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:::I know that the Kennedys were staunch anti-communists, but I've never heard JFK--or the Kennedy family--described as conservative. Any citations you could make? Also, as for Cuba and Vietnam, one, Cuba changed his opinion on foreign policy. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy's foreign policy went from being center-right to being center-left, and his calls for peace and negotiations replaced hawkish rhetoric. Secondly, Kennedy actually wanted to pull out of Vietnam, and had started the motions to do so before he was assassinated. Johnson reversed it, and escalated it. [[User:ChuckR|ChuckR]] 21:55, 2 November 2009 (EST)
:::I know that the Kennedys were staunch anti-communists, but I've never heard JFK--or the Kennedy family--described as conservative. Any citations you could make? Also, as for Cuba and Vietnam, one, Cuba changed his opinion on foreign policy. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy's foreign policy went from being center-right to being center-left, and his calls for peace and negotiations replaced hawkish rhetoric. Secondly, Kennedy actually wanted to pull out of Vietnam, and had started the motions to do so before he was assassinated. Johnson reversed it, and escalated it. [[User:ChuckR|ChuckR]] 21:55, 2 November 2009 (EST)
::::sending combat forces into both Cuba and Vietnam to stop Communism is pretty dramatic example of a conservative foreign policy, not to mention forcing the Russians out of Cuba. In domestic policy he took many conservative positions: he opposed unions (esp Teamsters), opposed deficit spending, and supported tax cuts. He never supported abortion in any form, or gay rights. And (in 1960) he moved the country to acceptance of Roman Catholicism. Finally, he was opposed by the major liberals of the day (E. Roosevelt, Humphrey, Stevenson); for his VP he picked Johnson, considered a conservative at the time. The Kennedy family was known for leading the support of Joe McCarthy in 1950s. As for what people say, try Googling "jfk" and "conservative" and look at the 2 million hits.[[User:RJJensen|RJJensen]] 22:54, 2 November 2009 (EST)
::::sending combat forces into both Cuba and Vietnam to stop Communism is pretty dramatic example of a conservative foreign policy, not to mention forcing the Russians out of Cuba. In domestic policy he took many conservative positions: he opposed unions (esp Teamsters), opposed deficit spending, and supported tax cuts. He never supported abortion in any form, or gay rights. And (in 1960) he moved the country to acceptance of Roman Catholicism. Finally, he was opposed by the major liberals of the day (E. Roosevelt, Humphrey, Stevenson); for his VP he picked Johnson, considered a conservative at the time. The Kennedy family was known for leading the support of Joe McCarthy in 1950s. As for what people say, try Googling "jfk" and "conservative" and look at the 2 million hits.[[User:RJJensen|RJJensen]] 22:54, 2 November 2009 (EST)
:::::Well, first of all, if you Google "FDR" and "Conservative" you get 9,510,000 hits. I guess this makes Old Man Roosevelt the greatest conservative of all time then, eh?
Anyway, let's take a walk through history, shall we? Here's a list of some of Kennedy's liberal traits.
First of all, JFK supported the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. Not only is this confirmed by Robert McNamara in his film "The Fog of War," but an audio recording of then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson referring to this plan of Kennedy's is also shown. Also, consult Kennedy's National Security Action Memorandum 263, from October 1963, which called for the removal of 1,000 armed forces personnel to be removed by the end of the year.
Yes, Kennedy was--for a long time--a foreign policy hawk. No question. But by the last year of his life (post-Bay of Pigs), he was moving in a more dovish direction. He negotiated the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and gave a famous speech about world peace at American University on June 10, 1963. http://www1.media.american.edu/speeches/Kennedy.htm
Secondly, John F. Kennedy's tax cut was a demand-side tax cut, not a supply-side cut; Ronald Reagan he was not. You could argue whether a present-day liberal would institute such a measure (probably not), but no conservative would either. http://www.slate.com/id/2093947/ A good article about this.
