Nixon, Haldeman & Goldwater on Acceptance speech and Vietnam War

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Well, on the amnesty, I don't know whether it's really worth putting in.

I'd leave it in.

You'd leave it in?

I think so.

Why don't you say it?

In discussing Vietnam, I wrote in this lecture, I didn't have a great deal of time to talk about the fighting amnesty.

Most of you have heard of that, I think.

That's what they say.

I say that it's early in the draft documents.

I've had enough of that.

We don't hear what you're walking upon us.

You don't need it, I guess.

That's the point.

Because there's so much, I mean, I get the honor of feeling that they are in a fight period, you'll get the lead in the next day, and maybe the Vice President will get the amnesty thing.

Not, he doesn't attack it, let go of it, he attacks it on the parents and the history.

This isn't an attack, I don't, you see, I love it very much here, I have, I know I've said it before, I've made a great apology for all that, and I've said it, I haven't said it enough.

You haven't said that.

The thing that I think bothered people about Bo, I always said that I liked about him, was that, yes, sure, let him stay there.

He's stuck with Bo.

Not that I want him to stay high.

Right.

Absolutely.

They made their choice.

Nobody told them they had to leave.

But that, in terms of the voters that he wanted,

But they could pick a tree, frankly, where there's something to make some progress.

It might be .

There's a hell of a lot of them that you know about .

They can't relate to anybody .

That's what Harris showed, 75% of the food beforehand.

Maybe it just doesn't serve any purpose .

What would you say about that?

It's getting wrapped up in there.

You're pushing the process.

Yes, I am.

I'm dividing it for those two.

All right.

I say it is time to put me up for a piece of the law.

It cuts time out of the damn thing.

I think that's the real deal here with the law.

That's pretty damn good.

Now you see this one, the way it reads.

It's very, very general.

Discussing Vietnam, I noted that in this election, there has been a great deal of talk about providing amnesty to those 200 Americans who chose to deserve their country rather than serve Vietnam.

I say this not to put me on the square of grief alone.

The real heroes are walking the line.

Two and a half million Americans who did their duty and chose to serve their country do not have any regrets.

Let us be of those who have served America in the past.

I can serve the higher arms forces today in honor and respect they have so richly earned.

Pretty good stuff, and that's a hell of a lot of people.

Yeah, well, it's a lot of guys.

See, the legion, a lot of them aren't legionnaires.

You see, the people that serve, that's a lot of them, but if they're legionnaires, they don't pay any damn attention to the convention, or the VFW, or an awful lot of other things.

This gets to the point, without being mean,

I really think it's pretty good.

The one thing, I haven't caught it any time before, so maybe it isn't significant, but you say the real heroes are walking among us, which automatically excludes those who would go.

The real heroes.

The real heroes are those who, I'd better say, the real heroes are the two and a half million, I don't know how many, that's the real heroes.

Because that would then include $40,000 in given assets.

You're right.

I had noticed that once before.

I've heard that.

That line never occurred to me.

It's a line that, frankly, was prepared by Andrew.

It's a nice line, but it is served directly up.

And it's not true.

There's a hell of a lot of people who would say, what if I could have brought those four back?

that's I think that's good and it doesn't fail that's very good again for us

In fact, the press will know that it's been done in a more gentle style.

Well, that's another thing.

A lot of what you're doing, and I think this is a good fact, a lot of what you're saying says in a much more refined way what has been said with the medacs earlier, and that's pretty good.

You should play back off the thing that you by contrast come off of it.

I don't know what you're talking about here.

.

I say it that way rather than another way, very subtle.

If we are to say peace and freedom to all of our friends and allies in Turkey and Latin America, we must be sure.

I think it's better for me to say it.

What do you think?

I think personally, you like the positive state of the government.

I put it under the line, which is very important.

I'm going to go along with it.

I want the peace boxes across America

that they have the total backing of their president.

Right after I get the presidency.

Then I asked all Americans, I asked all my fellow Americans to join me.

More than two.

And we are, and we are making progress.

We are making progress to keep the peace.

