As an aside, or maybe not, I just finished finished an interesting book by ace espionage writer Charles McCarry called The Tears of Autumn, with an unusual take on who was behind Kennedy's assassination, none of the usual suspects.
Posted on 08/04/2007 3:03:00 PM PDT by mmanager
From a distance of nearly 50 years, the liberalism of 1960 is hardly recognizable. It was comfortable with the use of American power abroad, unabashedly patriotic, and forward-looking. But that was before The Fall.
In his eye-opening new book Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, Jim Piereson argues The Fall was the assassination of President Kennedy. It represented more than the tragic death of a young president, but the descent of liberalism from an optimistic creed focused on pragmatic improvements in the American condition to a darker philosophy obsessed with America's sins. Echoes of the assassination -- and the meaning attributed to it by JFK's admirers -- can still be heard in the querulous tones of contemporary liberalism.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Their percieved quilt continues.
I guess it is a quilt. But it is their guilt.
Fixed it.
The American Left in less than one complete sentence.
Theirs is a curiously anti-American philosophy, as in anti-America's tradition of optimism and improvement. They are so self-obssessed, so angry over the failures and pains of their own lives, but they can't get over it and grow up. They have to wallow in their misery, not exorcise it but exercise it. And since no one likes to feel they are to blame for their own misery, they want to take us all along for the ride--we're ALL to blame, and we ALL must pay the price for OUR sins--the sins of people long dead, people none of us ever met.
It's a really weird philosophical position--to make themselves feel better, they want to inflict hardship on some and after acquiring their fortunes, they want to give it to others in order to expunge their OWN perceived sinfulness.
Yes, but just what does the term “liberalism” really mean? I commonly means that government can spend your money better than you can, but it more broad than that. It is a license to depart from logics and facts to construct a city in the sky, a Camelot, where government decrees the forces of nature and defines human nature, where it is forbidden to have any unforeseen consequences, and where an idea is only evaluated on the basis of good intentions as opposed to effect or cost. Indeed, “cost” is a concept foreign to liberalism, because in Camelot, nothing costs anything. There are only “benefits”.
Thanks to internet forums like this one, and talk radio, more and more people are seeing liberalism for what it is- a frantic and futile attempt to be freed from reality. Indeed, the word “liberal” is now said far more often with a sneer and smirk (as in “$%&#@*# Liberal!), that liberals who used to be proud of the label now insist on being called “progressive”. Thankfully, after a few years the confusion between “liberalism” and being a “Classical Liberal” will go away.
Liberals are so desirous of being able to selectively detach from reality that it remains the last great unacknowledged mental disorder of the 21st century. These people must be dealt with firmly and quickly to marginalize them so they don’t hurt more people, destroy more wealth and put us in greater danger.
bttt
The war on poverty has claimed hundresd of more thousands than the war in Iraq. The fruitless battles to save the poor still rage.
I have a love/hate relationship with the ‘60s. It is still, by far, my favorite era for music. Even a lot of the drug-inspired music is very interesting to me; I love its inventiveness and unpredictability.
But I hate the damaging ideas that came out of that decade:
Drugs. I think we’re still dealing with a lot of moral ambiguity on that subject.
“Free love,” i.e. casual sex with no sense of responsibility or commitment.
Women’s lib, which is OK in concept to a point, but morphed into a world where both parents usually HAVE to work in order to support a family. Nannies or day-care centers take care of small kids while the parents work, then they later become latch-key kids. Not to mention that it spawned an insufferable group of militiant feminazis that have taken the concept WAY overboard to ridiculous extremes.
People like Malcom X and the Black Panthers.
The Great Society, which produced anything but.
The socialism of the “New Left.”
...and so on.
We are still reeling from the changes that were put into motion in that decade.
(Now, excuse me while I call up “Brown-Eyed Girl” from my iTunes list... >:)
The worst thing about JFK getting shot was the free ride that it gave to the rest of this “white trash with money” clan to achieve other positions of power and influence.
