Should Nixon's body be exhumed and buried in a landfill?

[exploited]

[Philly]

No. In modern times, war crimes, crimes against the public and maybe even crimes against humanity have been synonymous with the office of president.

I'm watching the GOP debate right now and already see a lack of quality, self respecting leaders putting themselves out there to be President. Wouldn't help to put ex-president bodies in landfills.

Also, Nixon was kind of awesome outside of the totally deplorable scumbag piece of shit side of him. Watergate wasn't even a big deal IMO. The treason that cost American lives is only notable because he stepped out of line when he wasn't president yet. While in office, you betray your people all the time for the good of the union, or at least your own distorted concept of that.

[exploited]

[Philly]

[exploited]

[Philly]

It's the one I keep bringing up. But you're really basing your argument on the emotional appeal of how morally reprehensible Nixon's actions were, not the fact that he overstepped his authority.

[exploited]

[Philly]

Never said it wasn't illegal. But lots of presidents have done terrible illegal things both in and out of office. We don't desecrate their graves and put their corpses in land fills.

Instead of asking about Nixon specifically, let's come up with a general proposal about posthumous actions taken against the remains of deceased former presidents. Here's just a draft which you can change to make it more workable. As is I find it absurd, but you could probably soften it quite a bit with minor rhetorical tweeks:

"An appointed non-partisan panel of historian, constitutional scholars, and ethicists should be tasked with reviewing the life and tenures of all deceased former presidents to determine which ones can be confidently said to have betrayed their country and countrymen, violated domestic, international, or "higher laws"(crimes against humanity), and knowingly caused deplorable harm to the security/interests of the United States or its people. Upon completion of the panel's review, those presidents found to have met the "Nixonian Standard" introduced by exploited, will have their graves desecrated, and their remains reburied in a suiting landfill,"

I think it's a highly excessive proposal to exact posthumous and ultimately symbolic punishment upon dead corpses. A proposal whose result would be to traumatize and disturb any living family of the president in question, as well as to create a sort of "dunce corner" for the bodily remains of presidents who did terrible things, so we can quickly reference the "Is his body now burred in a landfill?" litmus test to determine which presidents served the office while polluting of the United States with licentious turpitude in ways that rise to the level of behavior that is illegal, treasonous, morally reprehensible and harmful to the American People with intentional malice - and of course, which ones did not

Then, for example, if you and I were having a spirited argument about the Presidency of Calvin Coolidge, I might argue that he was a terrible president whose incompetence, laziness, and complete lack of (in fact no interest in) governing vision, added up for a presidency most noteworthy for ensuring that the imminent Great Depression arrived as strong an as unprepared for as it could be, and that not once did he put forward ideas to improve, enrich, or fortify the seemingly good economic hand he had been dealt in the roaring 20's. He instead just let his corrupt friends make use of their nepotist power within the executive branch to steal and swindle, with Harding either asleep at the wheel or intentionally looking the other way. I'd tell you he's a terrible president who doesn't deserve any kind of honorable final laying place for his remains But then you'd remind me that while the panel assigned to this assessment found Harding to be a harmful, corrupt president with no regard for his sworn duty to protect the American people and their welfare from all threats both foreign and domestic, he did however not break the the law (allow him his corrupt friend to fleece the people, but refraining from such things himself), his horrible misuse of the roaring 20's economy causes terrible harm to America and the American people, but as he lacked any type of vision, was largely incompetent, and was mainly just parroting that lassez faire shit that other pre-depression Republican presidents seemed to be doing ok with, harm was not caused with malice and intent. Ergo, Harding's grave remains in tact, in the same graveyard and burial plot he was first placed to rest, over 3.6 miles from the nearest landfill.

And through using such a reference, we will be able to give perspective to our critiques and debates about former presidents, understanding that absolute failure in the job, nor great success in the job, disqualify you from ending up in the landfill or avoiding it altogether.

