NationStates Jolt Archive

I don't have the solid figures about global aging trends (can someone dig some up and put it up as a reply?), but does an aging human population means the installation of socially conservative and economically right-wing governments (at least in the western world)?

Almost every elderly person in the contemporary western world seem to become more socially conservative as they age. They become defensive about the financial assets they accured over their working lifes - hence advocate lower taxes and right-wing economic policy.

Does this mean in 20 years time we'll see a socialist nightmare unleash across the globe?!

I don't have the solid figures about global aging trends (can someone dig some up and put it up as a reply?), but does an aging human population means the installation of socially conservative and economically right-wing governments (at least in the western world)?

Almost every elderly person in the contemporary western world seem to become more socially conservative as they age. They become defensive about the financial assets they accured over their working lifes - hence advocate lower taxes and right-wing economic policy.

Does this mean in 20 years time we'll see a socialist nightmare unleash across the globe?!

While I do think that the world is sliding right, in the long-term it is going to lurch leftward. That being said, I don't think the operative feature is age demography so much as it is increasing volatility in markets will make us think twice about turning over our retirement to the vagaries of the market.

I hope so.

I don't have the solid figures about global aging trends (can someone dig some up and put it up as a reply?), but does an aging human population means the installation of socially conservative and economically right-wing governments (at least in the western world)?

Almost every elderly person in the contemporary western world seem to become more socially conservative as they age. They become defensive about the financial assets they accured over their working lifes - hence advocate lower taxes and right-wing economic policy.

Does this mean in 20 years time we'll see a socialist nightmare unleash across the globe?!
Only in comparison to say, 10/15 years ago.

I mean, in the US alone one of the Heros of the Democrat (mostly Leftist) Party, Pres. John F. Kennedy would today be considered a radical Right Wing Idealogue.

Really. What was all this stuff about "Ask not what your country can do for you..." that's totally anathema to modern Dems and nearly so to the Repubs.

Quite the opposite. It is true that individuals tend to become more conservative as they age because they've found a niche and prefer not to be disturbed. But just look at how the world was in the past...slavery, people being found in meat cans, women staying home to clean and give birth; all that's changed mainly because of liberal upheaval. And now we get to watch history unfold right upon our very eyes with gay marriage.

Economically, yes. In terms of culture, most definitely not.

No, just the United States. If you happen to live there, it might seem as though the world is sliding right, but in reality, it isn't.

Economically, yes. In terms of culture, most definitely not.
In terms of culture, errr...what culture? :)

No, just the United States. If you happen to live there, it might seem as though the world is sliding right, but in reality, it isn't.

Europe definitely is. The spread of neoliberalism among many developing countries seems to indicate that they are (or were), too.

Europe definitely is. The spread of neoliberalism among many developing countries seems to indicate that they are (or were), too.
At long last.

Europe definitely is. The spread of neoliberalism among many developing countries seems to indicate that they are (or were), too.
"Definitely is" what? Sliding right - or not sliding right?

Your response reads both ways.

In terms of culture, errr...what culture? :)

I am thinking of Western culture, mostly, but I think the trends exist in the others as well.

The belief in basic human egalitarianism has gone way up, stances on homosexuality are considerably more liberal than they were in the recent past, and the further back you go the more drastic the change, the rabidity of the religious fundamentalists indicates just how much corporate capitalism is annihilating the "moral values" they exhort (one of corporate capitalism's positive accomplishments), pornography is no longer taboo, divorces are only viewed by a tiny minority as morally wrong, imperialism has an almost universally bad connotation, war is no longer something to be supported just because your country does it, nationalism is far less fierce than it was a few decades ago....

The list is long.

"Definitely is" what? Sliding right - or not sliding right?

Your response reads both ways.

Sliding right. "New Labour" and the larger "Third Way" being clear cases.

I am thinking of Western culture, mostly, but I think the trends exist in the others as well.

The belief in basic human egalitarianism has gone way up, stances on homosexuality are considerably more liberal than they were in the recent past, and the further back you go the more drastic the change, the rabidity of the religious fundamentalists indicates just how much corporate capitalism is annihilating the "moral values" they exhort (one of corporate capitalism's positive accomplishments), pornography is no longer taboo, divorces are only viewed by a tiny minority as morally wrong, imperialism has an almost universally bad connotation, war is no longer something to be supported just because your country does it, nationalism is far less fierce than it was a few decades ago....

