Howard Chandler Christy Depicts The Founders Signing The U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787. "Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States" (1940)

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

What Makes A President Great?

The Insight of an American Historian, H.W. Brands

Who is your favorite president? Is it one of the Rushmore titans, Washington, Lincoln, and company? Or do you have a soft spot for Jimmy Carter or Nixon? Several months ago, Historian H.W. Brands gave a lecture on this topic at the Hauenstein Center. His criteria for presidential greatness is fascinating, although I disagree with some of it.

Brands' criteria for measuring presidential greatness consists of the following:


*Did the president meet the expectations of the presidency in his contemporary age?
*Did the president have a greater impact on American life and history compared with his recent predecessors and successors? 
*Did the president face a crisis great enough to shake the foundations of American life?
*Many things happen in American life which have nothing to do with the U.S. Constitution. In such cases, did the president find a solution that the Constitution didn't provide for?
*The great presidents were dividers, not uniters. Did the president use divisiveness cleverly enough to get elected and re-elected?


It seems fair to judge a president's leadership against the expectations of his day and age. Technology and global connections are of a far different nature than they were in George Washington's day. On the flip side, there is a danger in a leader always giving in to the demands of the crowd. Presidents are elected because people trust them to have greater wisdom [than themselves] to make the big decisions. A president must keep this in mind when opinion polls swing one way, then the other.

Having a greater (or transformative) impact on American life seems a prerequisite for greatness. After all, biographers and textbook writers need stories to tell. Still, Brands may take this a little further than caution should counsel. Adolf Hitler and Genghis Khan had a transformative impact on world history. Yet, we don't hold them in high esteem (to put it mildly).

Brands is not alone among historians who claim a great, earth shattering crisis is essential to providing a president with sufficient opportunity to bring out his greatness. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and FDR are placed at the top of most academic lists of presidential greatness precisely because each of them had to tackle a crisis that put the existence and/or prosperity of America at risk. Brands concurs.

This view deserves to be challenged, and some have made the case for presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan, who avoided a major war and fostered prosperity during two terms. Drama and crisis need not be a criteria for greatness. There are other means through which a major impact (if quietly) can be made on the world, namely through smart diplomacy, sound economic policies, and the preservation and expansion of human freedom. It was not for nothing that Eisenhower didn't use an atomic bomb on another nation during his presidency, or that bloodshed didn't accompany the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe during Bush's term.

Historians are impressed by those who are ambitious for power and are successful in gaining it. More than two thousand years after his assassination on the floor of the Roman senate (by those less impressed than historians with people hungry for power) Julius Caesar has had no shortage of doting biographers. Brands falls victim to this spell by asserting presidential greatness depends on a willingness to set aside Constitutional scruples to find solutions to the problems of the day. 

To this point I must reply that the U.S. Constitution was designed to function the way it does precisely in the name of avoiding an American Caesar. The fact that the U.S. Constitution is the oldest (currently functioning) political constitution in the world, and has produced a society with a level of freedom that continues to expand to include ever greater numbers of people (some of them here illegally) is a testament that this document offers solutions to the problems of any day and age. Presidents should not be encouraged to seek solutions outside those permissible under the Constitution.

More troubling is Brands' assertion that the great presidents were dividers rather than uniters, and that a president aspiring to greatness must be divisive. Of the three greatest presidents (in Brands' reckoning), the one he uses most convincingly for this argument is FDR. At the Hauenstein Center, Brands called the audience's attention to President Obama's re-election campaign in 2012. The historian correctly explained that the current president resorted to tactics "we might call class warfare." But Brands believes Obama's demagoguery was tame compared to the class warfare employed by FDR in his successful campaigns in 1932 and 1936. Roosevelt spoke of "moneychangers" and "economic royalists" who were to blame for the Great Depression, and that Roosevelt was determined to rein them all in.

Regardless of how one may compare Obama's class warfare with FDR's, it is hard to accept Brands' claim that divisiveness is a hallmark of presidential greatness. Of anyone who reveres the memory of FDR, I doubt dirty political fighting is one of their reasons for admiring him. 

