Leroy N. Soetoro
2013-11-23 08:36:12 UTC
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/tea-party-has-roots-in-the-dallas-
of-1963/2013/11/20/9cb59b4c-3cf4-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html
By Bill Minutaglio, Thursday, November 21, 10:37 AM
The president is a socialist. He is neutering the United States on the
world stage. He is spending us into bankruptcy. He is hellbent on
expanding national health care, which will surely lead to government death
panels.
He is advancing big-government agendas everywhere from Main Street to Wall
Street. And do we really know the truth about his personal history and
religion?
Perhaps the man in the Oval Office should be impeached even tried for
treason.
If todays extremist rhetoric sounds familiar, thats because it is
eerily, poignantly similar to the vitriol aimed squarely at John F.
Kennedy during his presidency.
And just like today, Texans were leading what some of them saw as a moral
crusade.
To find the very roots of the tea party of 2013, just go back to downtown
Dallas in 1963, back to the months and weeks leading to the Kennedy
assassination. It was where and when a deeply angry political
polarization, driven by a band of zealots, burst wide open in America.
It was fueled then, as now, by billionaires opposed to federal oversight,
rabid media, Bible-thumping preachers and extremist lawmakers who had
moved far from their political peers. In 1963, that strident minority
hijacked the civic dialogue and brewed the boiling, toxic environment
waiting for Kennedy the day he died.
As he planned his trip to Dallas in November 1963, President Kennedy knew
that hundreds of thousands across Texas adored him or at least,
respected the office he held. But he also knew that there was an
increasingly hysterical fringe.
As Kennedy approached Dallas, he turned to his wife, Jacqueline. Were
heading into nut country today, he said.
Dallas Morning News publisher Ted Dealey had a loathing that became
particularly deeply personal. At a social luncheon for Texas news
executives in the State Dining Room of the White House, Dealey berated
Kennedy to his face: We need a man on horseback to lead this nation and
many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding
Carolines tricycle.
Back in Dallas, Dealey ordered his reporters to investigate whether
Kennedy had been married to another woman and whether the Kennedy dynasty
had somehow erased evidence of that marriage.
Not far away in downtown Dallas, oil billionaire H.L. Hunt was pouring
millions into a ceaseless anti-Kennedy radio campaign; it was the dawn of
extremist radio in the nation. Hunts program, Life Line, reached 10
million listeners a day with its scorching attacks against the mistaken,
the term Hunts announcers used to describe the presidents supporters.
When Kennedy proposed Medicare to provide health care for the elderly,
Hunts shows warned that government death panels would follow: a package
which would literally make the president of the United States a medical
czar with potential life-or-death power over every man, woman and child in
the country.
Hunts pastor in Dallas was the thundering W.A. Criswell, head of the
largest Baptist congregation in the country. Criswell was deeply
suspicious of the presidents Catholic religion, and he assailed Kennedys
candidacy as a possible plot that would undermine Americas true Christian
values.
Dallas was represented in Congress by an eloquent, Ivy League-educated
ideologue regarded by some as the most extreme politician in Washington.
Bruce Alger had cast the lone no vote against a federal program to
provide free surplus milk to needy children. Even among his conservative
peers, Alger was considered on the outer edge.
There was also Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker, the commander who had been
hailed as a hero for breaking the grip of segregation in Arkansas
capital; he led the bayonet-carrying troops who escorted African-American
students to the doors of a Little Rock high school and kept order in the
streets afterwards. Within four years, Walker had been relieved of his
command by Kennedys defense secretary, Robert S. McNamara, after he was
accused of trying to brainwash his troops with ultra-right-wing
propaganda. The defrocked Walker moved to Dallas and was welcomed by the
mayor in a grand public ceremony.
Walker promoted anti-federal agendas as well as what were once quaintly
called Southern traditions. He made national headlines by instigating
bloody riots against James Merediths brave attempts to integrate the
University of Mississippi.
Many historians now agree that the blind absolutism of these powerful men
of Dallas in the early 1960s has been discredited.
But here we are in 2013 and the echo is painfully clear:
The ad hominem attacks against a socialist president. The howling
broadcasters. The mega-rich men from Texas funding the political action
campaigns. There is even another charismatic, Ivy-educated ideologue: Sen.
Ted Cruz would have been quite comfortable in Dallas 1963.
