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2007-07-23 Home Front: Culture Wars

Trapped in Camelot, or, How the Kennedy Assassination Shattered Liberalism

Ed Driscoll

What happens to a nation when a world-changing event occurs of such tremendous magnitude that half the population can't process who caused it?

September 11? Try the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As James Piereson recently told me, "If Kennedy had been killed by a right winger with the same evidence that condemned Oswald, there never would have been any talk about conspiracies. It would have fit neatly into the moral framework of 1950s and '60s-style liberalism. And the liberals would have been off and running with it, and no one would have talked about conspiracies."

That's the subject of Piereson's new book, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism, in which he argues both that Kennedy was a victim of the Cold War, and that the repression of his killer's ideology caused tremendous psychological damage to the collective health of the nation.

It's not primarily an attempt to once again prove that Oswald acted alone, as authors such as Gerald Posner, and most recently, Vincent Bugliosi have demonstrated, to the satisfaction of virtually everyone whose name isn't Oliver Stone. But it is an attempt to explain an incredible transformational shift in American culture, which occurred during the years from 1963 and 1968, particularly in the media and on college campuses. . . .

Go read it all. I'm not sure the theory explains everything it purports to, but it's sure worth thinking about.

Posted by Mike 2007-07-23 17:13|| || Front Page|| [11132 views ] Top

#1 This theme continued into the tearing down of the Berlin Wall era. The biggest mistake made during that 2-3 year period - the biggest dropping of the ball of Bush I - was to blow the opportunity to discredit all forms of socialism in the same fashion that Nazism was discredited at the end of WWII.

Yes, the campus and infotainment left would have howled, but a bigger, better man would have used the bully pulpit to great effect, basically saying that a movement (collectivism) whose evil was as great as or perhaps even greater than that of fascism had been defeated. The populace was happy and interested and a very public airing of the stuff from Venona or the "Black Book" would have discredited communism for all time.

Instead, we defeated the most virulent form while allowing another one the space to flourish on campus and in the infotainment industry. As a result, we have the postmodern left plaguing the West and inhibiting our ability to accomplish much of anything.

Posted by no mo uro 2007-07-23 17:47|| 2007-07-23 17:47|| Front Page Top

#2 It helps moonbats sleep thinking that Camelot was taken down by some right-wing conspiracy. I mean why would a single person (commie to boot) dislike JFK? Also JFK was not as left-wing as he is made out to be. He disliked commies (see Cuba, Vietnam, etc) so it makes perfectly good sense to me that a commie convert would hate JFK.

Posted by Cyber Sarge 2007-07-23 18:08|| 2007-07-23 18:08|| Front Page Top

#3 ...and there are actally some people around that really think Teddy wasn't driving Rose's Oldsmobile that night. Fuckin Nixon!

Posted by tu3031 2007-07-23 21:06|| 2007-07-23 21:06|| Front Page Top

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