Harder still, is the case that the other great presidents, Washington and Lincoln, were divisive leaders. Washington was unanimously elected to be the nation's first president precisely because he was the only revolutionary figure all prominent Americans could unite behind. Divisiveness was rampant during the Civil War because it was a civil war. But Lincoln could hardly be blamed for it considering the southern states left the union merely because he was elected president in the first place. Furthermore, as the war drew to a close, Lincoln's reconstruction plans called for lenient treatment of the states being brought back into the union. There would be no treason trials. 

H.W. Brands' criteria for assessing presidential greatness is insightful because it reveals the way historians view human relations. Like others, historians tend to be obsessed with power and are impressed by those who wield it. They call our attention to those who organize and use people. Historians can be of great use in helping us make up our minds about our leaders, clarifying our own views of them, even if those views are contrary to those of the historian.

Patriot Thought  


Monday, July 29, 2013

New Video Link: The REAL Trayvon Martin and the REAL George Zimmerman

The evidence our mainstream media has refused to investigate. Find the link under the "videos" section of this blog page. No theory, just journalism, the way it's supposed to be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebu6Yvzs4Ls

Patriot Thought

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Dick Morris' History Videos

Have you always wanted to learn more about the history of America but you have no time to read dozens of books? Dick Morris has been posting short video segments in which he discusses the major topics (chronologically) of U.S. history. He's been doing this for about six months and is currently on the Great Depression. Each clip is less than 4 minutes long. He offers many great insights, some of them revisionist. To find a direct link to his history videos, go to the link under "videos" (on this blog page) or click this link:

http://www.dickmorris.com/category/history/


Patriot Thought

Saturday, July 27, 2013

How Does One Become A Great Historical Figure?

The Insight of an American Historian, H.W. Brands

Having read the work of many popular historians of American history, I've concluded H.W. Brands stands out among them. Biographers tend to fall in love with their subjects, a condition David McCullough mildly suffers from. In reading his Pulitzer-winning masterpiece John Adams, a critical thinker could not help but notice the author would have us believe politics played no role in President Adams' appointment of a large number of midnight judges, shortly before his adversary (Thomas Jefferson) was inaugurated to take his place as president. 

So what if Adams was politically motivated in stacking the courts with judges of his ideological bent the night (or weeks) before leaving the presidency? As president, he had the right to make those appointments. Yet, McCullough felt the need to defend his biographical subject, even on such a benign issue. A cynic may think the author has become the parent of his subject. Such parental protectiveness is less apparent in Brands' works of history (if it is detectable at all).

H.W. Brands is one of my favorite historians because he tackles both sides of every major controversy without imposing his judgement heavily on one side. His handling of President Andrew Jackson's role in the forced removal of the Indian nations to places west of the Mississippi, what we might today call ethnic cleansing, (without the genocidal purpose which often accompanies it) is fascinating because Brands shows us the dilemmas each of the major participants had, and what their options were. The result was that the tragedy of the Indian removal was conveyed to the reader without a biased or slanted judgement toward one party or another. I happen to believe the state of Georgia behaved shamefully and fraudulently in its instigation of that crisis, but Brands didn't force me to make that conclusion.

Recent history is the litmus test of a historical writer's even-handedness. During a time-killing walk through the history section of a local Barnes and Noble, I perused a copy of Brands' American Dreams: The United States Since 1945. Subjecting it to the ultimate test of fairness, I went straight to the chapters covering 1980 - 2009. I discovered the book is striking for its even-handedness in treating presidents as controversial as Reagan, the Bushes, and Obama. The same can not be said for other historians who have written good work on the same history, Paul Johnson and Sean Wilentz to name a few. 

Although recognizing Reagan never saw a weapons order he didn't like (contradicting his pledge to dramatically reduce the deficit), Brands conveys the Reagan presidency on all its merits, good and bad. By contrast, Paul Johnson's overwhelming praise for Reagan, and his excessive sympathy for Nixon, is matched by his dripping contempt for FDR and JFK. Nevertheless, Johnson's History of the American People is a fantastic (and vital) exploration of American history, aside from its flaws.

