Talk:Richard Nixon

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Stance on LGBTQ+ matters[edit]

Nixon was very much against homosexuality, it sees. It feels like airbrushing history to not include this fact whatsoever.

Source. Electricmaster (talk) 11:18, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I think we would want high quality reliable sources that would treat that in the context of the times. Fifty years ago, when Nixon was president, very few politicians would differ from that stance. If I'm remembering correctly, saying someone was gay, using more course terminology, was one of LBJ's favorite insults.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:18, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, we are talking a era when homosexuality was considered a mental illness by some. (It wasn't until 1973 that the American Psychological Association removed it from its list of mental illnesses.) Rja13ww33 (talk) 19:15, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In the hope of weakening the Soviet Union[edit]

There is a line (I think it is new) that describes Nixon's visit to China as being "In the hope of weakening the Soviet Union". I know that was the ultimate aim.....but I think the immediate intent was more basically to drive a wedge between the two communist nations in the Cold War. That is what most RS says. In (for example) 'The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World' (2010), Lorenz Luthi refers to this as a "wedge strategy" several times. (A good example is on p.145 where he calls it a "U.S. wedge strategy designed to split the Sino-Soviet alliance".) I may be nitpicking here....but does anyone think it is worth changing?Rja13ww33 (talk) 19:31, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I added that, and I’m comfortable if you want to change to wedge. The point of wedge strategy is to weaken. I think it this will be understood in either phrasing. The particular source I used casts it in terms of weaken. JArthur1984 (talk) 20:07, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think the "wedge strategy" really applies to Nixon. The Sino-Soviet split had basically happened by 1962, before Nixon's presidency. The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (2010) by Lorenz M. Lüthi mainly covers the years from 1956 to 1966 and only mentions Nixon once in the Conclusion chapter. I think it's more accurate to say that the Sino-Soviet split gave Nixon and Mao the opportunity for rapprochement, rather than that Nixon's visit to China was intended to drive a "wedge" between two countries whose relations had already deteriorated. Consider this passage from the chapter in The Cambridge History of the Cold War (2010) that I linked above: After the 1969 war scare (the Sino-Soviet border conflict), internal assessments in Beijing concluded that the USSR was China's greatest external threat. Mao moved swiftly toward a rapprochement with Washington, seeking improved relations with the United States as a measure of security against perceived Soviet expansionism. Malerisch (talk) 20:12, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It still don't think "weaken" is the right way to put it. It is probably true more sources (in Nixon's case) refer to it as "triangular diplomacy" than anything else. So maybe that is it. (Then again, I may be getting too caught up in semantics here.)Rja13ww33 (talk) 01:36, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's more like "isolate" or "marginalize", though I don't know if the source would support that. Wehwalt (talk) 04:31, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Could someone please correct the specifics of Nixon's younger brother's death?[edit]

The description is that his younger brother died as a short illness; I wanted to clarify that he died of tubercular encephalitis. See: "The Nixon’s lost their son Arthur to tubercular encephalitis in1925 and their son Harold to tuberculosis in 1933" from the Nixon library, at Microsoft Word - FA Family Collection at https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/forresearchers/find/textual/findingaids/findingaid_nixonfamily.pdf Jeanmarine (talk) 18:00, 11 February 2024 (UTC). I often make cleanup / clarifying edits like this but noticed that this page is locked, wasn't sure who can edit it.[reply]

Why is that considered more accurate than the existing source? Wehwalt (talk) 20:05, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wife beater[edit]

I figure that if no one else will, I guess I will add a section on Richard beating up his wife, Pat. Here are a few sources to use to make this part of the narrative. [1] and [2], which is a book review of The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon, Penguin Books, August 1, 2001, by Anthony Summers. I like to saw logs! (talk) 09:17, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well here's what academic historians say about the credibility of this fringe book: "Anthony Summers, who previously wrote sensationalistic books about the Kennedy assassination, Marilyn Monroe, and J. Edgar Hoover, finds Nixon guilty of more crimes than did Leon Jaworski, Peter Rodino and Woodward and Bernstein combined. His Arrogance of Power--even the title is unoriginal--is a dictionary-sized catalogue of Nixon's offenses, real and imagined. His sources are a wildly mixed lot: some as reliable as the sunrise, some as impeachable as Nixon himself. This book will probably disappoint even die-hard Nixon-haters, who will see the case for the uniqueness of Nixon's crimes muddied by Summers's kitchen-sink approach, which undermines whatever credibility his prodigious research might otherwide have lent him."--- from David Greenberg, "Review: Richard the Bleeding Hearted" Reviews in American History (March 2002) Vol. 30, No. 1 (Mar., 2002), pp. 156-167 at page 164. Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press, online at https://www.jstor.org/stable/30031728 Rjensen (talk) 10:22, 5 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]