Posted on 05/18/2006 12:05:21 AM PDT by beckett
"I have long argued that the worst thing that happened to the US in my lifetime (since the mid-1950s) was Kennedy's defeat of Nixon in 1960. If Kennedy hadn't been assassinated, I believe, then the trauma that it caused would not have devolved into the rage and then cynical alienation from America's moral core that -- since that time -- has been tearing our country apart."
I disagree. The old left had been entirely too successful up to that point. Without the "new left" going off the deep end, the country would have continued leftward.
Truth is, they collectively could not pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel and they make Marie Antoinette look like Mother Teresa.
The article argues, not necessarily persuasively but, in my view, still making an intriguing case, that, had Kennedy lived, much of the punch in the then dominant liberal political zeigeist that propelled it leftward would have been missing. His death constituted that punch, according to the author. In addition, I would say it's also defensible to argue that JFK and the oldest Kennedy son, Joe, were the most conservative of the Kennedy clan, and they were also the dominant leaders among their siblings. So I think it's far from certain that JFK would have followed RFK and Teddy to the left, or, more appropriately, that he would have allowed them to move to the left had he lived.
In any case, we can never know what JFK's politics would have been in the era his death ushered in.
That's a piece of it, but you have to remember that the Soviet Union did its best to subvert and destroy our culture, and had many willing accomplices ("useful idiots") among us who were instrumental in achieving that goal. I for one believe that they dealt us a blow that we will never recover from.
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