I didn’t see this coming. Christopher Rufo draws his map for the counterrevolution we need from Richard Nixon. He starts with Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign, to which my mentor Jeffrey Hart contributed the line: “Ramsey Clark is a conscientious objector in the war against crime.”
Well, Rufo has got me thinking. Rufo advocates his plan in the Summer 2023 City Journal essay “Bring on the counterrevolution” and in his Manhattan Institute video below. Listen and learn as Nixon instructs Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office to “write [Nixon’s lesson] on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it.” It sounds like the wisdom of the ages. I support the counterrevolution.
What about Watergate? In the video Rufo cites the contrasting portrait of Watergate that I first heard sketched by our late Claremont friend John Wettergreen and that John Marini, Steve Hayward, and others have further explored. Rufo both quotes and credits John Marini. Good for him.
I am afraid the country has changed so much since the Nixon era that Rufo’s plan may not be practicable. I should probably add that this reservation gives me pause: “Although some of Nixon’s actions went beyond the rule of law…” For more on the long war against the terrorist organizations on our home front during the 1970s, see Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage. Joanne Chesimard, by the way, is still on the lam.
Quotable quote: “It’s never too late for counterrevolution in our time.’
