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was unable to find one television show ’ The later reactions-probably the which liberal judges have cloaked their portraying a white male being damaged result of xeroxed copies reaching affir- corruption of the law. These letters rash- by affirmative action. mative action enforcers who don’t nor- ly echoed the response of the California Lynch cites a typical result of this mally bother to read the business press- prisons official quoted by Lynch. Asked systematic denial of reality: California expressed outrage that the article had about reverse discrimination against Democratic Congressman Don Edwards, appeared at all. And there was none of white officers, “He simply smirked and a mouthpiece,of the civil rights establish- this elaborate flimflam about the equal stated, ‘It’s your turn now.’ ” ment, was able to get away with claiming opportunity meaning equal outcomes or This is an argument that even George on the New York Times op-ed page that remediality or transitional periods with Bush could have won. Cl quotas did not exist-within weeks of three Supreme Court decisions about them. And supporters insisted that the (Bush-backed) 1991 Civil Rights Act did not impose quotas, although its key point NOFZIGER was to override Supreme Court decisions that rejected the notion of racial .imbal- Lyn Nofziger ance as prima facie evidence of employer discrimination. The result is a “spiral of’silence,” Regnery Gateway 1370 pages/$21.95 whereby people assume their doubts are not shared and suppress them, thus mutu- ally intimidating each other. But opinion reviewed by VICTOR GOLD polls show quotas are overwhelmingly unpopular, even with the “protected class- es” themselves. And when the Democratic party asked pollster Stanley Greenberg to There are two sayings everyone in politics rumpled shirt collar around which he investigate blue-collar defection from the should learn. One is an old Kennedy family twists his trademark Mickey Mouse tie; party in 1984, quotas emerged as the cru- motto: Don’t get mad, get even. The other quite humble, as a matter of fact, for a cial factor. The party promptly tried to was given to me by a newspaperman friend, political player who in his time has suppress Greenberg’s report. John Pinkerman, after I had lost an in- been a high-level adviser to two Meanwhile, the quota revolution rolls house power struggle while working for the Presidents. on. Its latest ramification is “diversity Copley News Service. “Just remember,” No, the chutzpah that makes it possi- Pinkerman consoled me, “ifyou sit by the management”-permanent quotas, with ble for Nofziger, like some NFL or NBA window long enough they all come by.” no pretense that they are remedial or tem- superstar, to strut his name-knowing it ’ porary, both for minorities and women, According to my wife Bonnie, neither say- ing is Jittenfor a good Christian lad to will be recognized by any fan of the and increasingly for the ongoing wave of adopt, but believe me, ifyoii turn the other American political game-is the kind non-white immigrants to the U.S. cheek in politics you wind up with two derived from a unique style of play. He bruised cheeks. is an original, a man who, on being told uotas are inherently unstable. -Lyn Nofziger by Richard Nixon not to let the They inexorably create turf dis- Democrats “get away with any lies,” Qputes between the various “pro- air notice: This is by way of replied,‘ “Mr. President, I’m not even tected classes.” And they inevitably exac- what’s known in the trade as a going to let them get away with the erbate racial polarization, particularly as sweetheart review, Lyn Nofz.iger truth.” the articulate white middle classes begin F being one of my favorite people; but as to be hit. Which is why Lynch thinks the subject of this salty, spirited political native Californian who once affirmative action is headed for “crisis.” autobiography might say, What the hell, covered Washington as a corre- This vulnerability accounts for quota sup- liberals do it all the time, why shouldn’t A spondent for the Copley chain, porters’ mounting fervor-above all their we? Nofziger was brought into the Nixon increasingly wild accusations of “ra- That out of the way, let it be said White House in October 1969 to run a cism.” There can be no doubt that until that it takes a certain degree of chutz- propaganda operation (Nofziger’s conservatives break the extraordinary pah to title an autobiography with your words). He would sit there in his Old power of this taboo in American debate, surname alone, but no one ever mistook EOB office, beneath a sign that said they will never get control of the culture. Lyn Nofziger for a shrinking violet