“Women’s lib, which is OK in concept to a point, but morphed into a world where both parents usually HAVE to work in order to support a family.”
Exactly. In order to have a decent standard of living, one of the wage earners has to pay for the huge tax burden.
Patched your guiltwork, I see.
I have to admit, you had me going there with your quilt. Made me want to take a power nap, LOL.
“But I hate the damaging ideas that came out of that decade:”
There were no new ideas. The ideas had been around for decades.
Marxist rebellion since Manifesto published 1848.
Unions and increased socialism in America clearly since the 1930s.
Womens’ rights ongoing, since voting (1920)and flapping (1920s).
Many civil rights which blacks had previously been promised weren’t fully realized until the 1960s.
Drugs were not introduced in the 1960s. Cocaine was used long before, as was marijuana.
As a 1965 HS grad, I know we were NOT all alike. We were NOT all druggies, did NOT all have shoulder length hair, did NOT all listen to music 24/7, did NOT all protest the war in Vietnam, etc.
Always, always, always remember in 1972 McGovern got obliterated by the Silent Majority who re-elected Nixon.
Good one!
I don’t believe this for a minute that at some point the left was ever exalted. This does not mean that the right was ever pure, either; but in the left you find the lowest and most repugnant philosophies imaginable.
You can find parallels in the philosophy of the left all the way from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Dave Foreman of Earth First!, who also proposed similar ideas for replacing civilization with isolated villages of ignorant peasants, if in a much cruder form.
Parallels between the idealization of nature by Henry David Thoreau and today’s eco nuts.
And you see parallels between the Civil War era apologist for slavery George Fitzhugh, and today’s self-proclaimed “elites” of the left, who still can’t get it through their head that most people shouldn’t be treated as herd animals.
No, I do not see the national socialism of FDR as any indicator of exaltation, any more than by his flawed economic policies, the depression was extended for years.
Perhaps Harry S. Truman came closest, because even though he began as a tool of big city machine politics, he never studied nor understood the philosophies of the left, and was far more realistic.
JFK really never did amount to much in his brief two years in office, other than duplicity in the Bay of Pigs invasion and a less than effective embargo of Cuba. His legacy is sustained only by his cult of personality, what the left hoped he would deliver, but never did.
As for the rest, Ann Coulter really should have written several more volumes to her book Liberal Treachery. She could do a re-write of J. Evetts Haley’s book, A Texan Looks At Lyndon (LBJ), which would fill one volume by itself.
No, they have the wrong Kennedy assasination.
The liberal turn to the extreme left began after the assasination of Robert Kennedy in 1968. That year was a turning point in American politics and popular culture.
The Dems started tearing the country apart over Vietnam—which is a war ramped up by their own—Kennedy and Johnson.
So much so, that by 1970, with Kent State, and the uncontrollable college campus student movements, there was almost anarchy. The Dems smelled blood in the water in 1972, with the ridiculous political escapade called Watergate, which resulted in the removal of a twice elected President from power in the face of impeachment, in August 1974.
By the spring of 1975, the Dems cut off aid to South Vietnam when North Vietnam invaded them, and we watched the ultimate humilation of our 16 year effort to stop Communism in Indo China, and the waste of the sacrifice of 58,000 of our young men.
Yes, and they NEVER, EVER TOOK RESPONSIBLITY for the three million people who were slaughtered in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the ensuing years.
The abandonment of Vietnam came at a time when we were facing down nuclear war with the Soviet Union and their expanionism into the Middle East.
But to the Dems, the act of performing the ultimate humiliation of our country over Vietnam was just the beginning. The electorate, reacting to Watergate, voted in the innocuous looking Democrat peanut farmer from Plains, Ga., Jimmy Carter— a dictator loving, Jew hating, America loathing weasel of a human being. His foreign policy actions almost totally defeated the United States in Central America, the Mid East, and in Europe. His view of the future—living with Communism and loving their feminine side. Hell, what’s 21% interest rates, gas lines, runaway inflation, and the near collapse of the American economy compared to adulation from the America’s enemies. And that a-hole is still drawing breath and doing damage.