The list is long.
That may be so, but cultural production itself is pathetic. Searching for truly high quality work nowadays is like trying to find a needle in a hay-stack. Non-discrimination is good, of course, as an indicator of culture, but that's about the only respect in which culture has advanced.

Europe definitely is. The spread of neoliberalism among many developing countries seems to indicate that they are (or were), too.True, but when those countries realize that neoliberalism isn't benefitting them, they'll slide back.

That may be so, but cultural production itself is pathetic. Isn't this due to the fact that cultural production is profitable? Anyone who can make a profit will produce something culturally, whether or not it is good.

No, It's like the Post-WWII Era. It'll shift back as our kids grow up.

I really hope so, 'cause the right-wing parties here (known as the "Opposition") ruined everything last time they got majority. And I do mean everything.

Edit: Hope it will shift back, that is. NOT that the world is turning right.

The Western world does, indeed, seem to be sliding to the right. I blame the terrorists. The mainstay of the right-wing has always been to whip up fear in the population and frighten them into conservatism, and the new wave of Islamist terrorism has given them the perfect scapegoat (Muslims and anyone who looks like an Arab) for everyone to dump all their angst on.

Give it a bit of time and people will eventually realise who and what they've been voting for and ranting about, the West will swing back to the left that much harder. Except maybe the US, but who cares about them?

The Western world does, indeed, seem to be sliding to the right. I blame the terrorists. The mainstay of the right-wing has always been to whip up fear in the population and frighten them into conservatism, and the new wave of Islamist terrorism has given them the perfect scapegoat (Muslims and anyone who looks like an Arab) for everyone to dump all their angst on.

Give it a bit of time and people will eventually realise who and what they've been voting for and ranting about, the West will swing back to the left that much harder. Except maybe the US, but who cares about them?

I'm here for at least 4 more years(finishing High School), so I care about the U.S. I think the fact that the Religous Right is getting really angry is proof that we are going a bit more left. Then again, the Religous Right is always angry about something.

Right-wing Republican Christian Environmentalism. What a twist!

Are we talking thirty something years? (1 generation)
Are we talking sixty something years?
Or are we talking about long term, like ninety years or more?

If we are talking about one generation, then in Europe, specifically the eastern countries, the medium age of the citizens there is estimated to be over fifty by then. It will be the first time in the history of civilization that the average age of an entire community will be 'old' and not young.

Who knows how that will turn out, but with age comes wisdom and temperance and a tendency to be more cautious, thus I would expect a conservative voting block that out numbers the stereotypical left leaning younger people.

If we are talking about sixty years, after the older generation will be quickly losing their voting block advantage of numbers simply by dying off, however, the younger generation from before will now be thirty years older and becoming more conservative themselves... Likely still out numbering the stereotypical left leaning youth.

In ninety years or more all bets are off, from me anyway. But consider, if the overall European population decline occurs as predicted by today's estimates, the entire European population should be about half of what it is now and would likely therefore have less than a single Chinese province of buying power and production ability (considering the Chinese would then have had a hundred years from now to catch up technologically), and no one then will really care what Europe does or does not do anymore, they might not be a world player anymore and will be delegated to the back pages of the world press then..

I don't have the solid figures about global aging trends (can someone dig some up and put it up as a reply?),

The whole world is not greying. Only Europe in the west and China-Japan in far east are greying significantly.

The ME is relatively younger, Iran is having a youth bulge, India (and Bangladesh and Pakistan) has a young population. They are having what can be called the classical Pyramid base shape. Sub-Saharan Africa is a sad case of hour-glass shape with adults lost to AIDS and unproductive children and old people fending for themselves.

http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/Papers/gkh1/chap1.htm


but does an aging human population means the installation of socially conservative and economically right-wing governments (at least in the western world)?

In the western world, yes, it does appear so. Plus the inevitable decline of Europe because of other regions catching up, there will be a backlash in the form of increasing conservatism.

Does this mean in 20 years time we'll see a socialist nightmare unleash across the globe?!

Not across the globe. China and India make up 1/3 of the world and both are moving away from their own brands of socialism (although both will retain some policies of socialism).

my gran's 80-something and she votes for the green party - she does buy the Telegraph though but i don't think she realises its political affiliation, she just buys it cuz all her friends do.