Sean Wilentz's Age of Reagan has the same problems, although from a liberal angle. His chapters on Reagan are chock full of stories about government corruption, yet that theme disappears when the reader gets to the Clinton chapters, as if the arrival of a Democrat president suddenly cleanses the sins of a corrupt bureaucracy. For ideological balance, Brands' work stands out from the rest. Brands is the type of writer who would come across as liberal to a conservative reader and conservative to a liberal reader, a quality unique and refreshing in an age of partisan extremes coloring information coming from today's media.

H.W. Brands has written biographies on Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, FDR, and is currently working on one about Reagan. Taken together, these six biographies will represent a view of the entire history of America through the prism of the presidency (excepting Ben Franklin, although he was a dominant political figure of his age).

Brands is a professor of history at the University of Texas. His students are mainly undergraduates. He is a prolific speaker at colleges across the country. Many of his public lectures are available on youtube. From listening to his lectures, one gains remarkable insight into the way a presidential historian assesses leadership qualities. Regardless of one's aspirations in life, Brands helps us understand the qualities that make someone a great historical figure.

Of particular interest is what Brands calls "the half-step rule." Have you ever realized you may be conflicted in your own views of a historical figure? For example, there are some qualities of that person's character you find admirable, and other qualities which contradict, or work against the quality you think is likeable in that character? To be more specific, let's take Thomas Jefferson's lofty words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal" with his vehement denunciations of slavery in that he "shuddered" to think "God is just" and that there will be a "reckoning" regarding slavery. Now, on the other hand, how do we square Jefferson's words with the reality that he owned well over a hundred slaves, and was dependent on their labor until the day he met the maker he knew would bring the reckoning for it?

Doesn't it seem contradictory that history is moved by some of the very people you would least expect to move it? If so, Brands' answer is the half-step rule. He explains that history moves in half-steps. For a person to become a truly great historical figure, he or she must have one foot planted in the future, while keeping the other foot rooted in the present. If both feet are planted in the future, a person's contemporaries will think he or she is out of touch with reality, or too radical, and therefore impressionable minds will not be impressed. A person who is a full-step ahead of his times will never have the opportunity to become a historical figure, at least not a great one because his impact will not be large enough. 

The key to greatness is to be a half-step ahead of the times, keeping enough common ground with contemporaries to convince them of the change you want them to accept. Future generations will struggle to square what they will see as contradictions in your character, but the fact that they will struggle with it (at all) is a testament to your impact as a great historical figure. 

If Jefferson hadn't owned slaves, he never would have been among the planter class that ruled Colonial Virginia. Therefore, Jefferson would never have been elected to Virginia's House of Burgesses. From there, it follows that he never would have been selected to go to the Continental Congress. Therefore, he never would have been appointed to the committee drafting the Declaration of Independence. Finally, Jefferson would never have set America on the ideological footing of liberty and equality for all (men), putting slavery on the permanent defensive. Other men may have accomplished this, but Jefferson would not have, had he not owned slaves. A great figure is not good in all his attributes, yet without certain (if unpleasant) attributes, he never becomes great.

Patriot Thought

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Moral Reflections on the Zimmerman Trial and on the Right to Self Defense


This reflection comes not from a legal expert on Florida laws concerning self defense, but from a thoughtful observer forming impressions of news commentary and reports from the recent trial of George Zimmerman, charged (but ultimately found not guilty) with second degree murder in the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida.

WSB pundit Erick Erickson explained Florida law concerning self defense like this, "In Florida, if you feel someone is threatening your life, you have the right to kill that person, even if you started the fight." Erikson went on to say, "In this case it looks as though George Zimmerman may have provoked Trayvon Martin." Of course, we'll never know who provoked whom. Does George Zimmerman following Trayvon Martin amount to a provocation? Is it illegal to follow someone? Surely it is not. No one likes being followed, but being followed in of itself does not give us the right to charge after our pursuer and beat him bloody. After all, beating someone up is illegal; our laws call it assault. Certainly, if a person is being assaulted, the thought may cross his or her mind that their life is being threatened. If so, we have legal protection (in Florida) to kill the person threatening our existence. Without having read the law in question, I've noticed no one has challenged this interpretation of it.

