It took me a few days to get together my thoughts about the revelation of Deep Throat. My first reaction was anger – but then it struck me that it was rather uncharitable (and probably unnecessary) to wish a swift death upon a senile 91 year-old man. My second reaction was indifference – it’s all so long ago, well before I was even born. My third reaction was to return to my first – whatever this man is today does not change what he was and what he did. Whoever W. Mark Felt is today, I hate him for what he did and I wish him, and his family which hails him as a hero for what he did, nothing but the worst.

Of course, I’m sure to be taken to task for that by that certain percentage of the population who believes that hatred is an unnatural emotion and that, somehow, God demands we forgive those who not only fail to repent their sins – but who seek to profit from them. Decent people have every reason to hate W. Mark Felt and what he did. They have every reason to hate a man who can probably be held directly responsible for many of the ills which befell this country in the last three decades.

Was W. Mark Felt, as the media has virtually unanimous claimed, simply a deeply devoted patriot? It seems unlikely.

After all, at around the same time as he was snitching on President Nixon, he himself was authorizing illegal break-ins. This is a crime for which he was later convicted before being pardoned by President Reagan. So, it hardly seems likely that he was so terribly offended by the idea of an illegal break-in that his conscience simply wouldn’t let him keep his damned mouth shut.

Frankly, that pardon really bothers me. What do you think the odds are that President Reagan would have granted such a pardon had we known then who he really was? I feel safe in saying that the odds of his being granted such a pardon would have been rather low. For all I’m concerned, he deserved to go to the gallows for what he did.

It wasn’t “patriotism.” It was that Felt was angry off that he wasn’t made Director of the FBI and so he started leaking profusely. That’s not patriotism – that’s just throwing a hissy fit.

Some have sought to avoid (or respond to) condemnation of Felt by minimizing the extent of his crimes. That just won’t wash – he and his actions are ultimately central to the exposure of Watergate.

Had those two young reporters at the Post not had a highly-placed confidential source, how long would they have been able to follow the story? Felt may not have provided them with the tips to set them off on the trail, but he certainly provided them with a way of hang a variety of small and often confusing clues together.

And what evil hath Mr. Felt wrought?

Without Watergate, there’d have been no defeat in Vietnam. Absent what happened to Nixon, the Congress wouldn’t have been able to cut off aid to the South Vietnamese. A free South Vietnam would endure to the present day. Absent the fall of South Vietnam, Pol Pot would probably have never been able to take over Cambodia and murder millions there.

Without Watergate there’d have been no Jimmy Carter and, hence, no Iranian Revolution (or at least none like we’ve known). It took a leader of special incompetence to lose Iran as Carter did. Without Carter in the White House, there’d probably have been no Soviet invasion of Afghanistan either. It’s questionable if, without those events, there’d ever have been a rise of Islamism like we have seen. Almost certainly, there’d have been no 9-11.

Without Watergate, there probably wouldn’t have been an Iran-Contra: because, at heart, Iran-Contra was simply a Democratic effort to recapture glory days of Watergate. And without Watergate and Iran-Contra there’d probably have been no Clinton Impeachment which was, at least in part, vengeance for those earlier events. The whole of the nation’s political culture would be different (and probably better) as a result.

And what was it all for? Was Watergate so bad?

Not really. It wasn’t much different than anything that past national leaders had done and it was motivated by a sincere impulse – to defend the nation against war opponents who were behaving traitorously and basically fighting upon the side of the enemy.

Anyone who can get some distance from the subject (and examine an unbiased account or two of the situation) can easily get to the place where Watergate does not bother them. It was really a minor affair – stupid to be sure – not something to bring down a President and send him off in disgrace.

The ironic thing is that, ultimately, it seems that Nixon wasn’t paranoid after all: they were really out to get him. The media, the establishment, the liberals, and the bureaucrats – they all engaged in a vast conspiracy with a single purpose: to get Richard Milhous Nixon.

Step back and look at Watergate. It’s a textbook example of a Witch Hunt. Forget McCarthy – if you want to see a Witch Hunt, look at Watergate.

McCarthy went after actual enemies of the United States and of the Constitution. And he did so by legal means. He did so against vast opposition from the establishment. He didn’t seek to deprive anyone of their political rights, he merely opposed subversives in the government.

Compare that with the actions of Nixon’s opponents. They illegally leaked information in order to create a frenzy. They used distorted information, and at that time nearly unlimited influence of the mainstream media, in an effort to turn the public against a President that they had just overwhelmingly supported. They used the threat of draconian jail sentences to turn people against the President in their efforts to get Nixon. They used every means within their power, both legal and otherwise, in their effort to get President Nixon.

Whenever I think of Richard Nixon, I become tremendously sad. Here’s a perfect example of a good man – a moral man – literally destroyed by the evil and insidious power of the left. A leader who always sought to do the best for his country brought low, and nearly hounded into his grave, by the treason-loving left. What a terrible fate to befall such a great man.

What a tragedy it is that a drug-abusing adulterer like John F. Kennedy is remembered as a sainted martyr while Richard Nixon, a man whose struggle for his country’s good lasted his whole life, will be reviled by generations of schoolchildren who will be indoctrinated with lies about an evil President and crusading reporters.

So it is that I cannot find it in my heart to forgive W. Mark Felt for his crimes or to wish him well. So far as I’m concerned, he can go straight to hell and, with any luck he’ll be getting there sooner rather than later.