"His brother was later assasinated by an ardent Palestinian, upset that Kennedy supported Israel. If it were left to the Democrats today, I wonder if we would abandon Israel. Almost certainly, we would be heeding the call to daily prayer. "

Can't resist getting in a little ridiculous slander? Don't you feel even a little bit guilty about the ridiculous assertions about one particular political party, especially when so many of them have died and are dying for their country? For shame.
Michael Czeiszperger | Email | Homepage | 05.15.06 - 10:43 am | #

So, Michael C., are you one of those "I support the troops but not the mission" people?
J. Peden | Email | Homepage | 05.15.06 - 11:18 am | #

And Michael C. I guess you agree with the earlier statement that if it was left to the Dems we would all be speaking russian in a brave new world? I know I do.
CharlesJ | Email | Homepage | 05.15.06 - 11:26 am | #

Michael,

1. "His brother was later assasinated by an ardent Palestinian, upset that Kennedy supported Israel" -- Undeniably True

2. "If it were left to the Democrats today, I wonder if we would abandon Israel." -- Speculation, most likey true, though open for argument. The left certainly supports the "Palestinian Cause". What do the Palestinians want more than anything? An end to Israel. Certainly something to "wonder" about without being slanderous.

3. "Almost certainly, we would be heeding the call to daily prayer" -- Again, speculation, though again the argument can be supported without much effort and certainly without being slanderous. All one need do is quote some prominent Democrats.

The men fighting and dying for their country are not the men leading us to or form destruction. All of our military bleed red, white, and blue regardless of politics.
Bryan | Email | Homepage | 05.15.06 - 11:37 am | #

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that 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." Were George Bush to say that, imagine the shrieks and howls that would resound in reply. Of course, it was Kennedy who said that, in his inaugural address, Jan. 20, 1961.
ELC | Email | Homepage | 05.15.06 - 11:40 am | #

I am a registered Democrat. A party that no longer exists. Why do I stay a Democrat? I stay a Democrat mainly to enjoy correcting people who call me "you XXXX Republican" and telling them I am a registered Democrat. After the stuttering and spitting subsides, the are ususlly left concerned that anyone registered as a Democrat can be a 'conservative'.

One day a local congressman showed up on my door step to campaign for re-election. We disagreed on everything he said. Finially in obvious frustration... he looked at his roster thingie and said, "Wait a minute, is says here you are a Democrat." I asked, "Does it also say there I am stupid?" He left angry.
jim b | Email | Homepage | 05.15.06 - 11:49 am | #

For a long time I've been asking how the party of John Kennedy became the party of Lee Harvey Oswald. Nobody seems to be able to answer. They got everything they wanted in the late 60s-early 70s, and it apparently made them even more bitter and frustrated.
Trimegistus | Email | Homepage | 05.15.06 - 12:26 pm | #

If Buddy Holly's death was the "day the music died",Then the assasination Of JFK was no doubt the same for the Dems.The party has never been or never will be any better.
brother Paul | Email | Homepage | 05.15.06 - 12:28 pm | #

When the Communists were at the height of their power, they sent out people to indoctrinate. Those people established themselves in those areas that had the most influence - the universities that formed the minds of the young. The fact that the young leaders of the post assination period were more communist/socialist that Democrat is a testament to the success of that program. And we still feel its effects in our schools today.
"Give me a child till he is seven and I'll have him for all his life"
"As the twig is bent, so grows the tree" Etc.
suek | Email | Homepage | 05.15.06 - 12:45 pm | #

I spent 40 years as a registered democrat, but unlike others I can no longer be part of a party that no longer supports democratic ideals. I registered 3 years ago as an Independent.
I was also a Liberal, but have since become a conservative.
In both cases I did not leave the party or change my ideas. They swerved hard to the left and neither represent liberals or democrats.
Dennis | Email | Homepage | 05.15.06 - 1:03 pm | #

suek: The quotations that you cite relate well to "It takes a village..,." the mantra of the commune.
onlineanalyst | Email | Homepage | 05.15.06 - 3:06 pm | #

>>"It takes a village..,." the mantra of the commune.>>

Well...it's how you socialize children, no matter what society them to be as an adult. Seems to me the first was from the Jesuits...I don't know the source of the second.
suek | Email | Homepage | 05.15.06 - 4:50 pm | #

suek: maybe you already know the additional answer to the question, "Where have all the American Communists gone?"

I can't remember if I've bloviated about this before, but, anyway, the other answer is that Communists have joined the Democratic Pary as a conscious tactic designed to control this Party.

About 22 years ago U.S. Communists correctly realized that they were not going to get anywhere in trying to be elected as Communists in the U.S., while they still needed to obtain Marx's critical first majority win in order to work the Marxist playbook [next, democracy would simply be abolished]. So they converted to become Democrats, an obvious choice for them as a path towards achieving a Marxist majority.

