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I answer Dr. Bastiat’s Question: JFK and the death of American hope
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Between the pill and age of the internet, there was the death of John F. Kennedy.
Before JFK was killed, the left believed in progress. Technology gave rise to wealth, penicillin and indoor plumbing. Humanity was moving from poor rural farms to glittering cities with cars and skyscrapers.
Things were looking up for black Americans as well. Blacks were making substantial progress in American society after decades of stifling Wilsonian Jim Crow. Just as importantly, black Americans were advancing economically as well as politically in the 1950s and 1960s, as Thomas Sowell has noted.
Internationally, Communism forged a unity among Americans. As much as conservatives (rightly) complain about FDR being soft on Communism, and Communists infiltrating Hollywood and the State Department, your average Democratic voter loved Jesus and hated Communists. Republicans and Democrats may not have liked the other party but usually didn’t hate them. Eisenhower Democrats were a thing, after all.
When JFK died, NYT editorialists responded by writing that America killed Kennedy because it was racist. That Lee Harvey Oswald was a Communist was forcibly ignored. This is a great interview about the subject here. Peter Robinson interviewed the author an eternity ago, but I can’t find that interview.
The death of JFK gave rise to punitive liberalism. It used to be that some liberals believed in affirmative action in order to make America more fair and equitable to previously oppressed populations. After JFK, affirmative action was necessary to punish white America. This is particularly odd considering JFK was a moderate with regard to Civil Rights. But when have convenient myths ever needed to be constrained by facts?
Meanwhile, racial equality degenerated into black power and the war on poverty became about transferring wealth to poor people who stayed poor. We forget how optimistic FDR’s and JFK’s left-liberalism was. They thought that they could end poverty through technocratic allocations of wealth. Why did LBJ declare a war on poverty? Because he thought he could win it. Lefties today talk about how the poor will always be poor so they should receive various forms of financial aid.
Though not as materially important, American academic life became more and more corrupted and this has enervated the nation’s spirit. A source of serious thought about American advantages and weaknesses became worse than useless. Listen to Yeonmi Park’s take on college if you don’t believe me.
Perhaps most importantly, family life fell apart. This was mostly due to the pill and abortion, but I also think cultural factors were a big deal as well. I disagree with the materialist view of the world that scientific advancements and physical resources are the only things that determine history. The loss of confidence in Western Civilization that Dr. Bastiat laments has to do with the West telling itself the wrong stories.
I think the death of JFK was more of a symbolic event than one that shifted world history. Still, I think that single event is the best marker of the shift between an optimistic left-liberalism and a bitter and punitive left-liberalism.
Published in General
Certainly under his Administration but not necessarily with his active participation. He denied being involved but that might have been to protect Kennedy. His denials prevented JFK’s critics from arguing that he took the plans from the architect of the Normandy invasions and screwed them up.
The corruption of America’s universities was well thought out.
I remember how for some six months in the 1980’s, every time I stepped into a coffee or muffin shop to sit with a simple drink and pastry, a group of academics would be discussing the great good fortune coming their way.
University of Calif at Berkeley was offering early retirement to its professors. These were people in their forties if even that. Those going on about their coming good fortune were always men. They couldn’t believe the pension benefits they’d receive, along with a decent severance pay.
Not once did I overhear any women professors discuss being let go.
By the 1990’s, at least one crime novel I read had to do with a guy trying to get tenure at a university where only gay women profs made the grade. A murder had been committed on campus. Unfortunately this murder was not a fictional portrayal of one of the geniuses in administration who had been encouraging male profs into early retirement. Even when literary justice can take place, it is not always utilized.
Back during the Clinton administration’s welfare reform, Oregon’s welfare rolls dropped by 40%, but the payroll of the welfare administration stayed the same. A government jobs really is a sinecure in most cases; if a position is abolished, the person in that position is simply moved to another.
Can you share the author and title of the novel?
Far too few people know that JFK, as president, raped an intern. This seems to be rather undisputed, especially by the current leftwing definition of rape.
Also, he spent the lunch hour in the White House pool with “secretaries” Fiddle and Faddle.
The press laughed it off back then and still do. ‘ Ha ha ,good old Jack, the stuff he used to get away with.’ He was their guy.