And I brought them to keep the peace.

They're a hell of a group, too.

I know the answer, and that's a big story.

But it's very disturbing to me that I'm

to read those polls and find them, and put on those domestic issues, we just shouldn't pick up.

I mean, I understand.

If it were a poll, the children behind, so providing things to look at, this is a poll that children have just taken the hell out of the other side.

So we get negative ratings, wrong order, negative ratings, ratings on our colleagues, negative ratings, ratings on the same time.

Plus, I mean, I was a veteran.

I think it's all of those are things that there are problems that are there that are bothering people in sort of the world.

They know if they see that whole part of it, the way I analyze it, is this.

Maybe, but I think there are two things.

One, I do think we've gotten the shape of our domestic council in terms of it's stating things in a more effective kind of way when they go up.

You've got to state that you can't conquer them.

The second thing is that I realize that one reason that all the international views that we have got on Trump's campaign, remember, is that there the nation has heard me discussing it.

On the other issues, they have heard our policies discussed by others, forced and strained through the media.

You know, and we have had, I don't know, a condolence about that.

What really saved us from Vietnam was when the NBA beat them.

And what made us in China and Russia

Iowa, period, right?

That's what it gets down to.

I'll let you try this.

Let's see what happens.

I come off but there's a certain level of security with the local law.

You know, those who hold one objection to the rule of law and one objection to the policy to get something, you know, something good.

I was always assured that the rest of the United States, most of the United States never has to negotiate with me.

There was no such thing as a decree for peace.

That's a good line.

I sure did.

I follow that.

It's not different.

We stand on a threshold of one of the most exciting challenges in the history of religion.

We have the opportunity, in our time, to do the best we can for the world.

Because the world trusts and respects us.

Because the world knows that we will use our power only to defend freedom and to be strong.

A strong America is not the end of the peace, it is the guardian of peace.

The initiatives that we have begun result in reducing the burden upon us to impose the name of the war upon the world today.

Even more important than the means, are the enormous creative energies of the American people,

and other people who were turned away from caring for war towards the work of peace.

In America, it will mean that we can undertake programs for partners at home.

It will be just as exciting as the great initiative we have undertaken in these past four years to build peace in America.

This dividend has too often been described solely by credit cards, how much money we have to take out of the arms of our clients.

By far the biggest dividend

is that achieving our goal of true and lasting peace would reflect the deepest hopes and ideals of the American people.

Speaking on behalf of all the American people, I was proudly able to say on my telephone address to the Russian people today, we covet no one else's character.

We seek no dimension other than the other people.

We seek peace, not only for ourselves, but for all the people.

This dedication to idealism runs through America's history.

During the tragic war between the states, Abraham Lincoln was asked whether God was on our side.

He replied, My concern is not whether God is on our side, but whether we are on God's side.

May that always be our prayer for America.

My fellow Americans, we hold our vision and future of peace in the world in our hands.

Let us reject the policies of those who bind and rule about our frustration and colonialism.

Let us not turn away from greatness.

The chance America now has to lead the way to a lasting peace in the world may never come again.

With faith in God, faith in ourselves, and faith in America, let us have the vision and the courage to seize the moment and meet the challenge before it slips away.

On my trip to the Soviet Union, I visited the cemetery after I received a thousand degrees of silence.

Her name was Hanna.

I read her diary, and it tells the terrible story of where she was.

Simple words of a child.

She wrote of the death of her mother and her family.

Finally, these were the last words in her diary.

All are dead, and Hanna is Hanna.

She's dead.

Let us think of Hanna, and of the other Hannas, and their brothers and sisters everywhere in Russia.

and America, as we proudly meet our responsibilities for leadership in the world in a way worthy of agreement.

I ask you, my fellow Americans, to join Ireland in authority, not just in the cause of winning an election, but in working together to achieve a goal that has been the dream of mankind since the beginning of civilization.

Let us build a peace which our children, and all the children of the world, enjoy for generations to come.

You certainly eliminated any question whether there was a problem with repeating that.