and DON’T GET MAD GET EVEN, thinking and Getting control of the quota debate came away without at least one bruised talking hardball politics twelve to four- itself will be comparatively easy. Recently cheek. Not that Nofziger-or, as it teen hours a day. By the time Watergate I wrote an article on Lynch’s work in were, Nofziger-is arrogant. On the broke, though, Nofziger had left the Forbes magazine-one of the very rare contrary, he is as unassuming as the White House to put his ’singular ‘propa- occasions when I’ve been allowed to ganda skills to work on behalf of the address this topic. The first reactions, Victor Gold is The American Spectator’s Republican National Committee, then from victims, were pathetically grateful. national correspondent. headed by Senator Bob Dole. -+ The American Spectator November 1992 15 LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED For, although he had been in the Nofziger in an uncharacteristically dour singing the Internationale as a firing Nixon White House, Nofziger was never mood. “No hard and fast rules, few loy- squad did its work. of it. He had come to politics as Ronald alties, no lasting gratitude.” Nofziger Despite efforts to keep the massacre Reagan’s press secretary in Sacraimnto, gives those words of caution as the moral secret, news leaked out. For among those a conservative true believer portrayed by to a story he tells about a well-known executed were five prominent local poets one liberal West Coast cartoonist as United States senator who, having asked and authors. The foreign press in particu- playing a rotund Sancho Panza to and received numerous favors from lar made big play of the “Five Martyrs,” Reagan’s angular Don Quixote. And it Ronald Reagan, repaid the debt by tum- suggesting that the KMT was pursuing a was as one of the original Reaganauts, ing his back on his benefactor when general suppression of artists. Among the first on the presidential campaign trail, needed. 104 American authors who protested then in the Reagan White House, that he The ingrate’s name? You’ll have to “the torture and execution of writers in secured his reputation as one of the most buy the book to find out. I am, as I say, China for their political opinions” were skilled operatives on the modem political the author’s friend, and the fact that he Sinclair Lewis, Robert Frost, Thornton scene-though not without mixed feel- pulls no punches and spares no names is Wilder, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Theo- ings about the game he played. the juice that makes Nofziger a read well dore Dreiser, Will Durant, Lewis Mum- “Politics is a strange business,” writes worth the price. a ford, John Dewey, Edmund Wilson, and Malcolm Cowley. The killings brought international opprobrium on the KMT. But there was one hitch. The man responsible for their THE CLAWS OF THE DRAGON: arrest was neither freelance warlord nor KANG SHENG-THE EVIL GENIUS BEHIND MAO- KMT officer. In fact, he was a member AND HIS LEGACY OF TERROR IN PEOPLE’S CHINA of the Communist Central Committee, and he’d turned over the information about He Mengxiong and the,Five John Byron and Robert Pack Martyrs to the foreign and KMT police because they belonged to a faction trying to wrest control of the Party from the Simon 8z Schuster 1560 pages/$27.50 Soviet-directed Comintern. His name was Kang Sheng. reviewed by WILLIAM MCGURN e Mengxiong was not the first comrade Kang Sheng turned on, Hand he would by no means be the n the early spring of 1927, Shang- a prominent local hoodlum whose goons last. Virtually unknown in the West, hai’s Communists were sitting pret- set out in force to root out and destroy Kang Sheng was China’s answer to I ty. After two abortive uprisings Chiang’s erstwhile Communist allies. Feliks Dzerzhinsky, founder of the fore- against the city’s warlord establishment, This is the “White Terror” of the history runner of the KGB. Over the course of a general strike timed to take advantage books, and it would last until the Japanese almost five decades his name was syn- of the approach of the Nationalist invasion a decade later. onymous with terror in China, even more Kuomintang Army-the Communists Perhaps the most notorious incident inside the Party than outside. The Claws and the KMT were then still allied-led in this campaign was the January 1931 ofthe Dragon, by a former diplomat writ- to their capture of the Chinese sections arrest in the International Settlement of ing under the pseudonym John Byron and of the city. With most of Chiang Kai- a faction of Chinese Communists led by journalist Robert Pack, is his story, shek’s partisans bogged down in the pro- by He Mengxiong.

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