Subverting America (NYT 1973)

[Nevilledog]

https://www.nytimes.com/1973/06/17/archives/subverting-america.html

No paywall
https://archive.ph/O2CdD

If political tyranny ever comes to America, it is likely to arrive not in the guise of some alien ideology such such as Communism or Nazism but as a uniquely Ameri can way of preserving this country's traditional values. Instead of tyranny being the dramatic culmination radical protest and revolution, it can come silently, slowly, like fog creeping in “on little cat feet.”

The Watergate scandal is a profoundly sinister event because, in so many of its aspects it reflects an authori tarian turn of mind and a ready willingness on the part of those at the highest levels of Government to subvert democratic values and practices. Tyranny was not yet a fact, but the drift toward tyranny, toward curtailing and impairing essential freedoms, was well under way until the Watergate scandal alerted the nation to the danger. That is what Senator Lowell Weicker, Connecti cut Republican, had in mind when he referred on the opening day of the Senate hearings to the perpetrators of Watergate as men “who almost stole America.”

What would constitute tyranny in the United States? It would involve reducing Congress to a peripheral role in making Government policy, discrediting the political opposition, suppressing the more aggressive forms dissent, intimidating television, radio and the press, staff ing, the courts with one's own supporters, and central izing all of the executive power in the hands of the President and his ?? totally dependent aides. During his years in office, President Nixon has made ?? progress toward all of these objectives.

There is no evidence that he aspires to dictatorial authority for himself, but there is abundant proof that be seeks to alter the balance between the power of Gov ernment and the liberties of individual citizens. There is evidence, too, that Mr. Nixon's guiding philosophy is that the ends justify the means. Virtually all the major figures in his political entourage—campaign manager, deputy campaign manager, chief fund raiser, White House counsel, personal attorney, White House staff chief,. domestic policy chief, and appointments secretary—have now been implicated in allegedly illegal or unethical behavior. So many gamesters pulling “dirty tricks” cannot be an accident. Their presence in the top level of the Nixon Administration reflects a philosophy of ruthless pragmatism.

*snip*

[jaysunb]

1. Either history is repeating itself or

They (authoritarians) are simply refining their actions. ??