Posted on 02/09/2006 8:27:52 AM PST by Choose Ye This Day
I'm looking for any conservative statements--or ones that would be construed as conservative by today's moonbat left--made by John F. Kennedy.
I know he was basically a social liberal, but was pretty fiscally conservative, and fought for lower marginal tax rates. I remember about 12 years ago, Rush "interviewed" JFK for the Limbaugh Letter, but I don't have that copy anymore.
The obvious quote: "Ask not what your country can do for you..." comes to mind.
But if any FReepers can help me out with other quotations or presidential acts that JFK did, I'd appreciate your help.
Arggh!!! Spell check! Spell Check! Spell check!
Title should read CONSERVATIVE quotes, of course...not "Ceonservative."
"That Marilyn sure was a hot number!"
JFK
I don't think we can undo the past. In fact, the past is going to be with us for a good many years in uneducated men and women who lost their chance for a decent education. We have to do the best we can now. That is what we are trying to do. I don't think quotas are a good idea. I think it is a mistake to begin to assign quotas on the basis of religion or race -- color -- nationality. . . . On the other hand, I do think that we ought to make an effort to give a fair chance to everyone who is qualified -- not through a quota -- but just look over our employment rolls, look over our areas where we are hiring people and at least make sure we are giving everyone a fair chance. But not hard and fast quotas. . . . We are too mixed, this society of ours, to begin to divide ourselves on the basis of race or color.
I'll add that to my list. :o)
Kennedy calls for "an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes." He argued "that our present tax system ... exerts too heavy a drag on growth ... siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power, [and] reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking." Kennedy explicitly endorsed rate reductions for high-income taxpayers in language that foreshadowed supply-side economics, proposing tax cuts "for those in the middle and upper brackets, who can thereby be encouraged to undertake additional efforts and ... invest more capital."
Kennedy further argued in a January 24, 1963 message to Congress, "As I have repeatedly emphasized, our choice today is not between a tax cut and a balanced budget. Our choice is between chronic deficits resulting from chronic slack, on the one hand, and transitional deficits temporarily enlarged by tax revision designed to promote full employment and thus make possible an ultimately balanced budget." Lest members of Congress failed to get the point: "I repeat: our practical choice is not between a tax-cut deficit and budgetary surplus. It is between two kinds of deficits: a chronic deficit of inertia, as the unwanted result of inadequate revenues and a restricted economy; or a temporary deficit of transition, resulting from a tax cut designed to boost the economy, increase tax revenues, and achieve--and I believe this can be done--a budget surplus."
Kennedy v. Kennedy
By Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
(Expanded version of column appearing in today's Globe)
March 15, 2001
In an eloquent and focused speech to the Economic Club of New York, the president made his case for tax relief. Rate cuts for all taxpayers, he argued, are just what the economy needs.
"The most direct and significant kind of federal action aiding economic growth is ... to cut the fetters which hold back private spending," the president said. He urged Congress to "reduce the burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system" and vowed not to retreat from his pledge of "an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes."
The evidence is clear, he told his audience, "that our present tax system ... exerts too heavy a drag on growth ... siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power, [and] reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking." He insisted -- defying the class warriors -- on tax cuts not only for low-income workers but also "for those in the middle and upper brackets, who can thereby be encouraged to undertake additional efforts and ... invest more capital."
It was a forthright, convincing call for sweeping tax cuts, but the president who delivered it wasn't George W. Bush. It was John F. Kennedy, speaking on December 14, 1962. His remarks that day were the first presentation of arguments that he and his aides would repeat throughout 1963, and that Lyndon Johnson would press until the tax bill was finally enacted early in 1964.
JFK's words are as persuasive today as they were four decades ago -- so much so that a group of Republicans has resurrected them for use in radio ads promoting Bush's tax-cut proposal. Narrated by Steve Forbes, the conservative publisher who has long championed lower taxes, the ads are designed to put pressure on Democratic senators in states Bush carried last year. "If Jack Kennedy can support tax cuts," Forbes says in the version of the ad airing in Louisiana (for example), "so can Mary Landrieu."
But not everybody welcomes President Kennedy's contribution to the tax-cut debate. Ted Kennedy, for one, is in a snit.
"It is intellectually dishonest and politically irresponsible," he fumes in a letter to the team that created the ads, "to suggest that President Kennedy would have supported such a tax cut.... If President Kennedy were here today he ... would be outraged by comparisons between his 1963 tax cut and the current proposal."
It is one of the paradoxes of Senator Kennedy's career that, on issue after issue, he has come to embrace political positions far removed from those of his late brother. JFK consistently pushed for higher spending on defense, for instance. Ted has consistently pushed for the opposite. President Kennedy was a Cold Warrior who vigorously supported efforts to contain the Soviet Union and defeat its proxies. Senator Kennedy -- in conflicts ranging from Cuba to Cambodia -- generally opposed such efforts. If Ted is against something, odds are Jack would have been for it.
