Raysian Military Tech
10-04-2004, 18:59
I'm posting the following article because several people here think that just because JFk was a democrat, he was a liberal. THat is very untrue. By today's standards, he's right-of-center.
From Newsmax: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/11/21/140357.shtml
Democrats continue to cite the late President John F. Kennedy as being an example of their kind of liberal – a man who would have approved of the far-left policies and programs of today’s Democratic party. That’s sheer nonsense.
The record shows that JFK was neither their kind of liberal nor an advocate of the socialist policies today's liberals embrace, nor of their so-called "progressive" policies which place them on the left of the political spectrum, nearly out there with Marx and Lenin.
John F. Kennedy bore little resemblance to his brother Teddy Kennedy, the U.S. Senate’s paragon of liberalism, which is so at odds with JFK’s oft-demonstrated conservative views.
JFK would have been horrified to hear his fellow Democrats attacking the Commander in Chief, for example, while the nation was at war and American service men and women were dying on foreign soil.
John F. Kennedy was above all, a fierce patriot, a war hero who would have been infuriated had he heard that Bill Clinton had once proclaimed that he loathed the military, or had he seen how Clinton emasculated the Armed Forces.
Unlike the draft-dodging Clinton, JFK put himself in harm’s way and almost died in the Pacific when, with his father’s enormous political influence, he could have sat out the war in some cushy job in Washington.
Instead he chose to volunteer for one of the most hazardous assignments in the Navy – commanding a small, flimsy, plywood PT Boat. And when that boat was sunk by a Japanese destroyer, he risked his life to save the lives of his crew members despite his crippling injuries.
Those who invoke his memory while at the same time undermining the war against terrorism forget that this was a president who:
Backed Cuban exiles in their attempt to oust the Castro regime which, then as now, sought to use terrorist tactics to overthrow anti-Communist governments in Latin America and install Soviet style regimes south of our border.
Faced down the Soviets when they brazenly installed missiles aimed at the U.S. in Cuba and forced them to withdraw their ICBMs from the island 90 miles from the U.S.
Sent U.S. troops into South Viet Nam in an attempt to quash the Soviet and North Vietnam-backed Viet Cong.
Those present-day liberal Democrats who castigate President Bush for seeking to advance democracy in the Middle East no matter what the cost to America in lives and treasure should recall JFK’s pledge in his Inaugural address " ... we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
If you listen to the 10 men vying for the 2004 Democrat presidential nomination, what you hear is the exact opposite – none of them would think of making such promises today, being utterly unwilling to pay "any price,” in Iraq or the rest of the Middle East. Cut and run is closer to their hearts.
On November 22 we observe the 40th anniversary of JFK’s assassination and we do violence to his memory by linking him to the leftwing cabal which is today’s Democrat party.
Instead we should look for the real John F. Kennedy and when we discover him we’ll see that he would be sickened to see what has happened to his party since his death in November 1963. Make no mistake about it; JFK was in many ways a failure as president, but his failures were not due to his natural conservative views but because he sought to appease his party’s dominant liberal wing, which he needed to have behind him when he ran for re-election.
The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Castro’s Cuba, for example, was more due to the failure of the will of men like his U.N. ambassador Adlai Stevenson, who bitterly opposed the U.S. support of the Cuban exiles seeking to overthrow Castro.
When push came to shove during the invasion and U.S. air power was needed to save the exile invaders, he listened to Stevenson’s advice knowing that if he didn’t he would have infuriated the left wing of his party and risked losing their wholehearted support in 1964. But he also had his successes, especially in facing down the tax and spend liberals in his party bitterly opposed to his tax cutting policies which were anathema to the majority of his fellow Democrats.
As Dr. Roderick Beaman has written in an etherzone.com column, although John Kennedy "has been elevated to icon status in the liberal world," he was instinctively, "one of the most conservative people" ever to serve as president of the United States, and his voting records in both the House and Senate show he was among the most conservative Democrats in the House and Senate.
Writes Beaman, “Kennedy’s reputation as a conservative likely cost him the vice-presidential spot under Adlai Stevenson in 1956." And along with his family’s staunch support of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, it almost cost him the presidential endorsement of New York's Liberal Party in 1960, an event, Beaman notes, that could have doomed his White House hopes.
Although JFK moved to the left for purely political reasons in his final year in the White House, it was because he realized he needed strong liberal support in the forthcoming 1964 election where he was facing a strong challenge from his close friend Sen. Barry Goldwater, a man despised by liberals, but one who JFK described as a dear friend and "a man of decency and character."
It is almost laughable to hear today’s Democrat presidential candidates such as Howard Dean invoke the Kennedy mystique while at the same time attacking President Bush’s tax reductions.
Dean and the others would just as soon forget that it was JFK who proved that reducing the tax burden on Americans almost automatically boosted the U.S. economy to record heights. JFK’s tax cuts sent the economy sky high, exactly as George Bush tax cuts are in the process of doing today. And at the time JFK was slashing taxes across the board, none of his fellow Democrats dared to accuse him of giving tax breaks to the rich as they are saying about the Bush tax program.
Kennedy would have been shocked to see modern day Democrats cozy up to Fidel Castro – a man JFK despised as a brutal, Marxist dictator. Finally, it was thanks to JFK determination to fight organized crime – often an ally of the big city Democrat machines that backed liberal Democrat candidates - that the federal government launched the war against the big crime families that eventually brought the Cosa Nostra crashing down.
