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Why Stop at Reassessing Confederate Monuments? What About the Kennedy Brothers?
Townhall.com ^ | August 24, 2017 | Larry Elder

Posted on 08/24/2017 9:07:08 AM PDT by Kaslin

As we rewrite history and remove Confederate monuments deemed "offensive" when viewed through the prism of contemporary standards of morality, reasonable people ask: Where does one draw the line? The left, for example, reveres the Kennedy brothers, John, Robert and Edward. But if evaluated by today's standards of social justice, would these left-wing icons hold up?

In Sen. Ted Kennedy's case, how does the monument-removing left feel about the kiss Kennedy blew Gov. George Wallace a mere 10 years after Wallace delivered what became perhaps that era's most infamous defense of segregation? At Wallace's request, Kennedy spoke in Alabama at a 1973 Fourth of July "Spirit of America" rally honoring Wallace in 1973.

Just 10 years earlier, Wallace defended "Jim Crow," or legal segregation, by shouting, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," and attempted to prevent blacks from attending the University of Alabama by blocking a campus doorway. Yet at this July 1973 rally, where Wallace received a "Patriotism Award," guest speaker Kennedy praised Wallace as a believer in the "true spirit of America," who supported the right of everyone to "speak his mind and be heard." Kennedy also talked about the things the two men had in common, including that they "don't corrupt," "don't malign" and "don't abuse" the people's trust.

John F. Kennedy won a razor-thin race in 1960. The black vote was crucial. Just four years earlier, nearly 40 percent of blacks voted Republican. Kennedy got 68 percent of the black vote, thanks in part to the tireless efforts of entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. The brilliant singer/actor/dancer/musician/comedian Davis campaigned hard for Kennedy, and even postponed his wedding to a white actress until after the election to avoid costing votes from those who disapproved of interracial marriages. But after Kennedy got elected, and Davis then got married, the President-elect disinvited him from performing at Kennedy's inaugural gala. It got worse. Twentieth Century Fox, to which Sammy's new wife was under contract, invoked the morals clause and let her go, effectively ending her career.

The NAACP criticized Ted Kennedy's appearance at the Wallace rally, and during Jack Kennedy's presidency civil rights groups grew frustrated over Kennedy's failure to offer a civil rights bill. But JFK, afraid of alienating the South, wanted to delay any legislation until after the 1964 re-election.

This brings us to Robert Kennedy. FBI head J. Edgar Hoover sought and received permission to wiretap Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The person granting him permission? Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

Some historians argue that Kennedy agreed to the wiretap because he feared Hoover possessed scandalous files on the Kennedy brothers. But other historians say Robert Kennedy sincerely believed, as Hoover did, that communists infiltrated King's civil rights team.

"I asked the FBI to make an intensive investigation of Martin Luther King," Robert Kennedy later told journalist Anthony Lewis. "We never wanted to get close to him just because of these contacts and connections that he had, which we felt were damaging to the civil rights movement and because we were so intimately involved in the struggle for civil rights, it also damaged us."

Never mind that FBI documents later released do, indeed, show that a close King adviser also served as a high-level operative and financier of the Communist Party USA. Tell this to today's social justice warriors in Philadelphia where, for example, locals debate whether to move a statue of a mayor whom some black Philadelphians call racist. Whatever Mayor Frank Rizzo was and did, he didn't own slaves.

Is removing Confederate statues a priority issue among blacks, the group presumably most offended by the monuments? Not really. A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll shows that more blacks want the monuments to stay than want them removed -- 44 percent to 40 percent, respectively. Add in the 16 percent who are "unsure" and a majority of blacks either want the statues to stay or don't seem to care much one way or the other. Also, if Confederate statues inflict such misery on the psyche of blacks, why do tests repeatedly show that blacks have higher self-esteem than whites?

Charles Barkley, the ex-basketball star turned television analyst, said he's "always ignored" Confederate statues. He said: "I'm 54 years old. I've never thought about those statues a day in my life. I think if you ask most black people, to be honest, they ain't thought a day in their life about those stupid statues. ... What we as black people need to do ... we need to worry about getting our education. We need to stop killing each other. We need to try to find a way to have more economic opportunity. Those things are important and significant."

Barkley makes more sense than many of our so-called leaders. Why don't we first tackle issues like the breakdown of the nuclear family, noncompetitive urban public schools and gang-related violence before we move on to Confederate monuments?