As populations age and as wealth gaps grow so do the rightwing tendancies of the ruleing classes. In the northern Hemispher populations are aging and in the south the gaps between rich and poor are growing. = lurch to the right. its ok in the long term because the right always produces a nutter who will go invading countries to ligitimise his/her rule and in the process destroyes their county's economy. Then there is a reactionary lurch to the left that leads to silly unworkable econamic policies that are not viable. Saddly the center ground is usually inhabited by political non-entities with little (if any) ideology and only get to power by not being their predesessors (See John Major or Tony Blair vis MAggie T).

my gran's 80-something and she votes for the green party - she does buy the Telegraph though but i don't think she realises its political affiliation, she just buys it cuz all her friends do.

And my Gran thinks Jesus was an allien becaus ethe halo "obviously" is a space helmet to allow him to breathe on earth and going up to heaven is one of thos teleporting things from Star Treck. One person that is not part of a trend does not mean a trend isn't happening...

in the south the gaps between rich and poor are growing. = lurch to the right.

Don't you mean a lurch to the left as in populist leaders inducting more leftist policies as a response to the demands of the poor? :confused:

Don't you mean a lurch to the left as in populist leaders inducting more leftist policies as a response to the demands of the poor? :confused:

No, remeber that most of the South has been on the left for the last 50 or so years and it has failed. Even some of the most authoritarian dictatorships have been "left wing" in Africa and South Asia. South America is an exception that proves the point. Thanks mainly to US fear of Soviet progress, America supported regimes not terribly dissimilar to the fascists in Italy and as these have reformed or fallen in the last decade they have been replaced by left(ish) governments.

No, remeber that most of the South has been on the left for the last 50 or so years and it has failed. Even some of the most authoritarian dictatorships have been "left wing" in Africa and South Asia. South America is an exception that proves the point. Thanks mainly to US fear of Soviet progress, America supported regimes not terribly dissimilar to the fascists in Italy and as these have reformed or fallen in the last decade they have been replaced by left(ish) governments.

hmm..If I understand you correctly, you are saying that while South American becomes more leftist, Africa+South Asia will become more rightist (with left and right as defined in their regions) ?

I don't think so.
I reckon people of 50 years ago would laugh at us, let alone what people of 500 years ago would think.

How can anyone suggest we're becoming more right wing when we allow extremist muslims to insite hatred within our own country (England, for the purpose of my argument)?

I don't think so.
I reckon people of 50 years ago would laugh at us, let alone what people of 500 years ago would think.

How can anyone suggest we're becoming more right wing when we allow extremist muslims to insite hatred within our own country (England, for the purpose of my argument)?
Do we? I thought Abu Hamza was convicted, while somehow Griffin got off... an amazing twist of fate.

Do we? I thought Abu Hamza was convicted, while somehow Griffin got off... an amazing twist of fate.

Well, Abu Hamza was preachin hatred for months outside his Finsbury Park Mosque, whilst also conspiring murder, whereas Griffin was preachin inside a right wing pub in Oldham to a few backward dick holes.

A slight difference.

Well, Abu Hamza was preachin hatred for months outside his Finsbury Park Mosque, whilst also conspiring murder, whereas Griffin was preachin inside a right wing pub in Oldham to a few backward dick holes.

A slight difference.
And both are, in legal terms, the same offence and equally illegal.

And both are, in legal terms, the same offence and equally illegal.

I agree, and I in no way want to be defending Nick Griffin. But a blind eye (pun) was turned to Abu Hamza for too long.

I think it takes the piss that we give a house and benefit to someone that dispises the West so much. It was his choice to come here.

And the initial inciting of hatred to which i were refering to was the recent Mohammed picture protests, which we had nothing to do with, but they used it as an excuse to put forth their own agenda's - the downfall of democracy.

And as for the Muslim council, they never come forward and denounce the extremists, they simply complain about how they will be percieved in Britain.

I agree, and I in no way want to be defending Nick Griffin. But a blind eye (pun) was turned to Abu Hamza for too long.

