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certain hypocrisy and myopia on the part of liberals in their excessive reaction
to
the persecution of respectable people and institutions, like
The New York
Times,
as compared with their indifference to the persecution of militants and
radicals. Still, there was something very reassuring in the ultimate response of
Congress, the media, and public opinion on the whole, to Nixonian politics,
indicating that there was a limit to what the country would put up with. Only
a few months earlier it was frightening to think there might be no limits, that
the country was so corrupt, so brainwashed, so spineless, that what we were
living through was nothing less than our moral and political decline. And in
the absence of any other viable solutions, perhaps we have to be grateful for
lesser evils-a doctrine we once despised when we were younger, purer, more
uncompromising, and still believed that radical solutions were possible.
P.S. The just announced blanket pardon of Nixon, a pardon for undisclosed
crimes, and the rumored pardon of all the other Watergate participants, is the
final act of the coverup. Now, without any judicial means of getting at the still
unknown facts, Watergate is declared officially a mystery, and thus transferred
from the present to the· past, which is the'exclusive preserve of scholars and his–
torians. Only the fact that this has happened keeps it from being incred–
ible-incredible, too, that the new admimstration should revert so quickly to
Nixonian methods.
An ironic; thought: if Christ had been pardoned-for crimes he didn 't com–
mit-we wouldn't have Christianity.
w.p.
