“But DAD!!?? FDR won World War II and got us out of the depression, and JFK was assassinated!” (As a kid educated in publik skool they were idols to me.)
“FDR was terrible for the USA during the depression, and JFK was a womanizer and a liberal.” That was all he said - I wish he had told me more.
It wasn't until college (and Reagan) that I understood what my old man was talking about (and agreed with him, and could talk more with him). He had some rough years in business under Carter. I'm glad that he got to see Reagan be president!
BTW - Kennedy would be a conservative compared to a lot of the democrats of today!
Having grown up in a family where politics and news was discussed daily, where I was fascinated by what the adults said so managed to absorb a lot...just by listening when adult friends and family visited and the talk really "got into the weeds", so to speak, and lucky enough to have gone to school where and when real FACTS were taught, by the time JFK was running for president, I was aware enough to understand what a TERRIBLE man he was. And though still in high school, I certainly did NOT know all THAT much about just HOW terrible a person he was, but did learn that later.
I'm writing a journal of historical FACTS about the times I've lived through, for my grandchild; if you have any such, you should write one too...so that the truth reaches them when you no longer can.
Eh, regarding JFK, with all due respect to your old man, at least JFK actually FOUGHT against the Communists and actually broke ranks from his fellow Democrats and aided Joseph McCarthy in taking down the Communists or die trying, which is still a heck of a lot better than most of their contemporaries on the left during that time including Harry Truman, let alone now. You have to admit, that’s pretty dang courageous. Plus, he also realized letting Vietnam having free elections especially with someone like Ho Chi Minh manning things would have been stupid and wisely rejected it. He sure as heck beats FDR who was so in bed with the Communists that it’s actually a surprise that he WASN’T one. To say little about the likes of George Lucas (he’s so far to the left that he knowingly rooted for a terrorist group, the Vietcong, during the war, and has implied that he’s NOT fond of JFK), John Kerry, and Bill Clinton (who actually not only dodged the draft, but even went further to organize not just anti-war protests, but explicitly anti-American protests, with their being sufficient evidence that he may have joined the KGB during that time), not to mention Barack Obama.
Definitely agreed with FDR, though. Heck, his dallyance with Stalin is pretty much the reason why we even HAD a Cold War and why Communism had been expanded significantly, and in more ways than one (for example, you probably know how the Yalta Agreement’s why Eastern Europe was subject to the Warsaw Pact, but did you know that it was also partly the reason why China became communist overnight after World War II?). Not to mention he was responsible for the UN, a Communist front organization of the worst sort.