This infiltration started in 1984, and I saw them do it at that time, though at first I didn't really know what to make of it: I have known a guy, since he was 12, about as well as you can know someone. He is an incompetent self-absorbed racist and sexist controllist, partially disguised. I always allowed him leeway here, because he was seen by all his peers, including me, as a harmless buffoon, and he organized fun things like barbecues and basketball games.

But along the way he [somewhat startlingly at the time] managed to get himself situated as the leader of the/a Communist Party in San Francisco around 1974. Then around the time of 1984 he very abruptly got married and became a Democrat, and as though no one would notice this. His personal experience of invisibility was especially bizarre since he had to know that at least I would notice it.

Since he never tried to explain his conversion to me or even said it had happened, I just played along with his illusory invisiblity. His move struck me as a significant phenomenon of some kind, and I wanted him to think that I had not noticed it as significant, since this also seemed to be exactly what he intended.

He then became a University Professor in Madison, Wisc., specalizing in Vietnam! At that time I still didn't know what to make of his actions. So when he proudly announced his specialty to me, also strangely thinking that I would be approving of his interest in Vietnam, all I could think instead was, "Who the f*** would want to do that?"

Now I believe I know what this all probably means. According to Lowell Ponte, by 2001 the Communist Party USA was advising anyone asking about what to do to support the Party, to simply vote Democratic. Ponte gives the inception of this tactic as 1984 - I really don't remember exactly when I saw my friend convert, but it was somewhere around then.

I know my friend and know that he is after self-glorification by way of a grand mission which he is really incapable of analyzing. I suppose he could validly call himself a Liberal and a Democrat. But he still has the same dysfunctional controllist nature and ends. So he's still a Communist regardless. [In the past I trapped him once so he couldn't get away physically - we had to walk 10 miles down a trail - and got him to admit that when Communism eventuated, he would not need to be a worker but rather one of the enlightened Party managers because "someone has to manage". He also admitted that he would forcibly take all my stuff if it was necessary to a Communist revolution.]

Branching out along on this thread: about a year ago,I presented my analysis about where the Communists might have gone to another Liberal friend of mine who certainly thinks he does not like Communists. He seemed to willingly accept that large numbers of Communists had now become Democrats. But he, literally instanataneously, rationalized this fact by asserting something to the effect that the Communists had merely finally seen that the true path to all that is good lies with the Democratic Party and so had renounced Communism. That's all he said about it, and that's all he wanted to say about it. So I didn't press it.

Following this story as it progresses along its Wonderland path of apparent gross lunacy, this second Liberal friend of mine has also tried to tell be that he is really a "moderate Republican", but is "frustrated" because he just can't find any moderates in the Rublican Party.

But strangely, he too thinks that I have not noticed what he has been doing over the past 30 years. After all, I've only virtually lived with the guy for long periods here and there over these 30 yrs.. His actions involve, for example, the fact that at one time he personally was doing the most number of abortions per man-hour of perhaps anyone in the whole got-dam World. Justified, as I have heard him solemnly say, by one of his two sacred missions in life, to "support women's rights"; he is also an obsessive-compulsive environmentalist who is so totally hypocritical that you probably wouldn't even believe what I have seen him do - but justified by his other sacred mission in life, to "protect the environment"; he loves Bill Clinton, and has referred to electing specific Democrat candidates in terms of "we" needing them elected; he states that Iraq is Vietnam, the U.N. is not dysfunctionally corrupt, and thinks Howard Dean makes sense, etc..

So what was I to make of his allegation that he was indeed a moderate Republican and couldn't find any within the Republican Party? Obviously he is trying to get me to stop voting for Republicans. He's used some other tactics to this end, and I find them all pathetic, though they are really quite malicious. This guy instead thinks he is very slick, but all the local cowboy rednecks see right through him too.

How many Liberals think they are invisible? Can they even recognize who the LIberal is right next to them?
J. Peden | Email | Homepage | 05.15.06 - 5:44 pm | #

>> "Where have all the American Communists gone?">>

They are chameleons...they use any organization that has a following and and organization and somehow subvert its members to its purpose. They can't stay invisible for long!
suek | Email | Homepage | 05.15.06 - 7:26 pm | #

What I remember about JFK and Cuba wasn't so much the missle chrisis, but the Bay of Pigs.

JFK wanted it to be an above board war, and vetoed air cover by american planes to help the Cubans trying to stage a counter revolution. The result was what JFK described the result as "a bigger screwup than PT109."

The moral? Let the military fight the war, don't run it by polls.
Frank Borger | Email | Homepage | 05.16.06 - 6:19 am | #

" I was glued to the TV set, saw the assasination of Jack Ruby; ..."