Then, for a bright shining moment, when all seemed lost and we would never find our way, Ronald Reagan came on the scene. Oh, the lefty Dems could not stand this America loving, freedom loving, enemy of Communism—they fought him every step of the way—Tip O’Neill,Lowell Weicher, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry,Patrick Leahy and others—fought every initiative of Reagan. Ted Kennedy even worked directly with the Soviets behind Reagan’s back to undercut him in 1983 during the nuclear showdown in Europe, an act of treason for which he has yet to be held to account.
Yet Ronald REagn did the unthinkable. Without firing a shot, he brought the Soviet Union to near collapse, brought down the Berlin Wall, and freed over 150 million people from the cruel yoke of Communism in Eastern Europe. To someone growing up in the 1960s, when duck-and-cover was considered a survival strategy, this type of victory in the Cold War was unthinkable.
Domestically, the Dems forever changed the process of Supreme Court justice nominations over Judge Bork in 1987. Again, Ted Kennedy led the charge. They fought Bush the Elder like they did Reagan, until he caved in to them in 1990 with the raise in taxes. They fought nuclear power for thirty years,keeping us mired in MidEast oil and politics, and preventing our energy independence.
Also in 1990, we faced our first post Vietnam large scale military challenge in the first Gulf War. Again, the rabid Left fought every effort to create a coalition to fight what was clearly a threat to our interests in the Middle East. Again they were fighting for our defeat in the run-up to the war. And who can forget the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991, when a pubic hair became the topic of water cooler discussions nationwide.
With Clinton in power during the dark years of 1993-2001, we saw abuses of power and executive privilege that were unimaginable a few short years before. The Left consolidated their gains in the various arms and departments of the US Government,such as Justice, the CIA, and the FBI(they were in control of the State Department since the days of WW2) again creating problems for the next President. They were the ones to lob missiles into Iraq at Saddam Hussein, and were ready to commit ground troops in a stupid, useless war over a fake genocide in Kosovo in 1999.
Yet, they were loathe to fight a war on terror after September 11, 2001, and have worked diligently for our defeat since then.
Their support of abortion has denied us 50 million children,their love of homosexuals and their lifestyle has now pervaded our entire culture down to the kindergarten level, their control of the teachers in schools and colleges have furthered their lies, and their control of minorities has perpetuated racial conflict. Political correctness and diversity are used to control thought, in a country that prides itself on being free.
If we are to survive, we must speak to our friends, neighbors and relatives how the treason and treachery of the present Democratic Part will affect our country and our children and grandchildren. They must be told how the Democrat Party is now a party of Communist fascists, bent on total socialism and redistribution of wealth,and the complete abdication of personal responsibility.
The Democrats now control Congress, with the almost insanely treasonous leadership of Reid and Pelosi, and party leadership by Dean. The hatred they spew against Republicans, the President, the lies they peprpetuate(yellowcake, Plame, etc.) are working toward their pinnacle of achievement—the election of Hillary Clinton as President. This is a woman, who is the wife and enabler of a rapist and serial adulterer draft dodging former President, an in-your-face Marxist-Leninist, and who hates our military and our Constitution is about to be crowned Queen in 2008. The drooling at tthat prospect is just starting.
Yes, the left has traveled far since 1968. No one believed they could ensnare a whole political party and shape it and its leaders to an anti-American agenda that would make Joe Stalin smile, but they have.
The popularity of JFK was primarily due to TV, especially color, he was telegenic. Period. Being young and rich attracted some but it was 99 percent TV. It was all show, ask Vaughn Meader.
