I was privileged to grow up in the information age, the first time in history when your views on the world around you didn’t have to come solely from your family, friends, and immediate interactions. I’ve always viewed the internet- and the ability to access new viewpoints from a very young age, as an obvious benefit of my generation. The capability to form my opinions off of information I have found myself has always felt liberating- however, in the past few weeks I have found that historically, my opinions may fall short. The facts I thought I had absorbed may have not have been facts, just ill-advised perceptions I had made based on popular opinions of people I thought were generally agreeable.

Out of the many examples of this phenomenon I could pick out, it was our lessons on Richard Nixon and the Watergate Scandal that really brought this idea to my attention. I thought I knew everything I needed to know about Richard Nixon, and as I had never heard a single positive thing about the man, I automatically assumed that he was a terrible president who never accomplished anything. As it turns out, that really was not true.

While I can say that I still wouldn’t agree with Ol’ Dick Nixon on- oh I don’t know but probably a lot of things, and his personality does leave something to be desired…Richard Nixon wasn’t a bad president. That’s the complete opposite of the impression I had been under my entire life. I thought that Richard Nixon was known as one of the worst presidents of all time, but weirdly, in the CNN special on Watergate, one of the experts said that before Watergate, Nixon was on his way to becoming known as the best president of all time.

When I bother to look at the actual facts rather than the common jokes at his expense, Nixon accomplished a lot in his time in office. He opened up US-Chinese relations, desegregated schools, limited nuclear weapons production, and had to deal with the war in Vietnam the whole time. I don’t think I have to like Nixon to respect the number of things that he did to further America.

While it’s unfortunate that he tainted his entire legacy with his paranoia, it may be even more unfortunate that I’ve been basing everything I know about him solely on one aspect of his life. This has opened my eyes to realize I do this with so many things in history- and I’m pretty sure almost everyone else does too.

Nixon, whether he be the best or the worst president of all time (although I’m pretty sure worst is already claimed), taught me a very important lesson. It’s okay to take our opinions from other people, that’s just how we learn. But if we do that, we should know the facts of what actually happened into consideration and try and see all the sides of history before making a decision.