[WAGCEVP]

Former Watergate 'Plumber' Attacks Government Regulations
http://www.townhall.com/news/politics/200307/CUL20030724b.shtml

Former Watergate 'Plumber' Attacks Government Regulations
(CNSNews.com) - Government is taking away too many civil liberties, and college students gathered for a conference in Washington, D.C., this week were warned against future encroachments by broadcaster G. Gordon Liddy, the former FBI agent who gained notoriety for his involvement in the Nixon-era Watergate scandal.


Liddy, who was one of the White House "plumbers" who spent about $300,000 on political schemes and the Watergate break-in, said his mission now is to educate young people about government restrictions stripping them of their rights.


At one time, Liddy, reminisced, people could rake the leaves and burn them in a barrel, ride a bicycle without a helmet, drive a car without a seatbelt and walk down the street holding a shotgun.


"All those liberties are gone," Liddy said to a group of about 100 students at the 25th Annual Young America's Foundation National Conservative Student Conference.


Liddy noted that such liberties of an earlier time in America didn't disappear "in one broad sweep. They were salami-sliced off, one half after the other, always in the name of some perceived good or product.


"The message is, this process is still ongoing, and if we don't stop it, young people are going to be telling their kids that 'when I was a kid this was a free country,' but they'll mean the way it is now," said Liddy.


Liddy said the loss of civil liberties compelled him to write his latest book, When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country. "The intent of the book was to shock young people, and then it was to educate," he said.


Liddy also singled out Second Amendment rights as being particularly at risk, noting that the nation's founding fathers feared a strong central government and, having just "thrown off the yolk of a tyrannical government" in the American Revolution, didn't want the government to have the power that it does today.


"The Second Amendment in the Constitution doesn't say 'we hereby give you the right to bear arms,' but what it says is 'this right will not be infringed,'" Liddy said.


The broadcaster noted that the idea of gun control is not a new trend started in the 20th Century, but in the colonel period because the slave owners didn't want the slaves to be armed.


At that time, the courts even applied gun control to free blacks because "the next thing you know, black people will be able to say anything they want to say, just like white people, and go anywhere they want to go," Liddy said.


Gun control emerged out of racism, Liddy claimed, calling it one of the "ugly legacies" from that period of history, and he argued that regulating guns is not necessary because there is any number of ways to kill someone.


During his four-and-a-half years in prison following his Watergate conviction, Liddy said he once saw a man injure several people using a table as a weapon.


"A guy could walk around with an ax and pound somebody in the head. What are we going to have ax control?" Liddy asked rhetorically.


Regulation of legitimate liberties is unjustified, Liddy said, telling young conservatives to work against increases in government regulation. "The best defense is a good offense," Liddy said.

[Standing Wolf]

Gun control emerged out of racism, Liddy claimed, calling it one of the "ugly legacies" from that period of history...

Leftist extremist so-called "gun control" was founded in racism, and remains just as racist to this day, although it's a rare leftist extremist who'll admit it.

[Pilgrim]

G. Gordon is an interesting guy. He served the longest prison term for the Watergate burglary because he wouldn't cooperate with prosecutors and squeal on his superiors.

One day on his radio program he explained why he kept silent. He said that inherent in a criminal conspiracy is a contract with the other conspirators to keep one's mouth shut if caught.

Pilgrim

[rrader]

Liddy said the loss of civil liberties compelled him to write his latest book, When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country. "The intent of the book was to shock young people, and then it was to educate," he said.


Did Liddy include a chapter about the democratic process and his willingness to subvert it?

Liddy is a sociopath who ought to still be locked up.

[Delmar]

Oh my, how far we have come in what gets us upset. I was overseas when the Watergate saga unfolded, and everybody was harrumphing about a two bit B&E and wanted to string Nixon up from the White House pillars. Still can't figure that one. McGovern would have lost even if nobody was running against him.

We just got rid of the village idiot who couldn't keep his hands or other parts of his anatomy off the trailer trash, and a lot of people around him have died under conspiciously suspicious circumstances, yet nobody seems to want to pursue this, not to mention the less than slap on the wrists for telling whoppers in a Federal court.

Heck, we had to wait until he died before we all found out that J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual-not that it mattered what he preferred, but then he was not about to hire homosexuals in the FBI. Guess he wanted to be unique?

[matis]

rrader said:

Liddy is a sociopath who ought to still be locked up.
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If Liddy is a sociopath, then I say we need 50 million more like him.



He's the only honest one of the watergate "plumbers" bunch.

He kept his mouth shut and demonstrated more integrity than all the rest of Washington combined.

