A particular JFK speech

[Paul Mackin]

On 12/18/2011 2:59 PM, Ian Livingston wrote:
>> What Kennedy was arguing for was the need for more self imposed restraint on
>> the part of the American press when it came to publishing information that
>> might be of use to the other side in the Cold War.
>>
> ...
>
>> In other words I didn't see the paranoia.
>>
> You don't see the paranoia? The Soviet Union was never a viable threat
> to the US. The whole Cold War was an exercise in paranoid dysfunction
> and the marketing potentials implicit in the holy "free markets" v.
> Godless "communism" melodrama. Kennedy was in an unusual position cast
> between his loyalty to big capital and what at times seemed to many of
> us to be his conscience. We'll never know, of course, just how tough
> that position was for him, or what his intentions really were, of
> course, but I do think Kennedy was playing the paranoia card with
> exceptional skill here.

The cold war wasn't a delusion.  Nobody thinks that.

The delusion was  an overemphasis on the existence of enemies  within, 
to which earlier the President had not been immune. However, this 
semi-McCarthy stance was never very strong and by this point in time was 
definitely in remission.

The speech in question was about something else entirely. (as I indicated)

So we disagree, almost a hundred percent.

But that's OK

P
















>
> On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 11:40 AM, Paul Mackin<mackin.paul at verizon.net>  wrote:
>> On 12/17/2011 4:44 PM, Joseph Tracy wrote:
>>> For myself and my own memories of the time, what Kennedy was doing was
>>> proposing in this speech and much more clearly in his inaugural address was
>>> not so much precisely anti-communism but anti-secrecy, anti secret and
>>> unaccountable authority. He was leading the country away from McCarthyist
>>> paranoia toward a genuine confidence in the openness and resilience of
>>> America's devotion to civi liberties. It is a fine line he is walking  but
>>> he is saying sure, be strong,be prepared, be wary but we have to behave in
>>> accord with our values or we lose all that makes America worth defending.
>>> For Nixon t was fight fire with fire. For Kennedy it was deprive fire of its
>>> fuel; again and again he spoke of that fuel being poverty and injustice and
>>> the deprivation of rights.
>>>
>>> Communism is gone except an an authoritarian party. But secrecy and lies
>>> seem to have found a welcome home.
>>
>> What Kennedy was arguing for was the need for more self imposed restraint on
>> the part of the American press when it came to publishing information that
>> might be of use to the other side in the Cold War.
>>
>> While there was reference in the speech to Soviet secret methods, the sense
>> of the "secret societies" remark was that although we Americans find secret
>> societies repugnant, meaning our own secret societies, still there is a
>> valid and important need for keeping certain information secret in time of
>> danger to the country.
>>
>> I didn't pick up in the speech that home-grown secret societies were of much
>> present concern.
>>
>> In other words I didn't see the paranoia.
>>
>> P
>>
>> P
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Dec 17, 2011, at 12:51 AM, Ian Livingston wrote:
>>>
>>>> A JFK speech with which I was not familiar. It is ominous. He is
>>>> clearly not talking about the "Communist threat", or about "secret
>>>> societies", but he seems rather to be talking about a general
>>>> insurgence of cabalistic truth-destroyers emerging in all parts of the
>>>> globe--people who will use truth to tell lies--and he calls upon the
>>>> press to respond with caution to this insidious menace. He actually
>>>> sounds afraid, perhaps foreshadowing somewhat Nixon's later paranoia.
>>>> I guess TRP would have heard this speech, or heard about it.
>>>>
>>>> http://wakeup-world.com/2011/05/20/jfks-speech-on-secret-societies/
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> "Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
>>>> creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
>>>> trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
>>>> of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
>>>> than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
>>>
>
>