In the days leading to Kennedys fateful hour in Dallas, the city
experienced one dark moment after another. Swastikas were plastered on the
high-end emporium Neiman Marcus. A bomb threat was made during a visit by
the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. A cross was burned on the lawn of a
Holocaust survivor. U.N. Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson II, in town for a
speech, fled for his life after being surrounded by a spitting mob.
It all occurred in a place where a few powerful people had marched far
from the political center and erected a firewall against reasoned debate.
Fifty years after Kennedys death, it is as if nothing has changed. As the
nation continues to sift for meaning in his tragedy, this is the most
aching lesson of all.
Comments:
John Johnson
11:14 AM PST
You are sick in the head and a tool of the DNC to dare try to relate the
tea party to Kennedy's killing! You Democrats can't debate the issues so
you resort to name-calling. Remember how evil you made Romney look? As you
lose your insurance and doctor and pay 50% more with a much larger
deductible just remember which party put you in that bind.
Stephen Guy Hardin
11:10 AM PST
Christ! Does the Leftist hate for the Tea Party in specific and
conservatives in general know no bounds? Oswald was a card carrying
Marxist, Fidel loving Commie....historical fact. Yet, the hate mongers at
the Post salivate at the opportunity to lie ( yet again ) and try and say
JFK was set up due to Right wing hate.... everyone knows Jackie O put the
hit out on him becuase she was sleeping wiht Bobby and Ted !
HumbleRomero
11:14 AM PST
You are dead center accurate about Oswald being Left Wing Liberal....
--
Barack Obama, reelected by the dumbest voters in the history of the United
States of America.
Eric Holder, racist black murdering United States Attorney General, still
has his job.
Nancy Pelosi, Democrat criminal, accessory before and after the fact to
improper vetting of Barry Soetoro aka Barack Hussein Obama, a confirmed
felon using SSAN 042-68-4425, belonging to a dead man.
Obama ignored the brutal killing of an American diplomat in Benghazi, then
relieved American military officers who attempted to prevent said murder
in order to cover up his own ineptitude.
Obama continues his goal of disarming America while ObamaCare increases
insurance premiums 300% and leaves millions without health care.
Obama backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt prior to their removal for
failing to represent the people and constitutional violations.
--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ***@netfront.net ---
of-1963/2013/11/20/9cb59b4c-3cf4-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html
By Bill Minutaglio, Thursday, November 21, 10:37 AM
The president is a socialist. He is neutering the United States on the
world stage. He is spending us into bankruptcy. He is hellbent on
expanding national health care, which will surely lead to government death
panels.
He is advancing big-government agendas everywhere from Main Street to Wall
Street. And do we really know the truth about his personal history and
religion?
Perhaps the man in the Oval Office should be impeached even tried for
treason.
If todays extremist rhetoric sounds familiar, thats because it is
eerily, poignantly similar to the vitriol aimed squarely at John F.
Kennedy during his presidency.
And just like today, Texans were leading what some of them saw as a moral
crusade.
To find the very roots of the tea party of 2013, just go back to downtown
Dallas in 1963, back to the months and weeks leading to the Kennedy
assassination. It was where and when a deeply angry political
polarization, driven by a band of zealots, burst wide open in America.
It was fueled then, as now, by billionaires opposed to federal oversight,
rabid media, Bible-thumping preachers and extremist lawmakers who had
moved far from their political peers. In 1963, that strident minority
hijacked the civic dialogue and brewed the boiling, toxic environment
waiting for Kennedy the day he died.
As he planned his trip to Dallas in November 1963, President Kennedy knew
that hundreds of thousands across Texas adored him or at least,
respected the office he held. But he also knew that there was an
increasingly hysterical fringe.
As Kennedy approached Dallas, he turned to his wife, Jacqueline. Were
heading into nut country today, he said.
Dallas Morning News publisher Ted Dealey had a loathing that became
particularly deeply personal. At a social luncheon for Texas news
executives in the State Dining Room of the White House, Dealey berated
Kennedy to his face: We need a man on horseback to lead this nation and
many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding
Carolines tricycle.
Back in Dallas, Dealey ordered his reporters to investigate whether
Kennedy had been married to another woman and whether the Kennedy dynasty
had somehow erased evidence of that marriage.