Our judicial system is fair. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. If the prosecution can not prove its case, the defendant must go free. Whether or not the acquitted gets what he or she truly deserves is a separate matter. The question is, Did the defendant get a fair trial?  People may speculate on the composition of the jury and how their backgrounds may have biased the verdict. Yet, the jury needed to decide whether or not Zimmerman was guilty of second degree murder (or at the last minute, manslaughter). For a guilty verdict, the evidence had to show some degree of intent to kill. The jury did not have the evidence or the eyewitness testimony to show that Zimmerman intended to kill Trayvon Martin. Therefore, their verdict of not guilty was the only reasonable outcome based on the conditions of a fair trial.

The evidence, such as it was, supported Zimmerman's testimony of self defense. He was being assaulted. The pictures taken after the event prove his assertion that Zimmerman had a broken nose and lacerations on the back of his head. Those lacerations look as though someone ran a cheese grater down the back of his head. He claimed he'd been knocked down, and that Trayvon had straddled him and was pummeling him from above, smashing Zimmerman's head against the concrete sidewalk. It's difficult to imagine how Zimmerman could have received the cuts and scrapes on the back of his head, if he (rather than Trayvon) had been on top in the fight.

The person on the top or the bottom of a fight is a crucial component in determining who had the opportunity to stop the fight and who had the opportunity to keep it going. The person on top can decide whether to get off and end the fight, whereas the person on bottom can only defend his or herself. For the bottom fighter, there is no retreat. There is nowhere to retreat to. Since the evidence more conclusively showed Zimmerman to be the bottom fighter, and the prosecution could not prove otherwise, we have nothing to contradict his testimony of acting in self defense. Killing in self defense can not convict a defendant of second degree murder or manslaughter in Florida. Therefore, the jury had no legal or ethical choice other than to acquit George Zimmerman.

It is disappointing to see so many people, some of them famous, who want to take away the people's right to proper self defense. Due to the Zimmerman verdict, Stevie Wonder has declared that he will no longer perform in any state that has a "stand your ground" law. In other words, Stevie Wonder is protesting against the American people having the right to defend themselves and their families from harm. Are we to believe Stevie applies that same standard to his own life? Does Stevie have bodyguards? If so, are they not armed and ready to kill to protect him from an assailant?

Are there any celebrities who do not or have not had either full time or part time armed bodyguards on their pay roll? Are celebrities arrogant enough to think they are the only people important enough to require armed security? What world does Stevie Wonder live in?

What kind of world would we live in if our right to self defense was taken away from us? What kind of America would we have? Certainly, we would not have the America we know and love? We would not have an America of fair trials or juries of our peers. If such sentiments ought to be important to us, than our media culture and our president have failed us horribly in the circumstances surrounding the Zimmerman trial, and its aftermath.

The first NBC report of Zimmerman's 9-1-1 call deleted a crucial segment of the conversation he'd had with the dispatcher. As edited, the segment featuring the dispatcher asking Zimmerman about the suspicious person's race disappeared, making it appear that Zimmerman, without prompting, said to the dispatcher, "He looks black." Such malicious tampering with the 9-1-1 conversation shows a major media outlet that is irresponsible, going out of its way to fan the flames of racial turmoil in this country.

All of the media coverage I witnessed about the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, displayed only pictures of Martin as a twelve-year old boy, five years prior to his death! Are we to believe no pictures of Trayvon Martin have been taken in the last five years? To this day, I have not seen a single picture of Trayvon Martin showing him to be anywhere close to what he looked like near the time of his death! Yet, all pictures shown of George Zimmerman have been recently taken. Why have NBC, ABC, CNN, and others not shown us photos of a twelve-year old George Zimmerman? If asked, they would undoubtedly say such photos bear no relevance to this case. However, the photos of the twelve-year old Trayvon Martin bear relevance because the real purpose is to play-up the image of his fragile innocence! There was nothing fragile about the adult-sized figure who used a concrete slab to smash the back of George Zimmerman's head! Such is the detestable, reprehensible bias through which our media culture spins the news before our impressionable minds.