From Newsmax: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/11/21/140357.shtml
Democrats continue to cite the late President John F. Kennedy as being an example of their kind of liberal – a man who would have approved of the far-left policies and programs of today’s Democratic party. That’s sheer nonsense.
The record shows that JFK was neither their kind of liberal nor an advocate of the socialist policies today's liberals embrace, nor of their so-called "progressive" policies which place them on the left of the political spectrum, nearly out there with Marx and Lenin.
John F. Kennedy bore little resemblance to his brother Teddy Kennedy, the U.S. Senate’s paragon of liberalism, which is so at odds with JFK’s oft-demonstrated conservative views.
JFK would have been horrified to hear his fellow Democrats attacking the Commander in Chief, for example, while the nation was at war and American service men and women were dying on foreign soil.
John F. Kennedy was above all, a fierce patriot, a war hero who would have been infuriated had he heard that Bill Clinton had once proclaimed that he loathed the military, or had he seen how Clinton emasculated the Armed Forces.
Unlike the draft-dodging Clinton, JFK put himself in harm’s way and almost died in the Pacific when, with his father’s enormous political influence, he could have sat out the war in some cushy job in Washington.
Instead he chose to volunteer for one of the most hazardous assignments in the Navy – commanding a small, flimsy, plywood PT Boat. And when that boat was sunk by a Japanese destroyer, he risked his life to save the lives of his crew members despite his crippling injuries.
Those who invoke his memory while at the same time undermining the war against terrorism forget that this was a president who:
Backed Cuban exiles in their attempt to oust the Castro regime which, then as now, sought to use terrorist tactics to overthrow anti-Communist governments in Latin America and install Soviet style regimes south of our border.
Faced down the Soviets when they brazenly installed missiles aimed at the U.S. in Cuba and forced them to withdraw their ICBMs from the island 90 miles from the U.S.
Sent U.S. troops into South Viet Nam in an attempt to quash the Soviet and North Vietnam-backed Viet Cong.
Those present-day liberal Democrats who castigate President Bush for seeking to advance democracy in the Middle East no matter what the cost to America in lives and treasure should recall JFK’s pledge in his Inaugural address " ... we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
If you listen to the 10 men vying for the 2004 Democrat presidential nomination, what you hear is the exact opposite – none of them would think of making such promises today, being utterly unwilling to pay "any price,” in Iraq or the rest of the Middle East. Cut and run is closer to their hearts.
On November 22 we observe the 40th anniversary of JFK’s assassination and we do violence to his memory by linking him to the leftwing cabal which is today’s Democrat party.
Instead we should look for the real John F. Kennedy and when we discover him we’ll see that he would be sickened to see what has happened to his party since his death in November 1963. Make no mistake about it; JFK was in many ways a failure as president, but his failures were not due to his natural conservative views but because he sought to appease his party’s dominant liberal wing, which he needed to have behind him when he ran for re-election.
The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Castro’s Cuba, for example, was more due to the failure of the will of men like his U.N. ambassador Adlai Stevenson, who bitterly opposed the U.S. support of the Cuban exiles seeking to overthrow Castro.
When push came to shove during the invasion and U.S. air power was needed to save the exile invaders, he listened to Stevenson’s advice knowing that if he didn’t he would have infuriated the left wing of his party and risked losing their wholehearted support in 1964. But he also had his successes, especially in facing down the tax and spend liberals in his party bitterly opposed to his tax cutting policies which were anathema to the majority of his fellow Democrats.
As Dr. Roderick Beaman has written in an etherzone.com column, although John Kennedy "has been elevated to icon status in the liberal world," he was instinctively, "one of the most conservative people" ever to serve as president of the United States, and his voting records in both the House and Senate show he was among the most conservative Democrats in the House and Senate.
Writes Beaman, “Kennedy’s reputation as a conservative likely cost him the vice-presidential spot under Adlai Stevenson in 1956." And along with his family’s staunch support of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, it almost cost him the presidential endorsement of New York's Liberal Party in 1960, an event, Beaman notes, that could have doomed his White House hopes.
Although JFK moved to the left for purely political reasons in his final year in the White House, it was because he realized he needed strong liberal support in the forthcoming 1964 election where he was facing a strong challenge from his close friend Sen. Barry Goldwater, a man despised by liberals, but one who JFK described as a dear friend and "a man of decency and character."
It is almost laughable to hear today’s Democrat presidential candidates such as Howard Dean invoke the Kennedy mystique while at the same time attacking President Bush’s tax reductions.
Dean and the others would just as soon forget that it was JFK who proved that reducing the tax burden on Americans almost automatically boosted the U.S. economy to record heights. JFK’s tax cuts sent the economy sky high, exactly as George Bush tax cuts are in the process of doing today. And at the time JFK was slashing taxes across the board, none of his fellow Democrats dared to accuse him of giving tax breaks to the rich as they are saying about the Bush tax program.
Kennedy would have been shocked to see modern day Democrats cozy up to Fidel Castro – a man JFK despised as a brutal, Marxist dictator. Finally, it was thanks to JFK determination to fight organized crime – often an ally of the big city Democrat machines that backed liberal Democrat candidates - that the federal government launched the war against the big crime families that eventually brought the Cosa Nostra crashing down.