I think it takes the piss that we give a house and benefit to someone that dispises the West so much. It was his choice to come here.
I agree, I just think its a double standard that Griffin got off...
And the initial inciting of hatred to which i were refering to was the recent Mohammed picture protests, which we had nothing to do with, but they used it as an excuse to put forth their own agenda's - the downfall of democracy.
Wat, would you abrogate their right to free speech in such a manner? Would you also abrogate the right of the cartoonists the same way?
And as for the Muslim council, they never come forward and denounce the extremists, they simply complain about how they will be percieved in Britain.
Actually they do condemn it...

Wat, would you abrogate their right to free speech in such a manner? Would you also abrogate the right of the cartoonists the same way?


Free speech is one thing, but they couldn't see their irony was that they were using free speech to condemn ours.

Free speech is one thing, but they couldn't see their irony was that they were using free speech to condemn ours.
True, but thefact is, we can't take away theirs unless we take away our own as well.

There is no irony in the Quran: God's word must be accepted at face value, however stupid it is.

Well, in the area of civil liberties, probably not. Look at this:
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/images/democrac.gif
Democracies have sprung up more and more since WWII, and more countries have a free press, not that democracy always equals more freedom, but it is a good bet. Many of them now have equal rights for women, gays etc. We really ned a better definition of what angle of government and/or society you're looking at and in what timeframe.

In the short-term, societies will slide to the right, and slide to the left, and then slide to the right, over and over again. Currently, in America, we are experiencing a rather depressing social slide to the right, and a fiscal slide to the... well, to the stupid, really. Bush's warmongering is pissing off fiscal conservatives and liberals alike. So we're not really sure how to label his spending policies, other than "Bad Idea".

However, in the long-term, societies will always move to the left. Liberalism is branded on the human spirit. You cannot permanently stop progress, you can only slow it down.

The world is sliding more and more to the left, especially the U.S. A hundred years ago, we didn't have income tax, Social(ist) (In)Security, Medicare, Medicaid, minimum wage laws, the EPA, the Federal Reserve, government-controlled education, etc.

The world is sliding more and more to the left, especially the U.S. A hundred years ago, we didn't have income tax, Social(ist) (In)Security, Medicare, Medicaid, minimum wage laws, the EPA, the Federal Reserve, government-controlled education, etc.

Over the last hundred years, yes, definitely - on all fronts.

True, but when those countries realize that neoliberalism isn't benefitting them, they'll slide back.

Quite possibly. Certainly current developments in Latin America seem to indicate that.

Europe definitely is. The spread of neoliberalism among many developing countries seems to indicate that they are (or were), too.

Finally! I'd rather a shift internationalist and neoliberal than a shift rightward; right-wing economics are as equally dangerous to world economic progress as those of the left, and are tainted by nationalist sentiments that inevitably lead to obstruction of the free market and economic repression in the name of hegemony.

I don't have the solid figures about global aging trends (can someone dig some up and put it up as a reply?), but does an aging human population means the installation of socially conservative and economically right-wing governments (at least in the western world)?

Almost every elderly person in the contemporary western world seem to become more socially conservative as they age. They become defensive about the financial assets they accured over their working lifes - hence advocate lower taxes and right-wing economic policy.

Does this mean in 20 years time we'll see a socialist nightmare unleash across the globe?!

This left-right axis is a bit misleading. I prefer the term 'liberal' - not in its US sense but in the meaning of 'less controlled'. I will specify economically liberal (ie. towards the idealised 'free market') and the socially liberal as appropriate.

I can't speak much for the rest of the world, but I think there is clear evidence of a shift to economic liberalism in Europe, mostly driven by the political elite over the wishes of the populace.

Personally, I think that's a good thing.

Evidence - rulings on State Aid. The European Commission has frequently ruled against State Aid, up to the point of causing firms to collapse. Look at, for example, the Spanish shipyards. The EC ruled the state aid illegal and the yards (Izar et al) basically collapsed. They're all up for sale. In Malta, the shipyards there have to get economically viable or they will be dead in the water. As part of EU accession, the Maltese govt had to stop subsidising the yards (albeit on a reducing subsidy basis over a 10 (?) year timeframe).

The EC has also repeatedly brought in directives based on trade liberalisation. Has done so fairly effectively for goods, is now attempting to do the same for services, although it has been defeated a few times, you can bet it will try try try try until it succeeds. It never gives up.