No, because you're saying it's totally different.

No, no.

I would just cancel it.

You mean, you skipped some of it?

Or you still recite the whole thing?

I do parts.

I don't decide all of them yet.

But your payoff is different.

Your payoff then, because you go into the children,

I was trying to remember how it went across.

It went away before.

First of all, the problem we had before is that we had the Lincoln thing that kind of went too close together.

Yeah.

And it did take a point.

You see, I think the Lincoln thing, and maybe this is a question that's a little easier for him.

Lincoln.

I think we should, for the reason that I

I justify it in a way, you see what I mean?

It's this, by far the biggest dividend is that achieving our goal of true and lasting peace would reflect the deepest hopes and ideals of the American people.

And I say how I reflected them when I spoke to the Russian people.

I was thoughtlessly required to not struggle.

And I'm struggling.

This dedication to ideals runs through America too.

We've been trying to work with the state of Abraham Lincoln and so on and so on.

And I say, may that always be our prayer.

I think that's a very important thing.

It is.

I follow Americans.

We hold our faith.

We believe in peace.

And I get it.

Let us reject the policy of those who are blind and quickly run out of frustration.

But let's not turn away from this.

The chance America now has to lead the way to a lasting peace in the world may never come again.

But let's have the vision and the courage and put it on the faith in God instead of on the other.

You know?

That's it.

Faith in God, faith in ourselves, and faith in America.

Let us have the vision and the courage to seize the moment.

Meet the child before he slips away.

That may remind you of a child.

Meet the child before he slips away.

On my trip to the Soviet Union, the plane trip to the cemetery, there were 300,000 people who died in the Soviet Union.

The reason I think the Bible put the names in is the document I already found.

It just

Let me read it in a way how much more effective it is.

The cemetery, I saw the picture of the father of a child.

She was a girl.

She was a beautiful child.

I read her diary.

It tells a terrible story of war.

The simple words of a child.

She lived the best of her life.

Thank you, Senator.

Thank you.

Let us think of China, and of the other one, and their brothers and sisters everywhere in Russia, China, and America.

as we proudly meet our responsibilities for leadership in the world, in the way we work for the great people.

The way I said it before was somewhat different.

I said, as we work for a more peaceful world, or I said that I worked for a more peaceful world the other time, to make sure that the other children of the world do not have to endure what she did.

I leave that out here because I covered it in the last paragraph.

I ask you, my fellow Americans, to join our inventory, not just in the cause of women in the election, but in working together to achieve a goal that has been the dream of mankind since the beginning of civilization.

Let us build a peace with our children and all the children of the world.

It also says that it incentivizes

state casualties, and that cuts by 98%.

Well, I have 95.

Say 98 on the basis of, there were 30 in July, and there were 2,105 in February of 68.

The year to year is 3%.

So the cut in half is still a mold.

We have that one black lump that's probably evaporating.

Where does the, I was looking at this one last thing.

Is that just bar leads from Hughes?

It isn't Hughes.

It's from somebody else, apparently.

He was talking about Hughes.

He said several sources, I'm sure.

Ample opportunities for leads.

Not our story.

Stan says it doesn't, just for once, Stan says it's a technical thing.

Yeah, he says it's that $200,000, which is the thing they're all excited about, it's the same $200,000, say one $200,000 was wrong here and another $200,000 was wrong there, but it's the same $200,000 that was a technical mistake.

It was filed in the wrong committee.

As soon as it was discovered, it was refiled in the other committee.

It has been reported on receipts.

It has been reported to each other.

That's what I think.

Are we, are they making also this kind of, are they taking a hard look at this government thing?

I'm sorry, yeah.

They aren't sure.

They've got to get their next file.

The last one.

See, we had a file just before the convention, so we have a file.

Well, theirs.

They had a file before theirs, but they've got, what they're going on is all the stuff in between there.

and then going back out of that valley.

What I'm getting at is you can catch them on anything.

That's it.

Nixon, Haldeman & Goldwater on Acceptance speech and Vietnam War

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on August 22, 1972

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