Liberal Logic: Commie Killed Kennedy = Tea Party Racist
Saturday Night Card Game
There has been a not too subtle attempt this week to smear the Tea Party as racist and violent in connection with the 50th Anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
What does the Tea Party have to do with the assassination?
It’s an outgrowth of the discredited and time-worn eliminationist narrative, that the modern “right wing” and the Tea Party in particular are the inheritors of the “paranoid style of politics” from the 1960s.
The logic, if you call it that, is that Dallas was a city infused with hate and anti-Catholic bigotry, that bigotry was reflective of a larger Southern bigotry including racism, and that the Tea Party is the outgrowth of that racist, bigoted past which led to the assassination.
- The New York Times, The City With a Death Wish in Its Eye
- The Washington Post, Tea party has roots in the Dallas of 1963
- The Washingtonian, “The city of hate had, in fact, killed the President
- Slate, In A Prophetic Letter, A Dallas Citizen Begged JFK Not To Visit
There is a problem with all this, of course. Kennedy was killed by a Lee Harvey Oswald, a Commie, not the “right wing.”
Let me repeat, because this is the internet:
JACK KENNEDY WAS KILLED BY A COMMIE!!!
You would not know that if you read the attempt to portray the Kennedy assassination as the result of right wing, bigoted hatred in the mainstream liberal media and blogosphere:
Rich Lowry notes (also see video at bottom of post), The Kennedy Conspiracy in Plain Sight:
As James Piereson writes in his brilliant book Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, liberals had the choice after the assassination to make Kennedy a martyr to civil rights or admit that he was a casualty of the Cold War. They found the notion of Kennedy dying for racial progress much more congenial and useful, even though it depended on a rank distortion.
The interpretive misdirection began in the immediate aftermath of Lee Harvey Oswald’s act of murder. Pundits and analysts still follow the well-worn script, often boiling down their indictment to one word: Dallas….
Slate calls a letter to Kennedy’s press secretary warning JFK not to visit Dallas because he might be killed by a right-wing mob “eerily prophetic,” which would be unassailably true . . . if Kennedy had been killed by a right-wing mob….
Prof David Bernstein noting the NYT and WaPo columns writes (via Instapundit):
Look, guys. Lee Harvey Oswald murdered JFK. Oswald was a Communist. Not a small c, “all we are saying is give peace a chance and let’s support Negro civil rights” kind of Communist, but someone so committed to the cause (and so blind to the nature of the USSR) that he actually went to live in the Soviet Union. And when that didn’t work out, Oswald became a great admirer of Castro. He apparently would have gone to live in Cuba before the assassination if the Cubans would have had him. Before assassinating Kennedy, Oswald tried to kill a retired right-wing general. As near as we can tell, he targeted Kennedy in revenge for Kennedy’s anti-Castro actions.
The attempt to at best distract us from who the killer was and why he killed JFK, and at worst to pin the blame on entirely innocent people for inciting Dallas opinion against JFK (or perhaps to imply that the right-wingers plotted the assassination), even though those innocents were exactly the type of people Oswald hated, is just pathetic, and the Times and Post should be embarrassed for publishing these pieces. The Post piece is especially embarrassing because it explicitly links Dallas “right-wing extremism” circa 1963 to the modern “Tea Party,” as if to say, “if the Tea Party had been around in 1963, one of its members would have killed Kennedy.”
My only real disagreement with Prof. Bernstein is that he only put Communist in bold, not in H2 font size, so let me help him out:
Communist
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Comments
I have studied the assassination for years and currently reading Vincent Bugliosi’s huge tome on the matter, “Reclaiming History.” Yes, Lee Harvey Oswald was a Communist, America hater. I remember the day after the assassination, the San Jose Mercury News had a picture of Oswald on the front page, giving the clenched fist salute of Communist revolution. (I still have the page.)
I saw a picture two years ago of a Tea Partier clenching a fist, so it’s pretty clear what happened.
Usually when I salute liberals I am one finger short of a fist.
Some needs to slap these revisionists in the face. “All the lies that they can fit” should be the mantra of the New York Times.
“All the lies that they can fit…
Know who was Tea Party back in ’63?
Jack Ruby.
“the modern ‘right wing’ and the Tea Party in particular are the inheritors of the ‘paranoid style of politics’ from the 1960s”
A curious delusion (assuming it’s not just outright propaganda).
Leftism is built around paranoia; rightism is based on the idea that the world and its systems tend to function via self-generated order, and paranoia need not apply. Consider the leftist delusion that economies (as well as entire societies) should be run via centralized, intelligent (hah!) control. The very concept of a natural market is anathema. Rightists have faith that markets work without direction; price is simply the ratio of demand to supply, with no human guidance required.
Paranoia is inherent in the leftist version. An uncontrolled market must be a battlefield, in which different economic categories of consumers fight for resources. The rightist market concept is automatically a cooperative one. Consider a large auction, like eBay in its early days. Some parties have things to sell, others want to buy them; price isn’t set by anyone, it happens naturally. The entire procedure is orderly and cooperative; no intervention by a Central Committee is necessary. The rightist concept is obviously a success (that is, it correlates well with reality).
Of course criminality is possible in either the leftist or rightist systems, and dealing with criminality may well involve some central authority to apply corrective force. But that’s not the central governing principle which makes the world go ’round.
Communism and it’s nationalist flunky, fascism, have cause more suffering in this world, then all of the religious bigots have combined, including crusaders, inquisitors and jihadists.
