KLAVAN: If Reagan Was Racist — What Then?

The headline in the Atlantic read: “Ronald Reagan’s Long-Hidden Racist Conversation With Richard Nixon.” The story told how the National Archives had released a tape of then-California Governor Reagan speaking to President Nixon on the phone in October 1971. Reagan had called the president after a vote in the United Nation had recognized the savage mass murderers of Communist China rather than the remnant of civilized China in Taiwan. To celebrate the vote, the delegates from Tanzania had danced — possibly barefoot, I’m not sure.

Reagan was well and truly annoyed that the U.N. — a “kangaroo court” filled with “bums” as he called it with a precision and accuracy admirable in a mere politician — had given the Communists this sort of legitimacy.