Surely you mean Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby?
Cynic | Email | Homepage | 05.16.06 - 10:46 am | #

Suek,

They aren't invisible.

All you got to do is follow the money, honey.

Follow George Soros, Tereza Heinz and Steven Bing's money and you will find it not only connected to the Democratic party but to most of the Marxist/Maoist/Communist anti American organizations around. Including ANSWER and their front organization CUPJ. CUPJ was the sponsor of those "demonstrations" at the Republican convention not to mention almost all of the major "anti war" and "pro illegal alien" demonstrations of the last 4 years.

The reason why most think they are "invisible" is that the MSM and their buddies in Hollywood are little more then the propaganda wing of the Democrats and their Marxist/Maoist/Communist anti American supporters and the "sugah daddies and mommies" who foot the bills. Unfortunately for them, thanks to the internet, too many see right through them. 40 years ago when the MSM was truly the gatekeeper of information the propaganda worked, it doesn't now.
Nahanni | Email | Homepage | 05.17.06 - 9:58 am | #

I'm not sure I'm convinced by the article. It's a thin slice of "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" that points to a couple of examples around the time of JFK's death, as assumes that must have triggered it all.

Which only says to me that the transformation had come from somewhere else, and was gathering force regardless. Of course, believing that would require you to take seriously many of the possibilities he dismisses at the beginning.

If you're trying to know your enemy, you must genuinely know them. I don't think this fits the bill - it looks instead like caricature, and that is a hazardous basis for plans.
Joe Katzman | Email | Homepage | 05.17.06 - 10:32 am | #

The American left had been running interference for the Communists since before World War II (e.g., the left's flip-flop from opposing to suporting American involvement when Hitler invaded Russia). I remember the same thing happening when it first came out that Oswald had Communist associations-- liberal voices favored every possible explanation (except the true one): No, it couldn't have been him, it had to be one of those Dallas right-wingers. It was him, but he'd must have been duped/co-opted/framed by the CIA. Or the mafia. Or driven to kill by the "climate of hate" in Texas. Whatever...

Sixty years of turning a blind eye to real enemies on the left has so debilitated the Democrats that they are no longer able to recognize ANY enemies, no matter what side they're on.
Old Grouch | Email | Homepage | 05.17.06 - 1:00 pm | #

The article you mentioned was quite good. However, I take issue with the premise that "Kennedy's death marked the beginning of the demise of liberalism".

My view is that this event marked the beginning of the demise of liberalism in the Democratic Party.

Maybe people don't realize this, but Ronald Reagan and JFK's politics were not that far apart. I could go into it here, but it would take much too long.

Liberalism now (well, for awhile, at least) resides in the GOP.
DrLaszlo | Email | Homepage | 05.17.06 - 1:26 pm | #

All the American Communists are in these movements: environmentalist, feminist, pro-illegal immigration, anti-religion, anti-business, pro-union, pro-NEA; and in Hollywood and the MSM. They are more numerous than they ever were. They are at least 75% of the Dems but few would admit it.

I left the Dems in 1998 (and yes, actually they left me), but jim b mentioned the best reason to have stayed a Dem. To drive the rest of them insane. (Maybe that's Zell's reason.) As a Republican I'm dismissed by them, and as an apostate I'm reviled.

Well, nothing worth having ever came easily, and conservatism is proof.
Peg C. | Email | Homepage | 05.17.06 - 1:43 pm | #

Dr. Sanity,

The nasty responses you are drawing in this comments section suggests to me that you and Mr. Piereson have a valid point.
Kurt | Email | Homepage | 05.17.06 - 4:48 pm | #

"If it were left to the Democrats today, I wonder if we would abandon Israel. Almost certainly, we would be heeding the call to daily prayer.

The Democrats certainly keep drifting further and further away from anything I could ever support."

The NY Times printed the "Holy Mother Mary", the picture of Jesus' mother with dung and genitals, on the very same page it advocated respect for the Muslims who rioted over the Danish cartoons.

Drifting, hell. More like taking steady steps in that direction.

Drifting, hell.
Jim C. | Email | Homepage | 05.17.06 - 5:53 pm | #

> Liberalism now (well, for awhile, at least) resides in the GOP.

Unfortunately, DL, so does a hell of a lot of socialism.
Ohbloodyhell | Email | Homepage | 05.17.06 - 6:01 pm | #

What a terrible lack of nuances. The author John LeCarre says the US is currently suffering from a grave political madness. It is disappointing that even far more educated people than the C-student at the helm are caught in the same black and white thinking. Open up to the world and get oriented towards reality!
Godtfred B | Email | Homepage | 09.04.06 - 6:29 pm | #