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Berkeley # 141 Title: Security is a Silent Majority Description: 28 x 38 cm ; blue on white Image: Nixon as "Linus" with American flag as a blanket

A clever trivialization of Nixon's famous “Silent Majority” speech, this print combines political rhetoric and pop culture in an effective satire.

Nixon delivered the quoted speech in 1969, one year after taking office. In it, he offered a thorough and wide-ranging defense of his administration's handling of the Vietnam conflict. He described himself as acting solely for the “future of peace and freedom in America and in the world,” while depicting his communist enemies as the “forces of totalitarianism,” guilty of creating “a bloody reign of terror.^”1 Responding to the wide-spread agitation against the war and his administration, Nixon famously called on “the great silent majority of [his] fellow Americans” for their support. This rhetorical tactic attempted to marginalize the millions of citizens who were protesting the war by contrasting them to the much larger number who made no public action. The assumption was that this 'silent majority', by NOT protesting, had given the president their tacit approval.

This print responds to that claim by depicting the president as Linus, a character from Charles Schulz's comic strip Peanuts. Linus habitually carried a blue 'security blanket', and in this revision, Nixon is shown with a security blanket of his own. He clings to the American flag stubbornly, petulantly — his office and its symbols become mere trinkets to assuage a gaping doubt. His silent majority is another illusory comfort, a mere thought-bubble kept alive by a childish refusal to face reality.

The clean lines of this satirical print separate it stylistically from the often-impressionistic aesthetics of the posters concerned with peace and humanizing the Vietnamese. Yoking together political and cultural references, the poster skillfully undercuts Nixon's claim to popular support as an excuse for waging war, thus making an argument for his moral culpability.