Your talk of Kennedy not supporting civil rights seems to neglect the entire last two years of his life. Kennedy deployed federal marshalls in 1962 to allow James Meredith to enroll in his first class at the University of Mississippi. Furthermore, after George Wallace infamously blocked the doorway of University of Alabama, John F. Kennedy gave one of his most famous speeches, his civil rights speech, on June 11, 1963. In it, he proposed what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. You can find a transcript here: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/003POF03CivilRights06111963.htm It is startling to me that you don't know of this. Also note that John, along with brother Robert, helped secure Martin Luther King's release from prison http://www.lib.lsu.edu/hum/mlk/srs216.html
Your claim in the main article that Kennedy never claimed to be a liberal is false. One of his most famous quotes is this, from September 1960, in accepting the New York Liberal Party nomination: "If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."" Also note the mention of civil rights.
By saying that Kennedy never supported abortion or gay rights, you're creating a false strawman. Abortion and gay rights were not issues in the 1960s; by this measure, you could just as easily claim that Nixon and Goldwater were liberals because they didn't (between 1961 and 1963) speak out against those two issues. Fact of the matter is, abortion didn't become a major political issue until Roe v. Wade. Had Kennedy lived, and opposed abortion through the 1970s, you may have had a point. The Democrats didn't introduce a gay rights plank to their party platform until 1976; the Republicans didn't introduce one in opposition until 1992.
But while we're talking about modern issues, here's President Kennedy arguing for '''''universal health care''''' in May of 1962 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14A1zxaHpD8
Kennedy signed Omnibus Housing Bill 1961, which proposed spending $3.19 billion on a massive government housing program for the working poor. It also called for the creation of the Department of Housing and Urban Urban Affairs.
Kennedy opposed the quota system for immigration, saying it had "no basis in either logic or reason." He said to Congress on July 23, 1963: "It neither satisfies a national need nor accomplishes an international purpose. In an age of interdependence among nations, such a system is an anachronism for it discriminates among applicants for admission into the United States on the basis of the accident of birth." (Kennedy, John F., Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1964, pp. 594-597.)
Kennedy signed HR5143, which abolished the death penalty for first-degree murder in Washington DC.
As for Kennedy and FDR, read "Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America." Franklin Roosevelt was one of Kennedy's heroes. His "Ask not..." quote and "New Frontier" were efforts to mimick FDR's "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" and "New Deal," respectively
It's also funny that you claim that the Kennedy family represented the conservative wing of the Democratic party; Joseph Kennedy Sr. strongly opposed the Lend-Lease Act and indeed, any aid to Great Britain at all. In 1940, he famously proclaimed "Democracy is finished in England. It may be here." He supported Chamberlain's policy of appeasement; read "The Dark Side of Camelot" by Seymour Hersh for more. So yes, the elder Kennedy did oppose FDR, but from his LEFT, not his right.
John F. Kennedy Kennedy established the President’s Commission on the Status of Women to examine issues of women's equality. Who chaired this group? Eleanor Roosevelt, whom you claim he opposed.
It's ashame that you felt the need to lock the page, enshrining your uncited and biased new article as "fact," and stifling what should be a robust debate and exchange of ideas. It also upsets me that you think I should "read more and think more," when clearly you aren't aware of (or simply chose not to mention) a great deal of what Kennedy believed or what policy directives his administration took. You do bring up good points about areas of his conservatism; he was a hawk for a while, he was tough on crime, etc. I don't mean to demean those points at all; you make them eloquently. But as I've clearly shown, he was quite liberal in many areas as well. My guess is, if he were alive today, he would probably be a Democrat in the mold of Joe Lieberman, or perhaps Evan Bayh. Hopefully, we can resolve this, and re-write the passage together to find a better balance, and more accurately show that Kennedy worked in both conservative and liberal directions in his long and illustrious career.
[[User:ChuckR|ChuckR]] 13:30, 5 November 2009 (EST)