BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from the FeeheryTheory.com

“And so tonight — to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans — I ask for your support.”

In November of 1969, Richard Nixon uttered this line in a televised address to the nation, explaining his plans in Vietnam.

At the time, the nation was enveloped in social, economic and racial turmoil. Nixon was speaking to the folks in the country who were respectful of authority, preferred order to chaos, disdained the revolutionaries and distrusted the intellectual elite who were attacking the pillars of American society.

The silent majority came to mean the white middle and lower middle class of America, and Nixon’s phrase came to be seen as a way to polarize an already polarized society. Continue reading →