Also he probably believed that his domestic abuses were necessary for him to save the world through detente. I don't think he wanted to style himself king, just that he was the head of a very paranoid snake which grew out of the middle classes because of Civil Rights, Hippies, and the Vietnam crisis.
>>18661927give boomer Karens an inch and they'll always back creating a surveillance state
>>18661959insofar as the OP text was right that the middle class in that era were willing to put the Constitution in the paper shredder out of Cold War paranoia
>>18661959It was boomer Karens in the progressive era who demanded this social reform and that government regulation. these guys exist in every generation and are always extremely statist and worship the idea of a nanny government.
>>18661246Interesting how you just skipped over the Gilded Age entirely.
>>18661255Roger Taney was a traitor and should have been hanged. His image will thankfully only get worse as the years go by.
>>18661246>After all, our nation had survived its first 150 years without an FBI, a CIA, security clearances, domestic surveillance, andwe also didn't face numerous threats from Russian hackers, terrorists, criminal enterprises, and pedophiles in 1850. the nation had fewer and simpler security needs back then.
