John F. Kennedy's Legacy is One of Revision: JFK Was Never Going to Withdraw from Vietnam


You hear it said all the time. Some people even believe it was the reason John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas. On the 50th anniversary of his inauguration, misinformed liberals doing their best to rewrite history with their lack of understanding and research of history once again find themselves standing in doo doo. Take for instance Liz Sidoti who writes:

Fifty years after John F. Kennedy summoned Americans to a new generation of leadership and patriotism, one thing is clear: This is no age of Camelot.

Were it uttered by a modern politician, Kennedy's famous "ask not" call to service might well be derided as a socialist pitch for more government. His idyllic clamoring for a united world to "explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths" could easily be dismissed by cynics as dreamy and lacking specifics.


Uttered by a modern politician as a rallying call for socialism and more government? Are you kidding me? Quite the opposite. In fact, most conservatives I know ask what happened to these types of Democrats.

When you look at the real Kennedy, he looks nothing like the modern day Democrat/socialist in 2011. He looks more like Reagan asking people to count on the government less and make a difference without government pushing you along. He supported across the board tax cuts to spur the economy--not pushing more government on people through artificial stimulus.



One of the largest misconceptions of JFK is this belief he was going to pull out of Vietnam. As Sidoti works to redefine JFK's famous quote into something Marxist, like Communist propaganda, the truth is JFK was willing to fight the spread of the most severe form of socialism in Southeast Asia. At no time was JFK willing to lay down to socialism spreading through Southeast Asia as evident in this September 1963 video interview with Walter Cronkite. In fact, it sounds like JFK defined in his day his own "axis of evil."




Does it sound like "ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country" is really a socialist catch phrase? I think not.