John: It's true that usage of various terms are considered not just by situation but by who gets to use 'em. For the reasons I already stated I think Nixon gets a fair measure of slack. There are other cases where he said things about Jews that weren't terribly flattering, but he was in private and, y'know, its called freedom of speech.

I had a pretty sheltered upbringing, I was brought up to inherently respect other races and creeds and be quietly proud of my own. As a student I remember a line from the once popular (and now barely mentioned) movie "Z" where some police officials are reviewing student dossiers and a comment is made: "he's half-Jewish. They consider themselves superior even to Jews." That line got a laugh from the audience (of young, liberal, non-Jewish students) so I accepted that Jews are looked upon differently than I had supposed, and apparently Nixon had his views which I do not consider anti-semitic in any harmful sense.
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Voltaire's famous line "pour encourager les autres" was from his famous tale "Candide" (turned into an Opera by Leonard Berstein BTW) specifically directed at the hanging of Byng by the British. I lifted the following excerpt from here:

The original quote is by Voltaire in Candide


Dans ce pay-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres.
In this country it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others.


He's referring to the execution of Admiral John Byng in England in 1757. Sent in 1756 to prevent the French from taking Minorca, he arrived when the island was already under siege and, after an indecisive naval engagement, withdrew without relieving the siege. He was court-martialed and executed for "failure to do his utmost". This brought charges that he had been used as a scapegoat for ministerial failure. On his tombstone it says "bravery and loyalty were insufficient securities for the life and honour of a naval officer".

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So one might take it that the English in matters of naval warfare were not people to mess around with. On the other hand, in the Operetta Ruddigore by Gilbert & Sullivan there is a charming song where a brave young tar sings about confronting a French Frigate, but as the song continues one realizes that the English actually fled before it!