The New Left grew out of revelations coming out of the Soviet Union about Stalin (1956). There still would have been New Left "anti-war," pro-Communists leftists; Eugene McCarthyites, McGovernites, and all kinds of problems for traditional liberal Democrats. Some in the MSM would still have praised the troublemakers as the "most intelligent generation ever."
NYTines icon Scotty Reston reported years after the assassination that Khrushchev had humiliated Kennedy so thoroughly at Vienna (1961) that Viet Nam was Kennedy's effort to prove that he could not be pushed around. His other choice to prove himself was Berlin.
Reston was the first to talk to Kennedy after the hastily arranged one-on-one meeting with Khrushchev after the conference, Kennedy was devastated.
IMO Kennedy knew he'd be running away if he ordered a pull-out -- especially after, many believed, the Kennedy's had approved President Diem's assassination (1963).
We know lots about JFK today, even with the "Fairness Doctrine" we'd have found out back then too, the print press was still free though hard to find sometimes. US News and Time magazines were real news magazines back then, they would have reported on Kennedy had he served two terms. IMO.
Kennedy was no big deal for the average Joe unless Joe was turned on by reality TV shows mixed with generous helpings of fantasy. Ask Vaughn Meader.
I remember that book and I remember Bobby Baker, Billie Sol Estes, et al.
I especially remember the death, in June 1961, of Henry Marshall. We all knew it was B.S. that he killed himself. Though none of us had connections with him or the Department of Agriculture; but we did know about Billie Sol and Lyndon.
They always say to find the guilty look for the one with the most to gain by the crime (JFK assassination) -- I've always turned it a little and ask who had the most to lose if there were no crime? That'd be LBJ. He was on the road to prison and RFK would be happy to drive the bus taking him there.
It's been decades but I believe that book described how LBJ built his telecasting and broadcasting empire -- he used his Washington influence to steal the licenses.
I have always held that the left finds opportunity only in their fellow Americans’ misery.....
Jimmy who? was a media creation. Barack who?
I believe that a lot of the "good" liberals left the Democratic Party and were denounced as "neo-cons" by the extremists in what's now the Rat Party.
Though I will never, never forgive or forget what those SOB liberals "good" and bad did to Goldwater.
Note to Bill O'Reilly producers. The term "neo-con" is considered a "hate" term -- ya, got me there. Oh.. and also the letters in my text can be rearranged to form all kinds of obscene words so it's technically as bad as dailycuss.com -- then of course I did type in SOB. Just trying to help.
Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt." "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?" "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
Leftists live in such a coccooned world that being a real person is nearly impossible to grasp. Soldiers have a sense of being Real at a very young age.
True. The leftists are so far out there that they will repel the vast majority of the American public, as long as the conservatives can just call attention to it in a gigantic way. Dirty hippies going ape-poop on national tv during the conventions severely damaged the democrats.
Lots of spot on posts here.
“Always, always, always remember in 1972 McGovern got obliterated by the Silent Majority who re-elected Nixon.
Yes, but that seems a very small point to me, in contrast to the profound changes (most for the worse, in my view), that have been wrought upon society, Silent Majority or no Silent Majority.”
I suppose I am more optimistic than you. Since then, we have elected Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. The dems have elected Carter, and Clinton—Clinton in part due to Perot.
Republicans can pull out wins in 2008 IF they have the political skill to point out the flaws with liberalism, as currently displayed. The democrat party has been pulled leftward, away from the mainstream of American sentiment.
At present the conservative movement is adrift, and the dems are doing a good job of portraying the right as extremist, which it is NOT, for the most part.
The Republicans need to demonstrate they are the mainstream, and the dems are the extremists.
The left simply decided it sides with the commies, whose supporters in fact killed Kennedy. They also side with the PLO, whose supporters killed his brother. They would dearly like everyone today to think their idealist leftist heros were killed by fanatical right wing fascists, justifying their own drive round the looney bend to funny-farm, but in fact it was their own looney predecessors on the whacko left, who killed them.
