Billy Graham Quotes
… this is your finest hour. I thought you were just great and everybody I talk to feels the same way …, You know Ruth … thinks this is all a Communist plot, left wing and everything else
Nixon had just made a television address explaining why he had asked for the resignations of his two most senior White House aides in the midst of the Watergate scandal. Nixon continued his lies and there were some of his supporters, like Graham, who were still fooled. Note the reference to Ruth—Graham’s wife. Nixon, himself, had been one of the first to perpetuate the Red Scare and blame communists for anything that goes wrong and to smear any critics by calling them communists who were just trying to destabilize the country.
Billy Graham, Christian Protestant Evangelist, Telephone Call To President Richard Nixon after Nixon’s 2 top aids were forced to resign during the Watergate Crisis
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Even the President was not spared during the McCarthy era. The red scare was so pervasive, that a lunatic fringe ultra right wing organization could call the President a “communist dupe” and be taken seriously be much of the media who were themselves intimidated and might be accused of being communists at any moment. It was a very low point in America’s history.
This quotation appears to be the origin of the ultra-right wing conspiracy theory that a communist will become President of the United States without the public ever knowing that he was a Communist. During the Obama administration, there were a number of ultra-rightists who believed that Obama was the culmination of this plan which the communists began in the 1950s and was only "discovered" Fred Koch and the John Birchers in 1963.
Nixon’s remark {583773} had been suppressed by the Nixon family and McGovern and the world first heard it 40 years after the fact.
At the time, one of the favorite right wing accusations that the media were all biased in favor of liberal points of view. Any time a news story was covered that implied or showed that right wing ideology might be wrong, the conservatives would cry “liberal bias” without addressing whether the objection was sound or not. Often the most extreme right wing views are ideological and flaunt reality. Colbert turned this into a very funny phrase.
Yale University had announced the discovery of a Norse map called the Vinland Map. It was an old Viking map that showed the East Coast of America and Canada as well as Greenland and Iceland. It purported to prove that the Vikings had been to America before Columbus. This was shocking and unbelievable to large numbers of Italian Americans many of whom lived in New York City. Most Italian Americans rejected the possibility that the map could be genuine, but there had to be a reason that it was forged. In the midst of the Cold War, there was an obvious villain and it did not take long before large numbers of people believed and repeated the headline. The quotation shows how rabid the anti-Communism of the Cold War was. The authenticity of the Vinland Map is still debated. Ironically, Columbus—the “discoverer” of America, never got to North America at all. He landed in and captured some islands in the Caribbean. The Daily News was then the largest circulation newspaper in the United States.
This is a classic example of one of the many politicians of the 20th and 21st century who would call anyone a communist who opposed anything that he regarded as American. In actuality, there were some very conservative economists and shareholders who did not think that the funding of celebrations had little or no value for shareholders. Many on the left were concerned that the celebration was in great part paid for by all Americans because of the tax deduction that was allowed. However none were communists.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had more influence and visibility than any other first lady, before or since. She was First Lady for 3+ terms—longer than any other, and in addition to her official duties, she wrote a very popular daily newspaper column. As FDR was handicapped and could not travel much, she traveled all over the nation and the world. She was also very outspoken and no one ever knew whether or not she was speaking with the President’s concurrence or was on her own. She tended to be very liberal—especially in terms of the evils of racial segregation—then legal, and the problems of workers. Her broad influence was very damaging to Southern Segregationist groups and arch Conservative economic groups, who realized that her influence in the change of public opinion was much more effective at changing America than were the socialists and communists who were calling for revolution and were so unappealing that they could easily be attacked. Mrs. Roosevelt was for them more dangerous than Communism.
Mandela was the head of the African National Congress a revolutionary party fighting against the then dictatorial apartheid government. As the head of the ANC armed wing, after years of peaceful protests and suffering literal massacres of people for nothing other than protesting, Mandela embarked upon a program of sabotage of military and government facilities reserving guerrilla warfare if that failed. Mandela was arrested for the sabotage and served 27 years in jail. While Mandela was incarcerated, the government resorted to death squads and massacres and the ANC retaliated with counter terrorism—but Mandela was not a part of it. There were a number of communists in the ANC movement, but when Mandela, released from jail, became the President of the integrated country, he maintained supported a capitalistic system which it has been ever since. However his refusal to purge the ANC of communists when he needed all the help he could get, has been held against him by some arch conservatives. To many of them, a communist is a communist, a friend of a communist is a communist, a person who knowingly works with or associates with communists is a communist, a revolutionary is a communist, a person who advocates whatever communists advocate is a communist, a person who opposes the investigation of communists in any field of endeavor is a communist. Mandella opposed racial discrimination and the Communist party also did to embarrass the US and other capitalistic countries which then had legal discrimination. Therefore, Mandella was accused of being a communist early in his career. The same thing happened in the United States where anyone who advocated Civil Rights and racial equality was a communist because he/she was echoing the communist line.
William Franklin Graham Jr. was an American evangelist, a prominent evangelical Christian figure, and an ordained Southern Baptist minister who became well known internationally in the late 1940s. One of his biographers has placed him "among the most influential Christian leaders" of the 20th century.
