Nixon and Civil Rights
To the Editor:
In taking issue with Dwight Macdonald’s quite proper observation that “no major candidate is on record against civil liberties,” Mr. Robert Lee Tripp [June “Letters”] posed this question: “But has Mr. Macdonald forgotten that Mr. Nixon has one of the worst records on civil liberties of any contemporary American politician?”
The assumption behind the question just isn’t true. . . . Mr. Nixon’s scrupulous regard for individual rights is no new thing—despite what some of his more ardent myth-making critics may allege. Back in 1948, when the House Committee on Un-American Activities was considering Communist-control legislation, Mr. Nixon—then a Congressman—wrote to the U. S. Attorney General: “We are deeply concerned that in our efforts to combat and break up subversive movements through legislation we do not impair or destroy any of the rights and liberties which we hold so fundamental here in America. If in adopting legislation there would be any danger of suppressing a truly democratic group as well as Communist groups, I would question the adoption of any legislation at all. . . .”
Victor Lasky
New York City
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