[Peace-discuss] Straining at a gnat...

[n.dahlheim at mchsi.com]

Carl,
    JFK was not a statist reactionary, but a statist pragmatist in line with the consensus liberal politics of 
the age---JFK was no reactionary, but he was cool and calculating in his management of the Cuban 
Missile Crisis and his political maneuvering behind the scenes masked by his hawkish rhetoric covered 
up his plan to remove combat personnel from Indochina by 1965------see the excellent and 
copiously researched book by military historian John Newman entitled "JFK and Vietnam."

    Don't get me wrong---JFK had little to no progressive credentials---but, then except for a few 
moments by Teddy Roosevelt, FDR's New Deal, Johnson's Great Society (nearly nullified by the 
Administration's poor reaction to race riots in 1965 and 1968), and Richard Nixon's domestic programs 
such as price controls, NIH Cancer Research, marijuana decriminalization, and environmental 
regulations---- there have been almost no progressive moments in the U.S. Presidency....

       Nick


----------------------  Original Message:  ---------------------
From:    "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
To:      Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Straining at a gnat...
Date:    Mon, 19 May 2008 21:02:29 +0000

> [Kennedy was a statist reactionary, proclaiming in this speech a new American
> fascism, in pursuit of which he spread murder and destruction from Latin
> America to SE Asia -- resulting in the deaths of, among others, some four
> million people in Asia.  Now he's a liberal paragon ("Obama's just like JFK!"),
> so all this popular historian can find to deplore is interference with his
> syntactical structures...  --CGE]
> 
> 	David McCullough urges BC grads to speak properly
> 	May 19, 3:33 PM (ET)
> 
> NEWTON, Mass. (AP) - Pulitzer Prize winning author David McCullough has a
> suggestion for what young people can do for their country.
> "Please, please do what you can to cure the verbal virus that seems increasingly
> rampant among your generation," McCullough implored Boston College's class of
> 2008 at commencement ceremonies Monday.
> He said he's particularly troubled by the "relentless, wearisome use of words"
> such as like, awesome and actually.
> "Just imagine if in his inaugural address John F. Kennedy had said, 'Ask not
> what your country can, you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your
> country actually," he said.
> Graduates apparently thought his speech was, like, awesome. They gave him a
> standing ovation.
> 
> 	###
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