Like tax cuts.
Ted voted for his brother's tax bill in 1964. But he has long since become an enemy of tax relief, and especially of across-the-board rate cuts. He fought the Reagan cuts of the early 1980s, which were explicitly modeled on those of the Kennedy administration. He has worked to defeat just about every Republican proposal for income tax cuts since, including those offered by Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole in the 1990s. No one is surprised that he is against the Bush tax cuts too.
What is surprising, though, is how strikingly he mischaracterizes the JFK tax cuts.
"President Kennedy's tax cut was responsible," Ted asserts. "It was targeted toward the middle class. Only 6 percent of President Kennedy's tax cut went to those earning over $300,000 in today's dollars" -- i.e., the top 1 percent of income earners. But that is true only because in 1964, the top 1 percent paid a far smaller share of the total tax burden than they do now. Back then, they accounted for 20 percent of all taxes collected; today they pay a staggering 35 percent.
By any rational yardstick, the Kennedy tax cut was enormous, and it was a boon to the rich. It cut the top marginal rate a whopping 21 percentage points, from 91 to 70. Bush's plan lowers rates at the top by only 6.6 percentage points. For those in the lowest bracket, JFK cut the tax rate to 14 percent; Bush drops them all the way to 10 percent.
The 1964 tax cuts were the largest in US history to that point. Bush's don't come close to setting a record. As a share of the nation's economic output, JFK's tax bill was twice as generous as Bush's -- 2 percent of GDP vs. 1.1 percent, according to the National Taxpayers Union. Likewise as a share of federal revenue: The Kennedy cuts "refunded" 12.6 percent of taxes collected. Bush would give back only 6 percent.
On that day in 1962, President Kennedy delivered a ringing endorsement of supply-side tax relief. What he advocated, he said, was "a tax cut designed to boost the economy, increase tax revenues and achieve" -- today we would say maintain -- "a budget surplus." That is as worthwhile a goal today as it was 40 years ago, and as achievable. Jack Kennedy would have been the first to say so.
"As I've said before, not every child has an equal talent or an equal ability or equal motivation, but they should have the equal right to develop their talent and their ability and their motivation, to make something of themselves." -- 11 June 1963
Of course:
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
It was JFK who increased America's troop number from 500 to 16,000 and he repeatedly insisted that while Vietnam might have been "in the final analysis, their war," American troops were nontheless not there "to see a war lost" and that he totally disagreed with those who were suggesting the idea of a pullout. "I think that would be a mistake," he said to Walter Cronkite in 1963.
That JFK was determined not to see Vietnam lost was borne out by his actions all throughout 1963. It was JFK who decided that South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem needed to be removed from office not because Diem was engaging in repression against Buddhists, but because Kennedy had become convinced that Diem was an impediment to winning the war. As a result, when prodding from Washington failed to work, it was JFK who authorized the coup that resulted in Diem's overthrow and assassination on November 1, 1963 (the latter was not desired by JFK, but it was extremely naïve for him to not foresee such a result). Those who insist that JFK was ready to wash his hands of Vietnam and abandon the South never seem to realize that if that were the case, then why did JFK meddle so much in South Vietnamese politics right up to the eve of his death? Since the South was not in any immediate danger of collapse, it would have been far simpler for JFK to disengage than by engineering a coup against Diem.
Geeze....one that leaps to mind for me is from his Inaugural Address "we will supprt *any* friend,oppose *any* foe..."
The American, by nature, is optimistic. He is experimental, an inventor and a builder who builds best when called upon to build greatly.
~John F. Kennedy
This one sounds like it could have been Rush.
"There are many people in the world who really don't understand--or say they don't--what is the greatest issue between the free world and Communist world. Let them come to Berlin!" [Applause.]
"There are some who say that "communism is the wave of the future." Let them come to Berlin! [Applause.] And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere, "we can work with the Communists." Let them come to Berlin!" [Applause and cheers.]
"And there are even a few who say "yes, that it's true, that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress." Lass' sie nach Berlin en kommen! Let them come to Berlin!" [Great applause and roaring cheers.]
Here's one that's currently apropo.
"We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth."
John F. Kennedy, October 26, 1963
But I don't know if he meant Muslims.
< /sarcasm>
Quotes attributed to JFK from the website USA Patriotism.
We stand for freedom. That is our conviction for ourselves; that is our only commitment to others.
All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner!"
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
The American, by nature, is optimistic. He is experimental, an inventor and a builder who builds best when called upon to build greatly.
Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain.
There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction
A man does what he must-in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures-and that is the basis of all human morality.
For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.
A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.
History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.
I know there is a God - I see the storm coming and I see his hand in it - if he has a place then I am ready - we see the hand.
When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.
A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today - and in fact we have forgotten.
I look forward to a great future for America - a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.
And so, my fellow Americans... ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
Thanks~! Those are great.
Is it usapatriotism.com?
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