Patrick J. Buchanan: '1968: The Year The Silent Majority Was Born'

Source:Richard Nixon Foundation talking to Patrick J. Buchanan, about his book about Richard Nixon.

Source:The New Democrat

"Pat Buchanan recalls the tumultuous year of 1968 and Richard Nixon's remarkable comeback to win the presidential election." 

From the Richard Nixon Foundation

I believe you have to understand the 1960s and 1967-68 especially to understand the great political comeback of Richard Nixon and the rebirth of the Republican Party. Once you know what this time was and what it was about and how it benefited Richard Nixon, you'll also understand how brilliant of a politician and political strategist that Nixon really was. 

Richard Nixon is in the same class as Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Franklin Roosevelt, when it comes to great politicians in American history. Perhaps smarter than all of then including FDR and Bill Clinton.

Where I agree with Pat Buchanan is that in 1967-68 America did feel like it was falling apart. The whole country seemed like it was pissed off. Riots and protests all across the country. Dr. King's nonviolent civil rights movement seemed to be going out-of-style, even within the African-American community with the rise of the militant socialist Black Panthers. 

In 1968, millions of Baby Boomers of all races and ethnicities coming of age in the 1960s and seeing an America they didn't want and stood up to demand change across the country. People who tended to agree with Dr. King on the issues that his movement was addressing, but were primarily campaigning against the Vietnam War and what they saw was a self and racist American capitalist economic system.

By the time we get to 1968 the late 1950s is only ten years before 68 and yet America was and looked completely different as a country and not just because of color TV, but the music was not recognizable from the 1950s, the movies and the language and culture in the movies was completely different. Protesting and especially rioting in the streets and doing it in big cities like Detroit, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, just wasn't done in 1957 or at any point in the 1950s for the very most part. But you also didn't have a huge generation of angry Americans ( the Baby Boom Generation ) who were angry and wanted a different country and different system.

And during this whole period in the 1960s, you had one political party in charge in America and in most of the country. Similar to what we have today, but with large majorities in Congress. A Senate with 64 Democrats in 67-68, 243 or Democrats in the House, a Progressive Democrat as President in Lyndon Johnson. 

But also in 1968, we had an angry Baby Boomers of all racial, ethnic, economic, and cultural backgrounds and the angry African-American community for good reasons, you also had the parents and grandparents of the Baby Boomers who were also angry, but they weren't angry at America. Just the leadership and party in power, as well as the new Counter Culture that seemed to be taking over America.

What we would call Reagan Democrats in the 1980s and today, we're Nixon Democrats in the 1960s and 1970s. Southern and Midwestern Democrats who voted Democratic most of their lives until 1966, 67, and 68 came around when they were looking for different political leadership. 

Back in 1968, the Republican Party even with their big gains during the 1966 Congressional midterms when they won 45 seats in the House and 4 in the Senate, was still primarily a Northeastern party, with some support in the Midwest and conservative-libertarian West.

And to get to why Richard Nixon was such a brilliant not just politician but political strategist which is just as important, Nixon understood that for the Republican Party to come back they were going to have to make gains in the Democratic Dixie South, while holding their ground in the Northeast, Midwest, and Mountain West, they were going to have to win over right-wing Southern Dixiecrats who opposed the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s.

Not just the Nixon comeback, but the Republican comeback, started in 1966 with Congressional Republicans winning back over 40 seats in the House and a lot of them in the South and winning back 4 seats in the Senate, allowing Congressional Republicans along with Dixiecrat Democrats, to block partisan, Democratic legislation, that was proposed by President Johnson and the Congressional Democratic Leadership. 

And in 1968, thanks to the Vietnam War and the socialist New-Left that emerged in the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party was a huge house that was hugely divided and their grand political coalition that kept them in power since the Hoover Administration in the late 1920s when they won Congress back, finally broke.

With Richard Nixon again being the great politician and political strategist that he was being there to take advantage of all this political and cultural chaos that was going on in the country. Richard Nixon is a big reason why the Republican Party is southern and rural based in America. He's also a reason why Republicans struggle to win in big cities and big metro areas, because they're base is so dependent on right-wing Fat-Right in many cases Southern Anglo-Saxon Protestant aging men. 