He did what he felt he had to do for his president in the face of what he considered to be a a leftist push to destroy the country.

Look around you. Liddy was right, wasn't he?


But right or wrong, he stuck to his guns, demonstrated loyalty, integrity, great resoursefulness and courage.


I liked him after reading his book: WILL.


And after a year or so of listening to him hosting his talk-show, I admired him even more.

He hears what his detractors, even the rabid ones, have to say and then takes their positions apart, but calmly, logically and politely. As for intelligence, his IQ is probably around 150.


The man was an attorney, an army officer, an FBI man and as a prosecutor he put the "turn on, tune in, drop out" Harvard Psychologist, Timothy Leary in prison. In later years they went on the dabating circuit together in colleges across the country.


As a convicted felon, he cannot own firearms.

He laughs as he tells his audience that he owns no guns, but that Mrs. Liddy sure has a bunch of them, loaded and all over the house.



In 1986 he and Leary were scheduled to debate at our local university. I was to meet a buddy at the auditorium door.

The crowds were huge and the overflow was going back to the parking lots 'cause the place was jammed full.

I met my buddy as he was going back with the crowd.

I tried to convince him to turn back around. "Follow me," I said, "...and I'll get us in."

He wouldn't do it.


No way I was going to miss G. Gordon Liddy!

I fought my way to the auditorium door, gave them some BS about my wife being inside and I had to get her out 'cause we had an emergency.

They assigned a guard to follow me around as I went up and down the aisles, "looking for my wife".

Eventually the guard grew tired of this, became inattentive and I gave him the sllp.

I ended up in a front row seat, got Liddy's autograph for my copy of WILL and he had a good laugh when I told him how I'd gotten in to see him.


Resourcefulness. You do what you gotta to do to get the job done


I guess I'm a sociopath, too, huh rrader?


I have the greatest respect and admiration for G. Gordon Liddy.



Matis

[Mike Irwin]

I must have missed Constitutional amendment 427G...

A burning barrel being necessary to the maintenance of a clean yard, the right to burn leaves in a barrel on your property shall not be infringed...

If I burned leaves in my back yard I'd probably set my fence on fire... :)

[jimpeel]

... having just "thrown off the yolk of a tyrannical government" ...What an egghead.... but in the colonel period because the slave owners didn't want the slaves to be armed.
...Yep, an egghead alright.

[Mike Irwin]

A misstep like that can get someone beaten...

But, go a little overeasy on him, Jim. Maybe even be eggstra nice?

He's just a little scrambled this evening... :neener:

[4v50 Gary]

I remember when it happened and we all screamed for Nixon's head. The President was suppose to be like the white knight who was never besmooted or blemished. Talk about naive. When Comrade Klinton became President, we knew he was dirty w/Whitewater before he was elected. Then he got re-elected and nobody cared anymore about the integrity of the office of the President. Several years ago (when Komrade Klinton was at the helm) I found myself wishing Tricky Dick was our President instead.

[rrader]

matis:

Terms like integrity and honesty don't belong in any sentence that describes G. Gordon Liddy. He was, and is, a personable, likeable, interesting, self-promoting, anti-American thug who tried to subvert the democratic process in this country. He admits being willing to do far worse for the White House then what finally got him sentenced to prison.

50 million more just like him? no, America's military and economic strength rests squarely on the health of its democracy. We don't need the kind of low and retrograde banana republic that a nation of 50 million sociopaths like Liddy would bring.

Liddy's wife keeps his extensive gun collection for him? I'm not impressed. He is obviously no friend of the Constitution that includes the 2nd amendment. Given power, anti-democracy thugs like Liddy would seize your and my firearms in a heartbeat.

Left-wing putsch in the early 70's? No, Johnson faced even more intense left wing opposition than Nixon, and most evidence suggests that the Nixon White House formed the "plumbers unit" because he was royally pissed at being spied on by the Joint Chiefs over Kissenger's trips to the PRC, and anger over leaks by folks like Ellsberg, not as part of some heroic strategy to save the Republic. It was FBI's Cointelpro outfit that was looking into the radical student movement, not the Nixon White House's "plumber's unit."

Liddy should still be in jail, IMO.

If there was a silver lining to Liddy's actions it was that it finally got us one of the 5-best Presidents of all time, Gerald Ford. If you want to see honesty and integrity, look to Ford, not Liddy. They're polar opposites.