Look also at the decisions of the ECJ when it rules on the free movement of goods and services

Social liberalism - clear evidence for this to (in the UK at least, I can't really speak about other EU states). Gay marriage, general shift in culture and censorship, tolerant attitudes to divorce and abortion (compared with say, 40 years ago). That said, is becoming increasingly authoritarian - ID cards and so on.

Overall, Europe at least, is becoming slowly more liberal both economically and socially.

I think that process will be accelerated by the emergence of Eastern European nations from communism. Many Poles, for example, now live and work in the UK. They by and large hate communism. But when they go back to Poland (if they go back to Poland) or when relatives visit them, then I feel they are likely to wax lyrical about the social freedoms in the UK. I've seen this kind of thing happen before. Where I live there are a lot of people from Eastern Europe and Turkey. They really like the liberal social attitudes here.

Actually the place in the world where the shift is most obvious is South America, but there they are shifting to the left. I think that Europe is shifting to the right, but slowly. America doesn't change much at all.

Only in comparison to say, 10/15 years ago.

I mean, in the US alone one of the Heros of the Democrat (mostly Leftist) Party, Pres. John F. Kennedy would today be considered a radical Right Wing Idealogue.

Really. What was all this stuff about "Ask not what your country can do for you..." that's totally anathema to modern Dems and nearly so to the Repubs.
Didn't JFK break up loads of monopolies and all that, using 'big government'? Doesn't sound all that right-wing to me.

Also, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" is a collectivist, and thus left-wing sentiment.

Try again.

Actually the place in the world where the shift is most obvious is South America, but there they are shifting to the left. I think that Europe is shifting to the right, but slowly. America doesn't change much at all.

Didn't JFK break up loads of monopolies and all that, using 'big government'? Doesn't sound all that right-wing to me.Do you mean Executive Order 11110 that would have gutted the Federal Reserve? (One of many conspiracy theories...) Which monopolies?
Also, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" is a collectivist, and thus left-wing sentiment.
Collectivist work ethic? maybe, but certainly not the modern Democrat entitlement mentality.

He also drastically cut marginal tax rates... not exactly a Democrat favorite thing to do.

I don't think I have to try again

Two Differing viewpoints

Remembering JFK

© November 28, 2003, Rod D. Martin

America marked the 40th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination last week, and much verbiage was spent in proclaiming him the hero of the party today epitomized by his youngest brother Teddy. Yet the memory of Kennedy resonates with virtually all Americans -- not merely those on the left -- and with reason; indeed, reasons his brother’s acolytes would rather forget.

JFK was no conservative, yet he was hardly the poster boy for today's left. In two key areas -- totalitarianism and tax cuts -- JFK wasn't even a liberal by the standards of his time, let alone ours.

Scholars call Kennedy a Cold Warrior. They're right. JFK saw Communism as he did Nazism, as a totalitarian monstrosity threatening life and liberty everywhere. Rejecting accommodation as appeasement, he embraced the containment doctrine that guided America after World War II.

Like Kennedy, most liberals of that era rejected appeasement. Yet Kennedy went further, striking right at the jugular of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. Having criticized FDR's people for handing Eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta in 1945, he joined Republicans in blasting the Truman administration and the State Department for their culpability in China's collapse before the Communists four years later. Speaking from the House floor, he said, "The responsibility for [this] failure...rests squarely with the White House and the Department of State."

Kennedy also confronted communist subversion at home. As a House labor committee member, he helped convict a communist union official. While in the Senate, he backed Senator Joseph McCarthy's investigations. In January 1955, after McCarthy had fallen from power, JFK walked out on a banquet speech by McCarthy-hating journalist Edward R. Murrow. Three years later, at a Harvard dinner, when a speaker compared McCarthy with convicted Soviet spy Alger Hiss, JFK exclaimed, "How dare you couple the name of a great American patriot with that of a traitor!," and stormed out of the building.

Eventually, Kennedy came properly to lament McCarthy's methods. Yet unlike most of his liberal Democratic contemporaries, JFK refused to deny the obvious: the high-level Communist penetration of FDR's State Department in the 1930s and 1940s. For this courage he almost paid dearly. In 1960, Eleanor Roosevelt tried mightily to deny him the Democratic presidential nomination, and New York's Liberal Party almost withheld its endorsement of him as well.