But pre-1966, the Republican Party simply wasn't big enough to compete nationally with the Democrats and Richard Nixon changed that.

C-SPAN: Molly Worthen- Lectures in History: 20 Century Fundamentalism

Source:C-SPAN- Christian Fundamentalists.

Source: The New Democrat

According to Wikipedia:

A fundamentalist, "is a person who believes in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture in a religion."

That could cover any religion anywhere in the world but generally its's Protestants in America and Muslims in the Middle East and South Asia, parts of Africa who carry that label. Because they're not only religious fundamentalists, but people who are very political and use their religious fundamentalism as their political philosophy. You have countries in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia which officially is a monarchy, but they're also a theocracy and Islamic theocracy. As well as Iran that is official called the Islamic Republic of Iran. Before America invaded Afghanistan in 2001 because the Afghan Government was harboring terrorists who are partially responsible for the 9/11 attacks, Afghanistan under the Taliban Regime was an Islamic state.

You move to America and we see Christian fundamentalists who are Protestants and tend to be Southern or rural as well as Anglo-Saxon with their ancestors coming over here from England in the 16  1700's. America is obviously a federal republic as a well as a liberal democracy with a strong separation of church and state, but if fundamentalist Evangelicals had their way in America they would create their religious theocracy, at least the fringe wing of the Christian-Right in America and establish a fundamentalist Protestant-Christian Anglo theocracy in America. Where women's place in America would be a lot different and a lot more restrictive. Homosexuality and pornography, would obviously be illegal. Certain types of speech when it comes to entertainment but also how people communicate in America would be illegal. Cursing to use as an example. And the argument for these restrictions would be that God wouldn't approve.

There fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups like Al-Quada and ISIS in the Middle East and Africa, that are looking to take over territory and countries to establish their own religious theocracy. But there also fundamentalist Protestant terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan in America, that commit their racist terrorism in the name of God. As well as non-violent fundamentalist Protestant organizations on the Christian-Right in America that would like to see their religious and cultural values become law in America. Where everybody would be forced to live under those values. The Family Research Council would be an example of that. There was a famous Alabama Senate candidate last year whose governing political philosophy was what he called God's Law. His fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible is Roy Moore's governing political philosophy.

Religious fundamentalism doesn't have any one particular owner. Not one religion or religious faction owns religious fundamentalism. Whether it's the Islamic-Right in the Middle East or the Christian-Right in America, or other religious factions in the world. They're just people who believe so strongly in their religious and cultural values and take the literal text of their religious books so literally and believe in those values so strongly and believe they're so great and right, that everyone else should not only live under those same values, but in some cases when it comes to theocrats believe that people in their communities  and country's should be forced to live under the same religious and cultural values.
Source:CSPAN

Virginia Hill: Mistress To The Mob

Source:The Mob Museum- Hollywood actress and mob businesswoman Virginia Hill.

Source:The New Democrat

"On March 24, 1966, passersby walking on a footpath beside a picturesque brook near Salzburg, Austria, found the body of a woman in the snow beside a tree. Her coat was neatly folded on the ground. A possible suicide note indicated the person was simply “tired of life.”

The woman was Virginia Hill, the onetime so-called “Queen of the Mob,” a courtesan and entrusted cash courier for household-name American gangsters from the mid-1930s through the 1940s. An Austrian official concluded the 49-year-old Virginia died of a self-administered overdose of sedatives, not a surprise given her history of near-fatal pill-swallowing going back to the 1940s.

Hill, born in 1916, was surely something of a mental case, perhaps diagnosed today as bipolar, sociopathic, borderline personality or worse. But while still only a teenager in 1934, she showed her mettle as the beautiful and beguiling redheaded apprentice of Mob bookmaker Joe Epstein in the rough and corrupt city of Chicago. Soon, with incredible ease, using her looks, sexual liaisons and talents for laundering money and stolen merchandise, Hill rose higher than any other woman in the national underworld, an equal among the most infamous male racketeers in the United States, among them Meyer Lansky, Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, Johnny Rosselli, Charles and Joe Fischetti, Tony Accardo, Frank Nitti, William “Ice Pick Willie” Alderman, Jack Dragna and, most famously, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel." 