[Delmar]

Ford one of the 5 best Pesidents we ever had? The same Gerald Ford who is more dangerous with a 5 iron than the nuclear football? C'mon! This is the same idiot who was on the Warren commission for cryin out loud. Not to mention that he wasn't even elected by the people-he was appointed......please stand by for this commercial break while we suspend the rights of the voting public in choosing the leadership.

[rrader]

Delmar,

Given what Ford was handed, and the superb way he restored the credibility of the US Government to most folks, yes I would put him in the top 5 Presidents of all time.

As far as the Warren Commission whitewash goes, the Kennedy brothers shafting of the mafia after taking support from them in the '60 election was pretty well known in D.C. How were they going to explain something like that to the American people who just lost "Camelot" in 1963?

As for being unelected, well... he was elected House Minority leader, a process very similar to and just as representative as the electoral college. Our chain of succession is designed to allow for rapid replacement of the POTUS and VPOTUS in an emergency, Nixon and Agnew's resignation aren't the kind of events that can be forseen. Maybe we do need to have a provision for special elections.

[Delmar]

How were they going to explain something like that to the American people who just lost "Camelot" in 1963?

Good point rrader-God help us if we ever expected a commission made up of people like Earl Warren, who decided to put Japanese-Americans in prison camps, or Allen Dulles, who had been fired by Kennedy, to actually tell the truth for a change. We have had a lot of leaders in this country since the death of JFK, but we sure have not had leadership, IMO.

In some defense of Ford, he was a junior senator at the time, and probably outranked by nearly everyone on the Commission.

I was not impressed by Ford and his lack of support for the veterans and his handling of the MIA's.

[Nathaniel Firethorn]

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. (Or the ones that have hands are, anyway.)

- pdmoderator.

[matis]

rrader said:

He is obviously no friend of the Constitution that includes the 2nd amendment. Given power, anti-democracy thugs like Liddy would seize your and my firearms in a heartbeat.
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But the article described his talk to the students about our losing our civil liberties, he just wrote a book about that, and if you listen to his talk-show -- he stresses this all the way through.



You say he'd seize our weapons in a heartbeat...


But the article included:
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Liddy also singled out Second Amendment rights as being particularly at risk, noting that the nation's founding fathers feared a strong central government and, having just "thrown off the yolk of a tyrannical government" in the American Revolution, didn't want the government to have the power that it does today.
__________________________________________________________


How do you reconcile this with your view of him?



As for the "yolk" blame that on the article writer, not on Liddy. Liddy loves the English language, uses it beautifully and makes a point of showing up common mis-uses of words.


He's even against the use of animals for medical experiments. Although he's certainly no Peta nut, he expresses his outrage against the routine torturing of animals by scientists who do repetitive studies with slight variations -- just to get grants from the government. Read his good book, THE MONKEY HANDLERS and you'll read about some horrible torture, accurately and honestly described. It'll turn your stomach and break your heart.

Try to catch his talk-show and you'll hear a tender and brilliant man, very able to blunt the anger and turn hostile listeners to his point of view.

He exemplifies the Warrior mentality and perhaps he carried his loyalty to Nixon too far, but he is no sociopath or thug.

Your characterization does the man an injustice.



Matis

[rrader]

Matis:

But the article described his talk to the students about our losing our civil liberties, he just wrote a book about that, and if you listen to his talk-show -- he stresses this all the way through.But the article included:
______________________________________________________
Liddy also singled out Second Amendment rights as being particularly at risk, noting that the nation's founding fathers feared a strong central government and, having just "thrown off the yolk of a tyrannical government" in the American Revolution, didn't want the government to have the power that it does today.
__________________________________________________________

How do you reconcile this with your view of him?

I'll tell you how; by keeping in mind the simple lesson that actions speak louder than words. His actions when at the levers of power were abusive of our Constitution and contemptous of our democracy. Once bitten twice shy, a man like Liddy is never to be trusted with power again, nor is his counsel on civil liberties particularly credible given his past.

I do listen to his show fairly often and I admit he is a very interesting person. You probably couldn't ask for a better person to have a beer and shoot a game of pool with down at the VFW hall. Still, given real power he'd revert to type.

[matis]

rrader said:
______________________________________________
Still, given real power he'd revert to type.
______________________________________________________

rrader, you remind me of the psychiatrists who are quite willing to predict the unpredictable: whether a person will or will not commit a crime in the future or whether they are or are not -- now that they have been "treated" -- whether they are a danger to themselves or others (if you look at their record you realize that these "experts" haven't got a clue).



I'd trust Liddy over most of the Libertarians I read and run across -- because Liddy lives in the real world instead of some theoretical utopia. And because he is warmer and more human than many.


We'll just have to agree to dis-agree.


matis