Word: hisses
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Where the rattlesnakes hiss and the wind blows free...
There is a great liberal tradition in this country from the days of Thomas Jefferson; but when that tradition becomes so warped that there is room in it for sympathy for Alger Hiss, but only disgust for Richard Nixon, then, indeed, it is a very sick tradition, and there is no place for it in this nation, nor at Harvard University. Eric A. Ven Salzen...
Perhaps I ought to have made my feelings on Mr. Hiss's statement more explicit; perhaps if I had done so, and if Mr. Von Salzen had read them, he would not be able to take refuge in the easy opposition between Nixon and a "proved perjurer." To begin with, I do not understand why Mr. Von Salzen should be so upset at the fact that Hiss was asked for an opinion on Nixon: even at the height of the Hiss case, no one denied the man's intelligence. Thus his opinion is, in fact, doubly worth having, as that...
Secondly, in calling Hiss Nixon's "victim," I was implying two things, one obvious, the other perhaps not so obvious. First, there is no doubt that, to put it mildly, the rise of Nixon's stock was intimately bound up with the fall of Hiss's. Second, I was implicitly questioning the political wisdom of the Congressional investigation of Hiss. This may sound like heresy to Mr. Von Salzen, but consider: assuming Hiss's guilt (and some reasonably intelligent people have their doubts about this), was it really in the best interests of this country to investigate him, provoking...
...unhealthy political climate of the post-War period, which the Hiss case so disastrously encouraged, was Congress right in exacerbating dangerous tensions by such an investigation? I think not. And I am sure Mr. Von Salzen would say the same thing today about, say, the concerted, unremitting attempt to secure full civil rights for this country's Negro population. He would no doubt argue, "You've got to be careful about this; sure they deserve their rights, but think of the dangerous tensions such an attempt would exacerbate." I submit that any sound politician would have at least considered...