Communism seems to be what “Community Organizing” is all about. They’ll just organize all you “Racist, religious bigots” into “Re-education camps.”
btw, ever notice how most everything related to communism is often put in quotation marks? Euphemism is their stock and trade.
Liberalism is a mental illness: victim mentality, paranoia, projection, entitlement and emotional hysteria.
And all these years, I’ve thought LBJ killed Kennedy.
Do you remember that rag “The Realist” from the late ’60s?
Calling Dallas “anti-Catholic” is hilarious. Anyone from Texas can tell you in most of the state, the Catholic church has a very deep foundation. Catholic schools are almost literally everywhere.
As far as the Tea Party being from the “paranoid” sixties, well, that’s just the purest invention by the left. The fact is, the Tea Party was only awakened by the catastrophic events of 2008 and the ensuing continuing catastrophes. If Obama had not lied about everything he “believed in,” these Americans would contentedly be going about their business, just as apolitical as they had been in the previous 20 years.
He would reduce the deficit: lie.
He would be a post-racial president: lie.
He would focus on the economy: lie.
He didn’t hear Jeremiah Wright, and didn’t endorse his view of America: lie.
Obama woke the sleeping dog. They say even dogs can tell the difference between someone tripping over, versus kicking them. Well, America the sleeping dog knows it’s been kicked.
Just off the top of my head (used to live in the area), Catholic high schools in the Dallas area: Jesuit, Ursuline, Hockaday, Bishop Dunne, Bishop Lynch, Cistercian, and the new John Paul II. Ah, but I can hear the liberals now, “is that all?” “So???”
But what do you expect from the people who are convinced Lincoln was a Democrat? That the Tea Party is violent and “astro-turf”, but the Occupy people are peaceful and “grass root”? They are beyond reason and logic. They will believe anything the NYT or Chris Matthews or Rachel Maddow tells them.
Hockady is a private high school for girls (not associated with the catholic church). Primarily non-catholic student body.
However i do agree that Dallas has a large catholic population today and during the 1960’s.
With the exception of the New John Paul High School, all the other high schools mentioned were charted prior to 1960. The University of Dallas is a catholic university. As of 1960, there were approx 10-15 catholic elementary schools, and today approximately 20-25 in the Dallas metroplex.
People seem to forget, that the crowds at Love field and lining the parade route were quite enthusiatic, certainly not reflecting any hate – with the exception of one communist.
Actually, I’d argue that Bush’s “Wall Street Bailout”, the one John McCain quit his President campaign to go vote for, woke the sleeping dog. Obama’s doubling down on Bush’s panic attack pissed it off and set it snarling.
Lee Harvey Oswald took a bus to the scene of the biggie crime .
The original working class Greenie.
Interesting.
On Friday (?) Neil Cavuto interviewed a guy who worked with Oswald at the book depository who told of giving Oswald a ride to work that day, as he did often. Oswald had a package he described as curtain rods. Still a “Greenie” since carpooling is as good a public transit to those dopes.
Cavuto’s transcripts of interviews stop at 11/21, so I can’t provide a link… I couldn’t anyway since most of this computer stuff is beyond me and my grandson is busy elsewhere.
The “Single-Idea Theory” explains the crazy trajectory of liberal logic 50 years later.
They couldn’t fathom or accept a pathetic commie killing “Camelot.” So, the story was twisted and it ricocheted off reality, passing through layers of “right-wing climate,” finally lodging in the Tea Party’s heart.
“the modern ‘right wing’ and the Tea Party in particular are the inheritors of the ‘paranoid style of politics’ from the 1960s”
And the left had the same paranoid, vicious politics back then. I caught hell in First Grade because my parents were for “warmonger” Goldwater. The grown-ups next door were incredulous when I said my parents were for Goldwater, and they were sure I didn’t know what I was saying. The “Daisy Ad” approved by Bill Moyers, CBS calling him a Nazi (haven’t changed much), and much more vitriol was par for the left, even back then.
And when officers arrived was in the 2nd floor break room calmly drinking a coke.
Here’s a good article quoting Bob Schieffer of CBS, who gave Oswald’s mom a ride that day. He explains Oswald just wasn’t a Dallas man.
http://houston.culturemap.com/news/entertainment/11-22-13-the-day-jfk-died-tv-anchor-recalls-exclusive-interview-with-assassins-mother/
I can assure you Dallas did not kill Kennedy. In fact, Dallas was never filled with right wingers; rather, wanna be New Yorkers; not that they killed Kennedy either. The feeling in Texas has always been Dallas wanted to be cosmopolitan like New York.
Where do these idiots get these ideas?
Oswald’s mother used to baby sit for some of the wealthy in Fort Worth.
I thought being anti-Catholic was a good thing to liberals.
Only the southern ones.
What, the Tea Party hates white people with back braces now? What won’t they hate? They probably hate haters too.
And I can’t help but notice that in “bigoted” Texas, a white jury convicted and sentenced to death the white supremacists who dragged James Byrd to death behind a pickup truck. Still, violent yahoos dead by legal injection after due process of law doesn’t satisfy the Left, since the crime was defined as a “hate crime” (I guess a “love crime” or “respect crime” is something only a Leftist or Leftist client can commit). For the record, I’m not a Texan, although I have nothing against that tribe, and would willingly become one if I had a good job or other reason to move there.