Few Americans are under the spell that our media is unbiased and fair. But in times when our society is rife with divisions, we should be able to look to our president for a message of unity and shared values. Presidents have historically given us what we want from them in times of pain and conflict. Reagan's speech following the explosion of the space ship Challenger, healed the nation in a moment of grief. JFK's address following the Bay of Pigs fiasco showed America it was led by a real man, one willing to accept personal responsibility for his mistakes. Unfortunately, in the days following the verdict of the Zimmerman trial, President Barack Obama botched his opportunity to play the presidential role of nation healer and uniter. Instead, he has come down hard in his sympathy for Trayvon Martin and has expressed disappointment of the jury's verdict of not guilty regarding the second degree murder charge against George Zimmerman.

The president's bias was apparent long before the trial took place. His most memorable statement following the death of Trayvon Martin was, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon." No one would have accused the president of bias if he'd followed up that comment with something like, "and I'd want my son to have a fair trial like the one George Zimmerman deserves as an American citizen." Of course, no such quote regarding Zimmerman came from the president. Mr. Obama's one-sided thinking of the case is undeniable in statements like, "I could have been Trayvon Martin thirty-five years ago."

The president's press commentary in the days since the announcement of the Zimmerman verdict has amounted to an outpouring of sympathy for Trayvon Martin coupled with an accusation that our criminal justice system is biased in favor of whites against blacks. Although the president began last Friday's address by acknowledging that the jury produced the only reasonable verdict under the conditions of our judicial system, he showed his displeasure in every other statement he made about the trial and the circumstances surrounding it.

President Obama's entire address asserted that our judicial system, and by extension the Zimmerman verdict, is racially biased, and that a double standard is applied in favor of whites against blacks. The president summarized, "All that contributes to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that from both top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different." It is one thing for cultural figures such as Al Sharpton to say something like this. It is a travesty for the president of the United States to say something like this. He is supposed to be above the fray. He is supposed to stand for all Americans, not just one racial or ethnic group. He is not supposed to take sides in a judicial case. He is not supposed to play politics with judicial matters.

What's worse, the president of the United States is wrong even in the things he said about our criminal justice system in that address. How do we the people know that if Zimmerman were black and Trayvon white, the outcome would have been different? NBC and ABC do not report on those kinds of cases! As far as high profile cases go, if our judicial system was racially biased shouldn't O.J. Simpson have been convicted in the murder of his ex-wife? I'm not saying O.J. was guilty or innocent. I'm just pointing out that if the president's logic were true, O.J. should've been convicted in that case. How about Jay Z's alleged role in the stabbing death of someone he had altercation with in a club, some years ago? If our judicial system was biased against African Americans, why was Jay Z not convicted? Or how about Michael Jackson? I happen to believe he received a fair trial in his final go around with the judicial system over accusations of sexual child abuse. He received a fair trial because the prosecution could not prove his guilt. Yet, if President Obama's words are to be true, Michael Jackson's racial identity should have convicted him. Yet, none of this logic is demonstrably true, not in the twenty-first century. 

The inescapable conclusion a fair observer can make is that the president of the United States is racially biased in his own interpretation of the American judicial system and that he is fanning the flames of racial turmoil in this country by backing it with the force of the Oval Office. Moreover, the president's attorney general has pledged himself to the cause of overturning "stand your ground" laws across the states. The Obama administration does not want the American people to have the right to defend themselves and their families, with the necessary means, from those who would do them harm.

In the concluding remarks of Friday's address, the president linked his twin themes of a racially biased judicial system and of his opposition to the American people's right of self defense as follows: 

"I just ask people to consider that if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman, who had followed him in a car, because he had felt threatened. And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, than it seems to be that we might want to examine those kinds of laws."

In this time of great social anxiety, the American people need to be told the truth by our media institutions. We are not getting it. In this time of great division, the American people need uniting leadership. We are not getting it from the White House. In this time when Americans need confidence that we have the right of self defense from those who would do us harm, the Justice Department of the federal government is against us.Thus is the revealed legacy of the Zimmerman trial and its aftermath.

Patriot Thought







Monday, July 22, 2013

Why Should We Still Care About the JFK Assassination?