Left: Let them control us so long as they love us. Send as many checks as possible so they'll love us even more and not attack us. They might even invite us to cocktail.
Though I will never, never forgive or forget what those SOB liberals “good” and bad did to Goldwater.
What did they do to him?
During my cop union PAC days, I shared many a adult beverages with hard core lefty union officials (they were wooing us to oppose the recall of California Supreme Court Justice Rose Bird and we played them along ;^).
While under the influence of various malted and brewed beverages, they admitted, "everything that is wrong with the world begins with the USA".
Modern day liberalism or leftist thinking is truly a mental condition/defect.
And no internet for the left to bitch about everything, because Algore hadn't invented it.
Cold man, cold ;)
Maybe I should have been more specific. I was referring to the 1964 election specifically.
Senator Goldwater, the 1964 Republican candidate for president, was so maligned that there were a few liberals who after the election published comments asking if they had gone too far. Did we destroy the man or just the candidate, some asked.
It wasn't just the general election and the Democrats, it was also liberal, internationalist Republicans. Rockefeller told his staff that, in the words of his public relations head, Stuart Spencer, "We had to destroy Barry Goldwater as a member of the human race." www.tcr.org/tcr/essays/EPrize_Goldwater.pdf
From the American Spectator,
". . .Goldwater, the first modern conservative to win a presidential nomination, the unending torrent of abuse verged on the apoplectic. CBS News solemnly reported the week of his nomination that Goldwater's first act after the convention would be to travel to Germany for a visit to 'Berchtesgaden, once Hitler's stamping ground.' And what will the conservative Goldwater do once there? 'There are signs,' CBS reporter Daniel Schorr said ominously, 'that the American and German right wings are joining up...' Got that? Barry Goldwater, said CBS in so many words, was really a Nazi. With a presidential nomination in hand, he was literally heading to Hitler's home to get the international Nazi movement rolling. The story, from the trip to Germany to the visit to Hitler's estate was, of course, false from beginning to end."
That I remember. What I don't remember is Walter Cronkite's attempt to tie Barry Goldwater to the assassination of JFK. He later apoologized it's been reported. I do clearly remember the efforts to tie the emerging modern conservative movement to the assassination, "the hateful comments from the conservatives made Oswald do it" it was reported for months after the assassination.
More.. "Equally hysterical was a liberal magazine that published a 64-page 'psychological study' of the candidate which began: 'Do you think Barry Goldwater is psychologically fit to serve as President of the United States?' You guessed it -- after claiming to poll over 12,000 psychiatrists across the country, the answer was no. New York Times columnist C.L. Sulzberger answered the question this way: 'The possibility exists that, should he (Goldwater) enter the White House, there might not be a day after tomorrow.' In case voters didn't get the message, Democratic strategist and LBJ aide Bill Moyers designed the so-called 'daisy commercial' that saw a child counting the petals of a flower disappear in the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion."
Well, you say, the Democrats pulled the "daisy commercial" after just one showing. I believe that that is correct; however, it became a "news item." I remember seeing the ad night after night on the TV network news. So tens of millions saw it not just the few who saw the paid showing.
It was Barry Goldwater the psychotic war monger who would be rushed to the White House after the swearing in to push the red button and end it all versus President Johnson, the "peace" candidate. Some really believed that.
Shortly after Johnson's swearing in there was little effort to hide Viet Nam. Goldwater said later that "they told me that if I voted for Goldwater there'd be war."
” They are so self-obssessed, so angry over the failures and pains of their own lives, but they can’t get over it and grow up. They have to wallow in their misery, not exorcise it but exercise it. And since no one likes to feel they are to blame for their own misery, they want to take us all along for the ride—we’re ALL to blame, and we ALL must pay the price for OUR sins—the sins of people long dead, people none of us ever met.”