As with totalitarianism, so, too, with tax cuts. Midway through his presidential term, JFK proposed a sweeping across-the-board tax cut, dismaying liberal Democrats, who preferred wasteful spending binges to "stimulate" the economy.

Today's liberal historians equate JFK's tax cut proposals with a demand-side stimulus, but that's not what JFK said while arguing for them. Here's what he said: "The present rates ranging up to 91% not only check consumption but discourage investment and encourage...the avoidance of taxes [rather] than the production of goods." He went on: "Our present tax system...reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking."

This was supply-side economics, pure and simple. Here was a Democratic president advocating a pre-New Deal, conservative Republican direction on taxes. And here were proposals that fit the rhetoric: a massive across-the-board cut, coupled with a 26-percentage-point reduction of the highest rate from 91% all the way to 65%.

Needless to say, liberal Democrats reacted to this about as cordially as they had to JFK's courage in standing against them on totalitarian communism years before. Thus, forty years ago last week, at the time of his assassination, the tax-cut bill was stuck in Congress. It took LBJ to get it through Congress the following year, an homage to the slain young President.

Now it must be said, when it came to communism, JFK as president did not exactly practice what he had preached while in Congress. For example, Kennedy convinced the Russians to withdraw (not-yet-armed-or-operational) missiles from Cuba, but only by agreeing to remove our (fully-operational) missiles from Turkey. And surely he had more than his share of other flaws, some all-too-reminiscent of the later President he once inspired at Boys Nation.

Yet on both totalitarianism and taxes, time has been kind to Kennedy -- and cruel to the left. Following Soviet Communism's fall in 1991, out came the KGB files and the rest is history. The old allegations were true: a half century ago, at high levels, Communists had indeed infiltrated the State Department, and other institutions as well. And as for tax cuts, the JFK cuts did what they were supposed to do and more. Productivity soared, revenues doubled, and prosperity returned, foreshadowing the more dramatic Reagan cuts to come. And as for today, President Bush’s tax policy’s impact on the post-9/11 economy becomes more apparent by the day.

John F. Kennedy’s standing as a president continues to be debated; but even so, one thing is clear: on tyranny and taxes, JFK was no liberal. His leftist admirers would do well to learn from the real JFK, not the made-up one of their fertile imaginations.


If Kennedy had lived, would history have been different?
The real JFK

November 21, 2003 | Page 10

THIS NOVEMBER 22 marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It was a traumatic experience for people in the U.S. and around the globe. Those old enough to remember can tell you the exact spot they were standing when they heard the news. Kennedy seemed to represent a new, vigorous, liberal leadership, after the gray Eisenhower years, committed to reforming American society and making a better world.

Many liberal Democrats also believe there was a deeper tragedy in Kennedy’s death--that it literally altered the course of U.S. history. As they see it, the so-called "turmoil" of the 1960s--the ghetto uprisings, the war in Vietnam and the resulting triumph of conservative politics--all would have been avoided if Kennedy had lived.

Is any of this true? Here, JOE ALLEN explains why Kennedy’s political history reveals not only an utterly conventional American politician, but an ardent Cold Warrior who brought the world the closest it’s ever been to nuclear annihilation.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WHILE JOHN F. Kennedy was the youngest man ever elected president when be beat Republican Vice President Richard M. Nixon in 1960, he and his family had a long political record. His grandfather, John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, was mayor of Boston, and his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was a rich businessman with a growing influence in the national Democratic Party.

Joe Kennedy also had extensive ties to the underworld, ties he built during the Prohibition era that lasted a lifetime. He had so much money and influence that President Franklin Roosevelt appointed him U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain in 1937.

The Kennedys, like other rich Catholic families in the 1930s, were extremely anti-Communist and anti-Semitic. They outrightly supported fascist Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War and sought to "appease" Hitler, fearing that another war in Europe would lead to revolution as it did in 1917. Joe Kennedy was eventually recalled as ambassador by Roosevelt, thus ending his hopes of being the first Catholic president of the U.S. He transferred those ambitions onto his sons.

John Kennedy parlayed his military experience in the Second World War into running for political office. He was elected to Congress from a predominately Irish and Italian working-class district in North Cambridge, Mass., a seat later held by Speaker of the House "Tip" O’ Neil.

