Ruling on Nixon Papers

Yes, let’s give Nixon his 30 pieces of silver, for undoubtedly we owe him.

We owe Nixon for his showing us that it can happen here. We owe him and Joe McCarthy and the others of their ilk for sowing the seeds of hate and fear that created the red-baiting years that so nearly destroyed this country.

We owe him and the others for purging the government of anyone who understood Southeast Asia so that we were dragged into a conflict that we could not win because we did not know what we were doing. We owe Nixon for the needless deaths of thousands of good Americans because he did not wish history to see him as the first American President to lose a war. We owe much to Nixon for the illegal invasion of Cambodia, which, when all was said and done, resulted in the deaths of millions and showed that there was some validity to the domino theory, if only we worked at it hard enough.

We owe Nixon and his minions for the deceit that tore apart the presidency and its institutions. We owe him for showing us that there is no limit to the depths a man will sink to subvert an election. We owe him for his lies and dissimulation in office and for his misuses of power.

Yes, the American people owe much to Nixon. But, fortunately for Nixon, ours is still a civilized nation despite all his attempts to change it. We do not pay the sort of coin he so richly deserves, and would have received in a less forgiving society.

Pay him his money, but please, please, let us be done with him once and for all.

JESS MORTON

San Pedro