Gene Healy: 'John F. Kennedy Was No Conservative'

Source:The American Conservative- John F. Kennedy (Democrat, Massachusetts) 35th POTUS.

"There are, by now, thousands of books on the Kennedy presidency’s thousand days, and 2013 has brought dozens more to coincide with 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination. But in JFK, Conservative, Ira Stoll, former managing editor of the New York Sun and current editor of FutureofCapitalism.com, has managed something truly original—and truly odd. This may be the first book-length attempt at Kennedy hagiography from the Right. 

Stoll lays it on pretty thick: in his telling, JFK was a great president, a good man, and—no kidding—a good Catholic. Moreover, Kennedy’s policies—his “tax cuts, his domestic spending restraint, his pro-growth economic policy, his emphasis on free trade and a strong dollar, and his foreign policy driven by the idea that America had a God-given mission to defend freedom”—show that he was, “by the standards of both his time and our own, a conservative.”

It’s a cramped, reductionist account of conservatism, one that collapses the entire political tradition into its neoconservative variant. But an even less charitable person than I could make the case that it’s a fair approximation of “actually existing conservatism,” and Stoll’s thesis has already received a fair bit of praise from commentators on the Right. 

God help us. If our 35th president—fiscally profligate, contemptuous of civil liberties, and criminally reckless abroad—is a paragon of modern conservatism, conservatism is in even worse shape than I thought. Let’s review the Kennedy record... 

From The American Conservative 

"Author Ira Stoll joins Glenn to make the case that President  John F. Kennedy was actually conservative."

Source:BlazeTV- Ira Stoll talking to Glen Beck.

From the BlazeTV 

I agree with Gene Healy that John F. Kennedy was no Conservative either. As I wrote the other day at The New Democrat why JFK was not a Conservative. At least in the Neoconservative or the religious-conservative sense. 

Again, just look at JFK's own personal life, as well as the belief in civil and equal rights for all Americans, as well as personal freedom. 

JFK was a cold warrior Liberal Democrat, the real Liberals Democrats of the time, who advocated for liberal democracy home and abroad. The so-called Neoconservatives, but when they were Democrats. That's JFK politics. You want to look at the Wendell Willkie's and Henry Jackson's, the Gerald Ford's, even, of the world, to get yourself a good idea about Jack Kennedy's own personal politics. 

You are not going to learn anything factual about JFK's politics, from some  hyper-partisan Republican, who believes that conservatism is about big defense spending home and abroad,  deep tax cuts that can't be paid for, and the only fiscal restraint having to do with social welfare spending, but probably nothing else, and that government should advocate and perhaps even enforce what they cal American traditionalism. Which is what you get from the Ira Stoll's of the world. 

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