JFK, Before And After Dallas

After his brutal assassination, liberals understandably elevated President Kennedy to secular sainthood, but simultaneously, they moved 180 degrees out of phase from Kennedy on virtually every issue he believed in (the Cold War, Vietnam, Cuba, the Space Race, tax cuts, American exceptionalism, etc., etc.) As Pat Moynihan once said, “Most liberals had ended the 1960s rather ashamed of the beliefs they had held at the beginning of the decade”.

That dichotomy is the subject of James Piereson’s exceptional new book, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution. Meanwhile, the Instant History blog flashes back to how very differently–and with infinitely less piety–Kennedy was viewed by the media before his death; in this case, the last issue of Time magazine printed while he was still alive, dated November 22, 1963.