Not far away in downtown Dallas, oil billionaire H.L. Hunt was pouring
millions into a ceaseless anti-Kennedy radio campaign; it was the dawn of
extremist radio in the nation. Hunts program, Life Line, reached 10
million listeners a day with its scorching attacks against the mistaken,
the term Hunts announcers used to describe the presidents supporters.
When Kennedy proposed Medicare to provide health care for the elderly,
Hunts shows warned that government death panels would follow: a package
which would literally make the president of the United States a medical
czar with potential life-or-death power over every man, woman and child in
the country.
Hunts pastor in Dallas was the thundering W.A. Criswell, head of the
largest Baptist congregation in the country. Criswell was deeply
suspicious of the presidents Catholic religion, and he assailed Kennedys
candidacy as a possible plot that would undermine Americas true Christian
values.
Dallas was represented in Congress by an eloquent, Ivy League-educated
ideologue regarded by some as the most extreme politician in Washington.
Bruce Alger had cast the lone no vote against a federal program to
provide free surplus milk to needy children. Even among his conservative
peers, Alger was considered on the outer edge.
There was also Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker, the commander who had been
hailed as a hero for breaking the grip of segregation in Arkansas
capital; he led the bayonet-carrying troops who escorted African-American
students to the doors of a Little Rock high school and kept order in the
streets afterwards. Within four years, Walker had been relieved of his
command by Kennedys defense secretary, Robert S. McNamara, after he was
accused of trying to brainwash his troops with ultra-right-wing
propaganda. The defrocked Walker moved to Dallas and was welcomed by the
mayor in a grand public ceremony.
Walker promoted anti-federal agendas as well as what were once quaintly
called Southern traditions. He made national headlines by instigating
bloody riots against James Merediths brave attempts to integrate the
University of Mississippi.
Many historians now agree that the blind absolutism of these powerful men
of Dallas in the early 1960s has been discredited.
But here we are in 2013 and the echo is painfully clear:
The ad hominem attacks against a socialist president. The howling
broadcasters. The mega-rich men from Texas funding the political action
campaigns. There is even another charismatic, Ivy-educated ideologue: Sen.
Ted Cruz would have been quite comfortable in Dallas 1963.
In the days leading to Kennedys fateful hour in Dallas, the city
experienced one dark moment after another. Swastikas were plastered on the
high-end emporium Neiman Marcus. A bomb threat was made during a visit by
the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. A cross was burned on the lawn of a
Holocaust survivor. U.N. Ambassador Adlai E. Stevenson II, in town for a
speech, fled for his life after being surrounded by a spitting mob.
It all occurred in a place where a few powerful people had marched far
from the political center and erected a firewall against reasoned debate.
Fifty years after Kennedys death, it is as if nothing has changed. As the
nation continues to sift for meaning in his tragedy, this is the most
aching lesson of all.
Comments:
John Johnson
11:14 AM PST
You are sick in the head and a tool of the DNC to dare try to relate the
tea party to Kennedy's killing! You Democrats can't debate the issues so
you resort to name-calling. Remember how evil you made Romney look? As you
lose your insurance and doctor and pay 50% more with a much larger
deductible just remember which party put you in that bind.
Stephen Guy Hardin
11:10 AM PST
Christ! Does the Leftist hate for the Tea Party in specific and
conservatives in general know no bounds? Oswald was a card carrying
Marxist, Fidel loving Commie....historical fact. Yet, the hate mongers at
the Post salivate at the opportunity to lie ( yet again ) and try and say
JFK was set up due to Right wing hate.... everyone knows Jackie O put the
hit out on him becuase she was sleeping wiht Bobby and Ted !
HumbleRomero
11:14 AM PST
You are dead center accurate about Oswald being Left Wing Liberal....
--
Barack Obama, reelected by the dumbest voters in the history of the United
States of America.
Eric Holder, racist black murdering United States Attorney General, still
has his job.
Nancy Pelosi, Democrat criminal, accessory before and after the fact to
improper vetting of Barry Soetoro aka Barack Hussein Obama, a confirmed
felon using SSAN 042-68-4425, belonging to a dead man.
Obama ignored the brutal killing of an American diplomat in Benghazi, then
relieved American military officers who attempted to prevent said murder
in order to cover up his own ineptitude.
Obama continues his goal of disarming America while ObamaCare increases
insurance premiums 300% and leaves millions without health care.
Obama backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt prior to their removal for
failing to represent the people and constitutional violations.
--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ***@netfront.net ---