Kennedy came to Congress in 1947--the same year as his future archrival Richard Nixon. While they were from competing political parties, both embraced the anti-Communism sponsored by the Truman administration. They also supported the programs and policies that turned the U.S. into the dominant imperialist power in those years, from the creation of the CIA to NATO.

With the help of his father’s cash, John F. Kennedy defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge in 1952. Kennedy’s years in the Senate coincided with the fever pitch of McCarthyism. Kennedy supported some of the most repressive anti-Communist legislation of the era, including the McCarran Act. His brother, Bobby, worked on McCarthy’s staff, and Joe Kennedy saw him as a political ally.

Kennedy spent most of his Senate years planning his jump to the presidency. He had a book ghost-written for him, Profiles in Courage, which chronicled the lives of past Senate leaders. It won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1957.

Kennedy sought to raise his profile around issues that would give him national exposure. He and his brother chose union corruption, particularly the mob-tied Teamsters union lead by its new leader James R. Hoffa.

The labor movement was ravaged by the purge of Communists and socialists after the war. And the Taft-Hartley Act, passed during the same period, criminalized many of the labor movement’s prized tactics. Now corruption and the mob ties of labor leaders were used for a new round of congressional hearings--lead by the Kennedys--that resulted in new federal laws regulating trade union activity.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE 1960 presidential race was shaped by the Cold War, with Kennedy charging that the Eisenhower administration had allowed "missile gap" to develop between the U.S. and the USSR. Not only was this charge completely fictitious, but after he took office, Kennedy began a new ballistic missile race with Russians.

During the election, Kennedy tread lightly on the issue of civil rights. To ensure Southern Dixiecrat support of his campaign, Kennedy chose Texas senator Lyndon Johnson--a segregationist--for his running mate.

In the end, Kennedy won by a little more than a 100,000 votes out of 69 million cast. Moreover, Kennedy’s victory was insured by outright vote fraud, particularly in Illinois. His brother Robert was largely appointed attorney general to prevent any serious investigation into vote fraud from taking place.

For people angry at Bush for stealing the 2000 by vote fraud in Florida, it may come as shock that a liberal icon like Kennedy came to power in the same manner. Much of what people know about Kennedy comes from his inauguration speech, with its rhetorical flourishes that seem to inspire liberal activism.

They are largely misinterpreted. It is a conservative, Cold War, anti-Communist speech. When Kennedy declared: "Ask not what you country can do for you but what you can do for your country," he wasn’t asking people to go out and fight poverty, he was saying don’t expect the federal government to hugely expand social welfare programs.

When Kennedy said, "Let every nation know...that we shall pay any price, bear any burden...in order to insure the survival and success of liberty," he was not talking about the U.S. defending the right of nations to self-determination but that the U.S. would intervene against any threats to its power, like in Cuba, that just had a revolution against a U.S.-backed dictatorship.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

KENNEDY’S PRESIDENCY is remembered for a series of crises. The three that reveal the most about the Kennedy administration were its policies toward Cuba, civil rights and Vietnam.

The 1959 Cuban revolution had a traumatic effect on the U.S. ruling class. Not only did the U.S. have extensive investment in Cuba and see it as a valuable source of raw materials but, until the revolution, the U.S. had been largely unchallenged in its "backyard" of Latin America.

The Kennedy administration was committed to the destruction of the Castro government as much as the Eisenhower administration. Under the previous administration, the CIA had trained an exiled army to invade Cuba and restore a pro-U.S. government to power. When Kennedy came to office in January 1961, he gave the green light for the operation.

The invasion at the Bay of Pigs was a massive failure. The CIA army was swiftly defeated, and the U.S. was quickly exposed as the force behind the operation. Kennedy was humiliated by the failure but continued operations to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government, including plans to assassinate him with the help of the American Mafia.

It was largely due to U.S. belligerence that Castro allowed Russia to put ballistic missiles in Cuba in hopes that this would keep the U.S. from carrying out any further military adventures. After U-2 surveillance revealed Russian missiles in Cuba in October 1962, Kennedy responded with a military blockade of Cuba and the threat of nuclear war if they weren’t removed.

"We will not prematurely...risk the cost of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouths--but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced," Kennedy declared in his address to the nation on October 22, 1962. The Russians didn’t run the blockade and withdrew their missiles. And this is how the world came the closest ever to nuclear holocaust--under John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy administration coincided with the growing power of the civil rights movement. While Kennedy courted the Black vote in the North during the 1960 election, he also wanted to maintain the support of the Southern wing of his party.