 A Book Review of Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot (Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard)

Not a day goes by without news commentary about the president of the United States. In any conversation with a friend about politics, the talk often focuses on the president and what he's doing. Try to imagine what a day of discussion would be like on the day a president is murdered? How about the days after it? How about the weeks, months, and years after it? If it is hard to imagine, it's because we haven't experienced a presidential assassination in fifty years. The fiftieth anniversary of the JFK murder will take place this November 22. O'Reilly and Dugard's Killing Kennedy brings that horrific day and it's immediate aftermath vividly back to life, forcing the reader to experience the horror the country went through on that day, and how the nation tried to make sense of it afterwards.

With the cottage industry of books available on every conceivable scenario surrounding the Kennedy assassination, of who may or may not have been involved in it, is it necessary to read O'Reilly's? After all, he's not a historian by trade. Furthermore, his book doesn't offer any facts that add something new to our understanding of the event.

If the reader is looking for a fun, engaging, fair-minded treatment without conjecture and outlandish or tedious theorizing, Killing Kennedy delivers superbly. It is barely 300 pages in length, and can be finished in a reasonable amount of time. The writers do not claim to have written the last word on the Kennedy assassination -and in fact- they are so fair minded, they admit there is more to the story than what the known facts tells us about the tragedy.

Most impressive is the scope of coverage this short book delivers on John F. Kennedy's whole life, and not just about the events of the assassination. O'Reilly and Dugard give us the story of PT-109, in which Kennedy first demonstrated his bravery during the sinking of his boat in World War II. The book then moves on to his early political career. The bulk of the book focuses on the main events of JFK's presidency, from the Bay of Pigs, to the missile crisis, to Vietnam, to civil rights, and more. The president's sexual affairs with Marilyn Monroe and others receive special coverage, and the impact these affairs had on his marriage is neither ignored nor excused. 

It is tempting to assume that a conservative pundit like Bill O'Reilly would be harsh in his judgement of (the supposedly liberal) John F. Kennedy's legacy, but quite the opposite is true. If we set aside the obvious Irish and Roman Catholic heritage the author shares with the president, the book offers much for conservatives to admire about JFK. Two decades before Reagan, JFK initiated major tax cuts to help the economy. His critics (Historian Paul Johnson among them) argue that Kennedy cut taxes to raise government revenue, but Kennedy was aware that doing so would stave off a recession. He was advised by British officials that high taxes punished job growth and deprived a government of revenue, therefore Kennedy was advised to kill both birds by cutting taxes. Consequently, the early sixties were boom years for the American economy. Imagine that!

For the armchair historians who believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the killing of JFK, the book offers reasons to support that view, although the authors do not entirely commit themselves to it. For many people who believe a vast conspiracy of very powerful people orchestrated the assassination, the starting point for them is the assumption that someone so insignificant and ordinary as Oswald could not have brought down a towering figure so large as John F. Kennedy. After all, Kennedy and Khrushchev held the world at the edge of nuclear holocaust during the Cuban missile crisis. Furthermore, the president of the United States was protected by the formidable Secret Service (even Lincoln did not have this).

Oswald was a nobody who couldn't hold a job or keep a family together. Yet, the conditions of the Dallas motorcade on November 22, 1963, made it absolutely plausible that a marksman with a decent rifle and scope could kill the president of the United States should that president be riding in an open convertible along a route the assassin was sure would lead the president within the shooting range of his rifle. The motorcade route was published in the local Dallas papers three days in advance, giving Oswald plenty of time to choose his ground. Conveniently, the motorcade came along window-view of Oswald's workplace, the Texas School Book Depository. On his lunch break, Oswald shot the president instead of eating lunch. That is how someone as ordinary as Oswald could have brought down the president of the United States.

The conspiracy theories began with Oswald himself. Soon after his arrest, Oswald told reporters he was merely a patsy. While telling them this, he smiled and proudly displayed his handcuffs. Reading of this, I couldn't help but wonder, if Oswald was really a patsy, why did he smile while telling it? Shouldn't a patsy or a pawn be terrified? On the contrary, Oswald was proud of what he'd done and was putting on a performance to drum-up publicity to make himself all the more significant and famous. What I gather from Killing Kennedy is that the murder of the president was a deed from a pathetic man who had given up on life and was throwing it away, reaping some glory on his way out.

