[LiteKeeper]

read later

[T'wit]

Good piece. Has some facts that will horrify thinking Democrats, if there are any.

[ladyinred]

Without reading the full article yet, I can tell you that I have read tons of books, materials etc on JFK's death. The right wing spoken of was the right wing of the democrat party that existed then, not republicans.

Ever special I watch this past week refers to that right wing, and I have been upset about that since these days that denotes republicans, and that distinction isn't being made. No one expects democrats to have a right wing these days.

[gonzo]

Ka-Bump............FRegards

[WaterDragon]

Ping!

[dixiechick2000]

Than you so much for the ping. I think this is the finest piece he's ever written.

"The Republican right wing didn’t enslave blacks, it freed them. Communism didn't save China from starvation, it prolonged the starvation in China. Democrats aren’t “for the working man.” Democrats despise capitalism, and so work to crush business, which reduces wages, benefits and the number of private sector jobs. (Socialists prefer government jobs to private sector jobs). And JFK, supposedly the young god of the Democrats, couldn’t win a primary in his party, today. The general election, he could win, because Republicans would love him. But, the party primary? Not a chance. He would be despised even by the Democrats who made this loving PBS program about him. Besides joining the long "radical" Republican battle for civil rights, JFK sent troops to fight communism in foreign lands, strengthened the military and called for large tax cuts to revive a sagging economy.

The breaking news about JFK is that even though I never met the man, I knew him. And the present crop of Democrats in congress, in the primary race and in the media, including PBS, are no JFKs."

Kudos, Larry Leonard!

[TheMole]

Very good article. I'd just like to expand on this point if I may.

Bob Schieffer of CBS, said on this program that the media first thought that Kennedy was killed by a right wing nut, but that Oswald turned out to be a very left wing nut.

He certainly was. Lee Harvey Oswald was a Communist active in pro-Castro groups like the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He actually defected to the Soviet Union and lived there for a few years. He hated Jack Kennedy because of his confrontations with Castro and Khrushchev. He was in no possible sense a right-winger, a quality he shared with Bobby Kennedy's Palestinian assassin Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, who hated Bobby Kennedy for his support of Israel in the 1968 Democratic presidential primaries. It is positively Orwellian, to borrow the adjective Mr. Leonard uses, how leftist jounalists and historians ignore these facts as they recount to the young and the ignorant how the 1960s assassinations were the product of an intolerant racist America.

[Golden Gate]

Bookmark Ping!-Bump! - Well worth the time / must read.

...the media first thought that Kennedy was killed by a right wing nut, but that Oswald turned out to be a very left wing nut. That is a perfect description of today's mainstream media, too.

...Slavery in America was ended in the North, by Republicans. It lasted longest in places where Democrats ruled, but the Republicans eventually finished it there, too. Jim Crow was invented by Democrats. The K.K.K in America was a Democrat organization.

Democrats opposed the 14th Amendment, and The Civil Rights Act of 1866 and of 1964...

Every single advance by black Americans from the end of slavery to the end of Jim Crow to calling out the National Guard to protect Rosa Parks was the direct result of actions by Republicans...(Oregon Magazine - Larry Leonard)

[JennysCool]

This is a fine article, but early on we find a mention of "Charleton Heston."

I know Mr. Heston, and he is a great American and there is no "e" in the middle of his first name. Call me a stickler (actually, I'm an editor), but when a goof like this pops up in the first couple of paragraphs of a piece, the rest of it loses the impact it should have.

Proper spelling and grammar make an impression on people everywhere; oftimes they are put off by finding some glaring error, and the point of the piece they are reading becomes diminished. And that's a shame, because a lot of them are good pieces, like this one.

Not meaning to nitpick, but I know I speak for lots of FReepers when I say one of the time-honored axioms of good journalism is "get it right."

Also, Mr. Heston deserves whatever courtesies we can give him. He has been exemplary in a host of good causes.

End of rant!

[Clintonfatigued]

Interesting outlook.

[freethistle]

At that time I was young and planning to register with Conservative Party in New York when I was old enough to vote. The anger was definitely right-wing.

We had the John Birch society really active-they had the Let Freedom Ring telephone message line going-and they were anti-Kennedy. I thought it was a little over the top but I used to call in and get the message of the day.

Years later I found out from in-laws in the midwest that the local civic leaders in their town had secret meetings when Kennedy ran to discuss what to do in the event he let the Pope take over religion in the US.

(Some of that may seem crazy now but the fear was real. One of my in-laws attended the meeting and he was genuinely concerned about Kennedy being a danger).

Some people were making plans for joining the resistance and going underground if Kennedy got too cozy with the Pope or the communists. He was considered then to be a liberal.

It was sort of weird because the Catholic Church was very anti-communist and had official prayers to be said for the conversion of Russia. (maybe they worked).

The New York Times, iirc, had an article before his visit to Dallas about the anti-Kennedy stuff going on there.

There were right wing Democrats in those days,and right wing Republicans-they were scared of change, opposed Kennedy and things were kind of rough.

I thought then and still think that Oswald was CIA-connected-which doesn't mean the CIA killed Kennedy. But a person going to Russia in those days was a very rare thing.

Heck, a girl in my grade school back then wrote to Russia for a penpal and she got a visit from the FBI.

If you 'defected' to Russia in the 1950s or early 60s you were a traitor and would have been followed by the FBI, and have an enormous FBI file.

[hershey]

I remember quite clearly how angry my family was about Kennedy's Cuba failure. He denied air support to the troops on that beach, as a result-- they were captured or killed by Castro's thugs. Then, months later, the Soviets installed missiles; he lied about the bargain he made remove. The fact that we promised not to install missiles in Turkey was kept quiet for years. The 'right wing' never opposed civil rights. We didn't like forced bussing...thanks to which Boston's schools are a mess. Kennedy's inept foreign policy was what had us fuming. He was a lousy president, no matter how you slice it.

[RLK]

JFK became involved in the civil rights movement rather lately and rather weakly. His personal tastes were opposed to the movement unless it could somehow be manipulated to bring him a few votes. Revisionistic history has attempted to portray him as a second MLK.

Kennedy had enemies for other reasons. There was a sarcastic maxim at the time, "What's the road to the White House?" Answer: "Go to Harvard, then turn left."

When Kennedy had the president of United States Steel summoned to the White House like a dog to receive a tounglashing for increasing steel prices, it created a lot of anger in the business and other communities. Kennedy was a heavy-handed leftist when it suited his purposes. I lived through the period. There is little now written about Kennedy that I recognize from the period.

To paraphrase a Reagan quip, I remember John Kennedy and believe me John Kennedy was no John Kennedy.

[ladyinred]

Yes there was right wing opposition to JFK. but what they fail to mention these days it was the right wing of the DEMOCRAT party, not the republicans. I have read all of the books on this, and it is in all of them, plus the real history will tell you. In those days there was a hard right democrat group.