You and I think alike. I often told people that “ libs don’t like themselves to start with, so why should they listen to you”
Your summary above adds to that. Well done.
Though I had wondered in 1960 about the legitimacy of JFK's election given the Chicago and Texas voter fraud -- Nixon rejected valid claims to investigations saying that for the good of the country we should just accept it.
Thanks, bumping!
I think your guilt quilt is spot-on. They’ve been making it since 1963. And when they’re not busy make new Shame on America squares to add to it, they’re lighting white candles and holding Victim Vigils. Surely by now they should have been found out for the fools and shysters they are. But just as Dr. Spock wrongly convinced parents to tolerate their unruly children to the point of neglect, we have been convinced to tolerate these unruly chlildren of the 60’s, to the point of a nation on the brink. They seemed so innocent then. If we were just patient, they would eventually grow up, see the truth, and move forward. They never grew, and they’ve worn us out physically and mentally.. Maybe that was their plan all along.
As I recall, some “journalist” asked Goldwater that If he HAD to, would he ever use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Goldwater answered Yes, he would if he HAD to.
Of course, from that moment until the election, the lying media said Goldwater would nuke North Vietnam if elected.
Meanwhile, the pious LBJ promised he would not escalate the war.
Thank you for that great analysis. I was not born until five years or so after the Goldwater campaign. I have heard his name but never knew a thing about him. He sounded like a good guy. I think that he helped pave the way for future conservatives.
I agree that ‘68 was the most tense year of the Sixties, but RFK himself had already been radicalized into a hippie candidate. I believe that the assassination of JFK was indeed the genesis of the radicalization of Sixties liberalism.
Yes, I remember that though I never gave his comments a second thought. I remembered how W.W.II ended and it was.. well, over. No more war! But! there was no need of nukes in VN except as noted below.
At that time I believe that Goldwater was a Brig. Gen. in the AF reserves. He had a good command of what he was proposing.
What was he proposing? Well.. I believe that there were only two things:
1) to knock down jungle hiding places with nukes
2) alert Red China and Russia that nuke weapons were definitely an option if they entered the war directly
(JFK / LBJ were cowed by the thought of Red China and / or Russian intervention beyond supplies and advisers, that could 'splain a lot why Washington caused so much trouble for the troops over there.)
There was no need to consider nukes beyond those reasons. Period. The liberals knew that but as is their wont they made Goldwater the issue rather than what he was proposing.
I did not research this using valid sources, it's just what I remember.
WOW - now that’s a well done summary of the left. Thanks.
I somewhat agree but I must add the following.
David Horowitz in his book "Radical Son" described the New Left as having arisen at least partly due to the disillusionment of the Communists here in the U.S. owing to the USSR's revelations (1956) of Stalin's barbarity. Their red-diaper babies rejected established governments of both sides. Some turned to Mao and some turned beyond that.
The Berekley "free speech" stuff was under way before Nov., 1963 I believe; it attracted lots of liberal-minded students and media.
I remember a cartoon. On the bed with her back to us lay a shapely woman. Superimposed on her backside was the Globe. Standing next to the bed and visible from the chest down were two gentlemen in boxer shorts marked with the hammer and sickle and a symbol for the U.S. respectively. One gentleman is saying to the other, "Ok, it's your turn again."
You’re right about the Left, but what you describe is not philosophy but Pathology. The actions of today’s “liberals” are guided not by a conscious thought process but largely by unconscious and irrational motivations, many of which impel their owners toward self-hatred and self-destruction.
Your points are well-taken and my use of the term “genesis” was wrong. However, I was responding to a post that said that the current Left was traceable to the RFK assassination in ‘68, and since RFK himself was a member of that Left I had to disagree.
J. Edgar Hoover in his Masters of Deceit also sought to disassociate Thoreau and Walt Whitman from Communist claims on them by pointing out that they were "radcial individualists."
The thing is, state socialism seems the rage for "radical individualists"--except in socialist states, that is.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.