From The Mob Museum 

"Virginia Hill (August 26, 1916 – March 24, 1966) was an American organized crime figure and the Mob's top courier for nearly 30 years. She was famous for being the girlfriend of mobster Bugsy Siegel who was killed at her palatial mansion." 

Source:Bloodletters and Badmen-Hollywood actress & mob lady Virginia Hill.

From Bloodletters & Badmen

If you watch the movie Bugsy from 1991 with Warren Beatty playing Ben Siegel with Annette Being playing Siegel's mistress Virginia Hill, the movie portrays Virginia as much more than a mobster's mistress. Mistresses are common with mobsters and mobsters who are married with children is also common with both Italian and Jewish mobsters and perhaps Irish mobsters as well.

Mob women are generally, but always babes in the woods. ( To use a Goodfellas line ) Basically unaware or ignoring what their husbands do for a living at least until their husbands go to prison for the first time. Then maybe, they get a clue that their husbands actually aren't construction workers or auto mechanics, legitimate businessmen, or whatever lie their husbands feed them as far as what they do for a living.

If you watch the movie Bugsy you see Virginia Hill as not just a mobster mistress but she basically handled the finances of Ben Siegel's Las Vegas operation and business. Siegel had the vision that Las Vegas would become a gambling and entertainment mecca that it is now today and has been since the 1960s, if not farther back. 

In the 1940s when Siegel got this vision Las Vegas was basically a pitstop four hours east of Los Angeles. Where people would go to gas up, get a bite to eat, perhaps stay for the night, but generally not a place where people would go to vacation. Unlike what it is now which is one of the top vacation towns in America.

Virginia Hill was not a babe in the woods. She knew who Ben Siegel was and that he was married with kids and that he was a New York mobster before they got involved out in Los Angeles. And didn't have any major issues with that. 

Virginia was attracted to Ben physically, but his charm, his humor, and perhaps the most of all his power and wanted to be with him. And became his business partner and had a role in helping his build his Las Vegas casino which was the Flamingo.

Peter Collinson: Mobsters- Benjamin Bugsy Siegel

Source:Peter Collinson- Jewish gangster Benjamin Busgy Siegel.

Source:The New Democrat 

"Mobsters - Bugsy Siegel"

Source:Mob Video Vault- Jewish-American mobster Benjamin Bugsy Siegel.

From Peter Collinson

One of my favorite quotes about Ben Siegel was about his friendship with actor George Raft. The quote being that Ben Siegel was a mobster who wanted to be an actor. And George Raft was an actor who wanted to be a mobster.

That is sort of how I view Ben Siegel. This Hollywood looking mobster who is the lead character and the mobster that is profiled in either Italian or Jewish mobster movies. Ben Siegel just didn't have the look of a criminal, at least not the look of a mobster or Ben's case a mobster enforcer who worked for both the Italian Mafia, even though he was Jewish and not Italian and also worked for Jewish mobsters like Meyer Lansky.

Now, Ben Siegel did have the look of a white-collar criminal, a scammer, gold digger who scams wealthy widows out the the money that they inherited from their dead husbands. Not saying that Ben Siegel didn't have the profile of a mobster or even enforcer but you see him walking around and he looks like a legitimate businessman. Perhaps a Jewish banker or something like that from New York. (Not to play off on Jewish ethnic stereotypes)

But that is what made Ben so effective as a mobster is that even though he didn't have the face of a mobster or the overall appearance, he had the mental and physical toughness of a mobster. Plus the intelligence of not a mobster but someone who would've been a successful New York businessman.

He was a lot smarter than the average even successful mobster in America. And that is not like saying he makes idiots look stupid or something. Or he's a really intelligent rookie. Siegel was a very bright man even though he never had much of a formal education. Who in some ways was even a visionary when it came to business especially gambling and casinos.

Along with Jimmy Hoffa, Ben Siegel is literally one of the architects of the modern Las Vegas that is so popular today. Siegel had the vision of a Las Vegas that would be come a popular entertainment vacation town back in the 1940s when Las Vegas was a town of about 10 thousand people or so.

Seventy years later today Las Vegas is a city of about 600 thousand people and a metro area of about 2 million people. Siegel wasn't just a mafia hitman who eventually has his own crew and division that was part of a broader Mafia family. He was a businessman and a visionary in business.