As Freedom Rides and lunch counter sit-ins spread throughout the South, Kennedy and his brother, the attorney general, attempted to get the more militant wing of the movement, led by the Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress on Racial Equality, to cease their militant actions. "I’ll get you tax-free status for voter registration, if you cut-out this sit-in shit," Bobby Kennedy said.

While Kennedy hosted Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others after the 1963 March on Washington, he put enormous pressure on them to make sure there was no criticism of his policies at the march. Civil rights activist John Lewis had part of his speech censored by march organizers because it criticized Kennedy.

While Kennedy gave high-profile speeches on civil rights, his timid action infuriated many, including one writer who described him as showing "more profile than courage" on the issue.

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THE AREA in which Kennedy’s legacy is subject to the most mythmaking is the Vietnam War, with the argument being that, if Kennedy had lived, he would have withdrawn from Vietnam after the 1964 election. Not only is there no evidence for this, but it misses the more important point that Kennedy escalated the U.S. presence in Vietnam that Johnson merely built upon later.

Soon after Kennedy’s inauguration in 1961, Gen. Edward Lansdale--a veteran CIA operative in the Far East--met with Kennedy and presented a report on the deteriorating situation in South Vietnam. Lansdale’s report urged increased support for the pro-U.S. regime of Ngo Dinh Diem. During the meeting, Kennedy is reported to have turned to Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Walt Rostow and said: "This is the worst one we’ve got isn’t it?"

After the botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and being bullied by Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev at the Vienna summit, Kennedy didn’t want another defeat on his hands. Kennedy was determined to re-establish U.S. "credibility" in the world. In his own words, "Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place."

Kennedy escalated American involvement in South Vietnam to the point where the U.S. was essentially fighting a proxy war on the ground. The revolutionary nationalists of the National Liberation Front (NLF) were committed to the overthrow of Diem and the unification Vietnam.

Kennedy was determined to prevent this, fearing that an NLF victory would inspire revolutionary nationalists around the globe. From several hundred American military advisors, Kennedy increased the number to over 15,000. When Diem became a liability, Kennedy ordered his assassination and the overthrow of his government in early November 1963.

Soon Kennedy himself was killed by an assassin’s bullet. If Kennedy had lived, he would have undoubtedly pursued the same policies of total war that Johnson did. Looking back four decades now on the presidency of John F. Kennedy, it’s clear that, in spite of the rhetoric, he was prepared to have us pay any price and bear any burden to defend American capitalism.

Tell me which one came from The Vanguard and which one from Socialist Worker Online.

Yeah. JFK was a collectivist... :rolleyes:

Do you mean Executive Order 11110 that would have gutted the Federal Reserve? (One of many conspiracy theories...) Which monopolies?

The steel monopolies.
Collectivist work ethic? maybe, but certainly not the modern Democrat entitlement mentality.

The Democrats are not leftists.

Opposing the USSR doesn't make someone a radical right-winger. From your history lesson it appears that Kennedy sometimes swung left and sometimes swung right.

on tyranny and taxes, JFK was no liberal.
If you ask me, a real liberal actively opposes tyranny, not appeases it. I question the idea that foreign interventionism is necessarily right-wing. I can think of both right and left-wing politicians who have favoured interventionism and militarism.

The steel monopolies.

The Democrats are not leftists.At least not enough for MoveOn.org...
Opposing the USSR doesn't make someone a radical right-winger. From your history lesson it appears that Kennedy sometimes swung left and sometimes swung right.Hmmm. OK, how about the ultimate NeoCon Litmus Test - Hawkish & anti-abortion... Yep. There's JFK.
If you ask me, a real liberal actively opposes tyranny, not appeases it. I question the idea that foreign interventionism is necessarily right-wing. I can think of both right and left-wing politicians who have favoured interventionism and militarism.But not cutting taxes to stimulate economic growth. But not actively opposing the Unions.

At best(?), Kennedy was a Hawkish, Supply-side, Anti Communist, Pro Life Centrist... He certainly would NOT be welcome in today's DNC.

Kennedy wasa Hawkish

No, he wasn't hawkish, at least relative to the US politcal climate back then.