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: dixie; history; kennedyfamily; kennedys; monuments; purge; race
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1 posted on 08/24/2017 9:07:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Hmmmm. Wasn’t there a Teddy Kennedy Life Guard school set up near Martha’s Vineyard after his tragedy with the Olds?


2 posted on 08/24/2017 9:12:43 AM PDT by rktman (Enlisted in the Navy in '67 to protect folks rights to strip my rights. WTH?!)
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To: Kaslin

I wonder if these people would be carrying pictures of dead people on money who were somehow connected with racism and the Confederacy? But then, do they have jobs that would pay them that much?


3 posted on 08/24/2017 9:15:18 AM PDT by SkyDancer (There Are Three Great Ways To Perfect Landings - Unfortunately We Pilots Don't Know Them.)
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To: Kaslin

Confederate monuments are just the low-hanging fruit. They are already moving on to Washington, Jefferson, Columbus, Junipero Serra, and even Lincoln. Then it will perhaps be ANY war monuments, the names of cities named by the Spanish colonialists (San Diego, etc.), and on and on, right up to the U.S. Constitution.


4 posted on 08/24/2017 9:19:27 AM PDT by Steve_Seattle
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To: Kaslin
Pity John F. Kennedy, Jr. died in the plane crash in 1999. Her certainly could have won the Senate seat in 2000 and likely would have ended up being President by 2012 at latest (the Kennedy name has way more cache than the Clinton name). And because he stayed at Jaqueline Kennedy's side most of his life, he was actually one of the better members of the Kennedy clan.
5 posted on 08/24/2017 9:20:14 AM PDT by RayChuang88 (FairTax: America's EconOomic Cure)
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To: Kaslin

In about 1995 Nick Touches wrotea great bio on Dean Martin called “Dino”.

In that book he talks about the 1960 election. Frank Sinatra was the one who got the Rat Pack to help Kennedy, although Dean Martin was a Republican. Dean observed Kennedy up close and personal in Las Vegas and determined he was a just another scum bag politician.

He cautioned both Sinatra and Davis on Kennedy. He told Sinatra that if Kennedy got elected he would be dismissed and as he said “No Waps in the White House”.

Martin decided he would not perform at the Kennedy Gala, could have been in response to what happened to Sammy Davis, but he told Frank he had better things to do and did not show up.
Good read and I recommend it. Dean could be a hard ass but it was a great deal smarter than most thought.


6 posted on 08/24/2017 9:20:20 AM PDT by Captain Peter Blood
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To: Kaslin

“Why don’t we first tackle issues like the breakdown of the nuclear family, noncompetitive urban public schools and gang-related violence before we move on to Confederate monuments?”

Low hanging fruit is easier to pick and doesn’t take much energy and can be considered free pickins.

Those other things require hard work and sacrifice, which means they will likely never happen.


7 posted on 08/24/2017 9:21:54 AM PDT by shotgun
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To: Kaslin

We must remove everyone from office who’s distant families ever owned slaves because these current government employees are constant reminders of an ugly past- so they must be removed from office- and not allowed to work- ever- because it would be too traumatic for snowflakes to see them in public


8 posted on 08/24/2017 9:22:33 AM PDT by Bob434
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To: Kaslin

All the while, Marilyn and Mary Jo cry out from their graves

BAN ALL KENNEDY STUFF NOW

“I AM SpartaLEE”


9 posted on 08/24/2017 9:22:39 AM PDT by A_Former_Democrat ("I am SpartaLee")
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To: Bob434

Basically tear down any statue of anyone born before 1900, because odds are, they held views that would be considered racist today.


10 posted on 08/24/2017 9:23:45 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: RayChuang88

Kennedy Junior was just not that interested in politics and I doubt he had any interest in running for Senator or any other office. In fact I think the guy might have been fairly conservative in many things, including the managing of his money. He was running his magazine at the time and was pretty much a private person. I doubt politics was anything he wanted, although he was the Wet Dream for many democrats.


11 posted on 08/24/2017 9:24:13 AM PDT by Captain Peter Blood
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To: Kaslin
It's amazing that this has suddenly become an issue. These statues have been around for decades and just NOW people want to get rid of them. The only reason I can come up with is...