Lee Harvey Oswald may have been the biggest winner from the assassination of John F. Kennedy, but America was the biggest loser. What followed was a gut-wrenching period of mourning for a president (despite his critics) much beloved by many of his countrymen. The Kennedy assassination has a grim distinction among presidential murders. Unlike the assassinations of Lincoln, McKinley, and others, the murder of John F. Kennedy was captured on film, in real time. Anyone can watch the last fleeting moments of President Kennedy's life by going to youtube and finding a clip of the Zapruder film. There, they will watch the smiling, waving president, whose skull is then exploded by the assassin's bullet. They can watch the First Lady's horror as she witnesses the butchering of her husband before her own eyes, his blood and gore spraying her face and clothes.  This country has never recovered from that gruesome day, and for the younger generations who have no first-hand memory of it, Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot is a terrific starting point to learn of its impact on our great nation.

Patriot Thought





Visitor Comments

The dated links and statements below show interaction between the readers and makers of this blog to further the marketplace of ideas that enrich the education of patriots. Certain opinions made to posts are excerpted and re-posted here to highlight interesting discussions by fellow patriots.

Chris CJuly 28, 2013 at 12:31 PM [writing in response to Thursday, July 25, 2013: Moral Reflections on the Zimmerman Trial and on the Right to Self Defense]

I think it is absurd to draw a moral equivalence between innocent until proven guilty and guilty until proven innocent. It should be clear that one is far more protective and respectful of individual rights than the other. It's ironic that you attack the American system here, when it obviously takes more into account that someone could be falsely accused. Hence the burden of proof is on the prosecution rather than the defense.

DonaldJuly 28, 2013 at 8:27 AM[writing in response to Thursday, July 25, 2013: Moral Reflections on the Zimmerman Trial and on the Right to Self Defense]

It is interesting because the American Justice system goes from a innocent until proven guilty point of view. It definitely is no better in China where it is from a guilty until proven innocent point of view. Both are flawed because both lend themselves to being tainted with corruption as well as the norms of society.

Living the JourneyJuly 26, 2013 at 10:11 AM [writing in response to Thursday, July 25, 2013: Moral Reflections on the Zimmerman Trial and on the Right to Self Defense]

I found it interesting that Donald's perception of how America out to be was originally influenced by American fiction. This reminds me of when I arrived in China the first time expecting to see sword toting warriors running on the roofs of ancient temple like buildings. I was definitely surprised by reality.

Donald
July 26, 2013 at 9:09 AM [writing in response to Thursday, July 25, 2013: Moral Reflections on the Zimmerman Trial and on the Right to Self Defense]

Long before Zimmerman was pronounced innocent, people in my country were laughing at the thought of a white man (yes he is white Hispanic really) being found guilty of killing a black teenager. That will never happen they say. When things like that happen, it is the stuff of legend and stories and hollywood scripts. Look at some of the greatest literature found out there (to kill a mocking bird for example). It is the stand of the downtrodden black defendant who triumphs over the hard and brutal white man. This in itself is a tragedy as well because of the stereotypical vision people then have of the US as in the case of many of my country people as well as others from other countries in their view of America.

Anonymous
December 28, 2012 12:13 PM [writing in response to Friday, December 28, 2012: Beyond Gun Control: The Real Reason For Sandy Hook (A Moral Analysis)]

I do believe in evil but I also believe that Adam Lanza had mental issues that weren't being addressed. Also, he had been abandoned by his father whom he hadn't seen in over 2 years and who had a second family which Adam was not a part of. Adam had been assigned a school psychologist but somewhere along the line he dropped through the cracks and didn't get the care he needed that could possibly have prevented this tragedy. We'll never know...

Living the JourneyDecember 31, 2012 7:16 AM[writing in response to Friday, December 28, 2012: Beyond Gun Control: The Real Reason For Sandy Hook (A Moral Analysis)]

How can evil be defined in a pluralistic society? Is morality something decided by vote? And then following that question, how can evil be "treated"? Jason, I think you're trying to open a door that very few want to walk through because if we do, we are forced to make choices about things many would like to leave "relative".