With all of that in mind, I'd be happy do just have a peer-reviewed study of sort of similar to the appointed panel, which would go through several round of approval, appeal, and reconsideration before we finally have a list of which presidents were and which were not horrible monsters who betrayed their mother land to whom they swore loyalty and service. The results of this study could simply be available for free as educatonal literature and online. No corpses will be moved to landfills, rather by attaining "baddie" status in the study's results, we consider the the same symbolic sentiment of desecrating his grave. The legacy of the president is now given a framework of rules, though the finer pointers are still open for discussion. Under this plan, Nixon probably ends up as one of the "baddies" when the results of the study are release, but they followed a fair process to label him as such, gave him a fair evaluation that was uniform with the assessments all deceased presidents had to hold up to, and he certainly won't be alone at the bad kid table.


This is the far better, though still bizarre and not really good ideas, but it's one I could live with.

Now getting back to the worst idea: yours, which is to simply single Nixon out for scrutiny, find him unquestionably a "bad guy" off of two pieces of information, without any type of review or counterpoints offered so that context and background may be provided, and move forward to immediately declare he should be exhumed and placed in a landfill This is the worst idea because it is...
1 Inconsistent in Choosing a Subject - We never do this to the remains of other presidents and your reason for targetting Nixon is that you really dislike him and the LBJ treason stuff is a pretty insane story right now that isn't getting nearly enough attention. Simply not a good enough mechanism to decide whose life stands trial before ex as he, unchecked, prescribes their fate as both judge and jury.
2. Prescribes a punishment that is petty, uncouth, and basically just sick - Desecrating graves of our former leaders is something barbarians would do to assert their dominance over us, and that our system of self governance has be ousted in favor of a system where our invading conquers have become our rules. So not classy.
3. Prescribes a punishment that shuts down open discussion of our history - One we put the decomposed remains of President Nixon into the landfill, that's kind of going to shut the book on any further understanding future historians and writers may one glean about a very mysterious, complex and interesting man who happened to be the president of the United States, We should not shut down discussions, even about bad guys.

So finally, my proposal: We do not desecrate Mr. Nixon's grade. We do not appoint a panel or commission an academic study to determine every former president's level of evil-ness individually and use that to label them as so, or to desecrate their graves. Instead we continue to have debates about our historical figures - ones in which we offer no reverence nor demonization of the subject, acknowledging that we will find terrible things about many great historical figures, but that should not slam the door shut on further striving to understand and learn about them.

[exploited]

After all that, you still haven't accounted for the fact that a non-President committed what can only be described as treason. Those two points together vastly overwhelm any of the other examples you've made. This wasn't a sitting President, elected by the people, and therefore given a great deal of leeway, and it wasn't simple incompetence or law breaking. It was treason, that resulted in thousands of deaths, that deliberately interfered with the office of the Presidency, and also involved passing confidential information to a wartime enemy.

The rest of this stuff about shutting down conversation or historical debate is nonsense and a red herring.

Now, I admit the part about exhuming his corpse and burying it in a landfill was just a tad over the line. However I am totally serious about stripping him of titles and making it widely known and officially acknowledged what he did. If you haven't noticed, the Executive Branch is a tad bit out of control, and that is largely because of your systems complete unwillingness to hold them accountable. Once you become President, apparently all is forgiven, and nothing you do can really be held against you. Wonder why their is abuse?

[Philly]

What title would you strip from this dead man? Former President? That wouldn't be punishing Nixon, it would just be an attempt to distort history.

The fundamental disconnect between our perspectives is that I would say this should be noted in the history books, in a way that characterizes how ruthless and callous Nixon was, to criminally betray America to a foreign enemy in order to help him become president of that same America. It's also less relevant but still interesting to note that the war destroyed LBJ yet the American people were actually duped into voting for a guy who was willing to commit high crimes behind the scenes to keep the war from ending.

I don't want to dig up his corpse. I don't want to change his title (still don't know what you mean by that) and I also don't want to tunnel vision on this incident to the point that we ignore the rest of Nixon's whole political career, which is an important part of modern history.

It sounds like you are extremely frustrated that you can't punish Nixon for this because he's already dead, so you are just grasping at straws for something to do and say "take that!"

This will make its way into the mainstream historical narrative eventually. It takes time for some reason. We've known that Thomas Jefferson raped his slaves since like forever but it was t really acknowledged in mainstream history til more recently. Other than that nothing to be done.