TRUMP

12 posted on 08/24/2017 9:25:48 AM PDT by unixfox (Abolish Slavery, Repeal the 16th Amendment)
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To: Kaslin

Indeed. What not just purge all of the history books and replace them an authentic history of the United States as written by some communist professor from Berkley?<p.
If the Chinese communists can do it, we can do it even better.


13 posted on 08/24/2017 9:26:40 AM PDT by GingisK
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To: Kaslin

Malcolm X belongs on the list too:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3579501/posts

There’s a boulevard in Brooklyn named after a racist who admired Hitler and boasted of being the first fascist. Harvard has a prominent institute named after a bigot who defended Nazi bigotry.

New York City, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles all have streets named after a supremacist and nationalist who palled around with Nazis. New York City has a statue of him. Washington D.C. has an art tribute to him. If we are going to take down Confederate memorials, there’s no way he can stay up.

He must fall.

In 1961, Malcolm X introduced George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the American Nazi Party, on stage at a Nation of Islam rally. After Rockwell made a donation to the racist black nationalist hate group, Malcom X led a round of applause for the Neo-Nazi leader and called him, “Mr. Rockwell.”

There’s been a recent effort in Bethesda to rename Winston Churchill High School after Malcolm X. How can you rename a school honoring the leader who defeated Nazism after Malcolm, a Nazi collaborator?

Malcolm X wasn’t breaking any new ground by palling around with Nazis. There had been a longstanding alliance between black nationalist and white nationalist groups which shared a common belief in the racial inferiority of other races, opposition to the Civil Rights Movement and anti-Semitism.

The head of the American Nazi Party had described Nation of Islam boss Elijah Muhammad as “the Adolf Hitler of the black man.”

Malcolm X had previously met with the KKK. The Muslim racist bonded with the Nazi racist over anti-Semitism. “The Jew is behind the integration movement, using the Negro as a tool,” Malcolm X told him.

Malcolm X’s Klan meeting was part of an alliance between the Nation of Islam and the KKK in opposition to the Civil Rights Movement. The Nation of Islam received protection for its mosques from the Klan.

J.B. Stoner, the KKK leader he met with, would be convicted of the bombing of the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham. The bombing had taken place three years before their meeting.

Malcolm X had even urged the KKK to eliminate “traitors who assisted integration leaders”. The man after whom streets all over the country have been named was urging the KKK to kill civil rights workers.

“I sat at the table myself with the heads of the Ku Klux Klan,” Malcolm X later admitted. “From that day onward the Klan never interfered with the Black Muslim movement in the South.”


14 posted on 08/24/2017 9:33:07 AM PDT by GOPJ (Trump stood behind Hillary for 47 seconds in a debate - now she wants an eternal pity party.)
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To: Kaslin

Don’t hold your breath


15 posted on 08/24/2017 9:34:42 AM PDT by vigilante2 (I fixed my flag)
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To: RayChuang88

Yeah, but unfortunately for him and his passengers he decided to fly a small plane at night over the ocean when he was not instrument rated. Proving again that Kennedys tend to lack basic judgment.


16 posted on 08/24/2017 9:37:47 AM PDT by Enchante
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To: Kaslin

I saw a photo on line of JFK making a speech in the same room with a Confederate Battle Flag. Guilty by association!
Rename the Kennedy Center, ban that horrendous bust of him which was reported, when it was dedicated, to make him look like he has “wall to wall acne!”


17 posted on 08/24/2017 9:46:55 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: Kaslin

I think that most large art galleries and art museums are adored by liberals. The npr crowd love the arts.

You have to bet that they are nervous, at the moment, about the future of any confederate valuable paintings. Many are worth a fortune.

Strange no one has brought up the destruction or shaming of artwork besides statues..... yet. My guess is liberal curators are nervous. But they wont say anything because of their hypocrisy.


18 posted on 08/24/2017 9:50:49 AM PDT by xenia ("In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." George Orwell)
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To: Kaslin

The Iconoclastic Controversy—American Edition.


19 posted on 08/24/2017 9:59:52 AM PDT by ameribbean expat ("I lasted 49 Scaramuchis". - Steve Bannon)
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To: rktman

Someone should just yell at the antifa: WOLF BLITZER!


20 posted on 08/24/2017 10:59:56 AM PDT by RossA
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