Anonymous
December 31, 2012 7:36 AM[writing in response to Friday, December 28, 2012: Beyond Gun Control: The Real Reason For Sandy Hook (A Moral Analysis)]

I think we should stop offering up drug store psychology and focus on the one common denominator- GUNS. Psychotic people exist in all cultures, nations and religions. Look at the countries in the world with strict gun control laws; such as Japan, Australia, Canada to name a few, and they have far less violence involving guns. Are you blaming secularism? Science? The devil made him do it! Right? Simply, Adam Lanza and other mass murderers are mentally ill. So let's make it impossible for people like him to obtain guns of mass destruction.

Jason Aldous
December 31, 2012 10:56 AM[writing in response to Friday, December 28, 2012: Beyond Gun Control: The Real Reason For Sandy Hook (A Moral Analysis)]

Dear Living the Journey, We will always have tragedies so long as there is evil. Evil as such can not be cured through government policy. On the contrary, its work can only be limited through choices made by individuals.

Dear Anonymous, I do blame secular reasoning for making it difficult for us to address the problem. If you take good and evil out of your worldview, morally you can not say there is anything wrong with what Adam Lanza did. You may be horrified at what he did, but you can not judge it against any standards, if good and evil are removed as avenues of inquiry.

Jason AldousDecember 27, 2012 6:39 PM [writing in response to Wednesday, December 26, 2012: Gun Control Part 3: The Second Amendment (A Legal Analysis)]

Let's see, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Even if the wording implies that the populace must be armed when called up for militia service, it says "the right of the people shall not be infringed." Since the amendment states that bearing arms is a "right" and "not to be infringed" it is an open and shut case for anyone taking an objective reading of it. "Rights" are entitlements. Privileges can be taken away, but not rights. It matters not if this right was given with militia service in mind. Good work, Mr. Emma.


AnonymousDecember 17, 2012 3:46 PM [writing in response to Monday, December 17, 2012, Gun Control Part 2: Would Society Be Better Off If All Guns Were Made Illegal? (A Reasonable Treatment)]

On my part, I think that all guns should definitely be regulated and strictly controlled. Its interesting that almost all Americans point to the 2nd amendment. From my point of view, this 2nd Amendment was written in a time when there was 'trust' among people and their government. Today this trust has been flushed down the drain

AnonymousDecember 17, 2012 5:26 PM [writing in response to Monday, December 17, 2012, Gun Control Part 2: Would Society Be Better Off If All Guns Were Made Illegal? (A Reasonable Treatment)]

In 1959, 60% of the American public favored a ban on handguns. Today, the majority of the American people don't even support a ban on assault rifles. Why? Because since 1959, the argument that tighter gun control would reduce crime has been effectively refuted in the mind of the public. The change in attitude toward gun control is primarily due to fear of crime rather than distrust of government.


GeoDecember 8, 2012 2:11 PM [writing in response to Friday, December 7, 2012, Pearl Harbor: Was It Japan's Fault, or America's? (Conspiracy Theory vs. History)]

FDR campainged on keeping the US out of the war but when he wanted to get into the war he needed an excuse. He may very well have been tempted to withhold information from his top commanders at Pearl Harbor. They certainly suspected he did.

GeoDecember 8, 2012 at 1:28 PM[writing in response to Saturday, December 1, 2012, Voting In A Bad Economy, Recession Myths: De-Constructing Historical Falsification]

Can't argue with your observations, Jason, but even with the limited space no mention of the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs in any discussion of Hoover/Great Depression/FDR is to ignore an elephant in the room.

Chris CDecember 7, 2012 at 4:40 PM[writing in response to Tuesday, November 27, 2012, The Next Great American President: Who We Need To Look For In 2016]

One qualm: I don't think Suez can be regarded as a long-term success for Eisenhower. It bought us no credibility with the developing world and managed to alienate important Allies. As a result, we got no real help from Britain in Vietnam and plenty of hostility from France in the 1960's. France's desire to oppose or sabotage us on key issues has continued to this day.