The news story will also have a video to go with it. Keep checking the story to catch a snippet of Ed Nixon’s speech.
When you know Richard Nixon’s brother is in the room, it isn’t difficult at all to pick which one he is. For one thing, there were only a few men in Wednesday’s meeting of the Bainbridge Island Republican Women.
But even if there were 100, Ed Nixon would be unmistakable.
He knows it and seems to be comfortable in his overall role as the brother of someone famous. People around the world ask him why he looks like Richard Nixon, he said.
Nixon was on Bainbridge Wednesday to speak and to sell a few books.
He’s written The Nixons: A Family Portrait, which deals much in the family and little in any of the controversial stuff about his brother.
During the speech he did talk a little, when prodded, about his brother’s presidency. An audience member said government didn’t grow as it had in other administrations. Ed Nixon said any president succeeds at the mercy of the Congress that’s with him. Richard Nixon didn’t agree with wage and price controls. He didn’t think they would work. But he let them go forward to prove whether he was right or not.
Ed Nixon is clearly a Republican loyalist. He said Democrats are risking the future of children, key to his overall message that family and children are what matter most.
He invited himself to any Democratic functions available. “If you want me to talk to the Democrats, tell me where and when,” he said. Nixon then asked if there were comparable “ladies” groups for Democrats, and took a shot by asking if there are any “ladies” in the Democratic party.
A major portion of his prepared speech was a recitation of principles he said he learned from his father, Frank Nixon. Frank was, according to Ed, a bit blunt, but had a real affection for the Constitution, particularly the Preamble. He drove home the principles to his children, one of whom would become president.
Ed, for his part, took what he remembered of his father’s teachings and rewrote it in 1992. The New York Times, he said, wasn’t interested. We’re just the Kitsap Caucus on the Kitsap Sun, but he was willing to turn over the text of those principles. Here’s the transcript of that part.
Giants
by Ed Nixon
The global failure of efforts by government “to provide for the for the general welfare” merely proves the correctness of our Constitution’s Preamble — “promote” and “provide” are not interchangeable.
Academic political scientists and policy advisers should know that prescribing “jobs” will not cure a sick economy. Good jobs are the product of a healthy economy. And government-sponsored job development teams too often result in the expansion of government-subsidized employment in the guise of “investment.”
Effective therapy aimed at the causes of persistent unemployment must begin with employer development teams. We need to promote the aspirations of present and future innovators, developers, managers, marketers, operators, investigators, i.e. entrepreneurs, to become employers, free to expand, to reinvest earnings without tax on gains, and inspired by a new freedom from bureaucratic statisticians.
Poverty cannot be abolished by government prescriptions aimed at the forced redistribution of wealth. Subsidies attack the symptoms, keeping patients at rest but crippling them in the process.
And union-led strikes too often destroy the means to employ, yielding a net loss — or only a doleful gain — for the employed. Inevitably, bureaucrats will try to restore “equality” at the expense of national wealth by imploring Members of the House to initiate more entitlement spending regardless of revenues — the net affect of which is always a reduced value for our currency.
Unhealthy disparities in income can be avoided but not by merely subsidizing the poor. Indolence is the culprit, an illness prevalent even among casino speculators who “earn” their living exclusively by playing the trends of usury, exchange rates, inflation, or any other “system” of artificial values.
Growth that intensifies disparity in personal income eventually leads to wild swings in economic trends, population explosions among the poor, and incubation of violence in crucibles of superstition.
Meaningful jobs cannot be created directly. They can only follow the development of employers and the promotion of wealth that is earned, retained and reinvested.
When recruiting new employees we should always seek those who have dreams of their own — those who perhaps look forward to employing others, or who certainly expect to contribute individually with exemplary quality in their own output, thereby giving others reason to dream.
In the final analysis, craftsmen’s pride is the root of all equality, whether related to tangible products or intangible ideas.
Promotion of the general welfare calls for statecraft built from experience. Wise leadership acknowledges past errors and patiently pursues solutions, while political petulance seeks to provide immediate gratification regardless of past failures.
Immigrants arriving here from more socialistic countries must be made to understand that we did not become a great nation by seeking to reduce everyone to the least common denominator.
The framers of the Constitution were giants in their time.
So now, let’s grow some new giants who understand the difference between “providing for the common defense” and “promoting the general welfare.”
