Blog #35 - Musings about history and peace

 

  

Pick one of these quotes and tell me what you think the speaker means by it and what he/she is saying about history/peace specifically.  Please make sure you don't restate the quote.  Explore its meaning, especially for today's world.  

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind...War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
John F. Kennedy

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
Abraham Lincoln

Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.

Richard Nixon

People ask the difference between a leader and a [political] boss. . . . The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

Teddy Roosevelt

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. Woodrow Wilson

 

No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of minorities. Franklin Roosevelt

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

Franklin Roosevelt

200 words minimum.  Due Monday, September 10 before class begins.  

Blog #31 - Which JFK conspiracy do you believe?

We have been watching Oswald's Ghost and trying to get to the bottom of the mess surrounding the murder of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963.  The Warren Commission, under stress to get to the bottom of the murder, tried to line up the facts and reasons why those facts had happened.  The implications of not coming to a lone gunman conclusion being murdered by Jack Ruby (feeling sorry for Jackie Kennedy who almost everyone loved or felt sympathy for) were staggering:  the murderer would still be on the loose.   So, the Warren Commission did was it supposed to: it presented the government's case for an open and shut case against Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) just in time for President Johnson to trounce Republican senator Barry Goldwater. 

Early on in the film, it appears to present one possible conspiracy with little evidence but conjecture: why would a leftist (LHO) kill a liberal president deep in the heart of Texas where JFK was deeply hated (given the editorials NOT welcoming the president to Dallas) along with the anti-segregationists and Texas oilmen (see pamphlet to the side).  The stuff that we hear on the cable newshows against either Presidents Bush or Obama is nothing new.  It was said 40 years ago.  Talk of impeaching a president was tossed at FDR, Clinton and many other presidents as well.

Another conspiracy that we heard was that the president was killed by the Cubans for his sponsoring of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the confrontation over the missiles in 1962.  LHO's shady past and his passing out of leaflets saying "Hands Off Cuba"  provide some plausibility for that scenario.  Whether these were pro-Cubans who wanted to kill JFK for the Bay of Pigs invasion, or anti-Castro people who were angry about the Bay of Pigs invasion and JFK' s refusal to support the invasion.  The killers could have been Cubans or it could have been Oswald.

In the book, 48 Liberal Lies About American History (That You Probably Learned in School), the #5 Lie was "JFK was killed by LBJ and a secret team to keep Kennedy from getting us out of Vietnam."   The author of the book, Larry Schweikart, argued that all of the top military contractors "put together couldn't equal the revenues of a major car comany or a McDonald's" (36).  There's some debate as to whether President Kennedy was a strong anti-Communist or not, whether he was willing to stay and fight in South Vietnam.  Some staffers stated that Kennedy had expressed uncertainty over remaining there.  Therefore, the "military-industrial complex" apparently has so much pull in the government that it can have a president assassinated (yet today, when our military is so much stronger and the U.S. gov't. withdraws from Iraq, not one single president is killed!  Amazing!). 

Also, there is the mafia involvement scenario.  There are a couple of angles on this.  One angle is that the assassination was retaliation for Attorney General Bobby Kennedy's attacks on the mafia.  They could have used their own killers and used Oswald as a "patsy" like he claimed.  According to Schweikart, there's wiretap evidence against some of the top crime bosses in the nation like Sam Giancana (the mob boss whose girlfriend, Judith Campbell, Frank Sinatra had introduced JFK to) among others (37).  The other angle has to do with killing JFK b/c he was having an affair w/ Judith Campbell (Exner, her married name).  

Then there's Oswald doing the murder by himself.  Pretty much the evidence points to this scenario.  Lawyer Gerald Posner wrote Case Closed  in 1993 tackles the absence of other evidence (the lack of more gunshots, the inability of the conspiracy folks to produce any bullets tied to the crime scene besides Oswald's or any other kind of forensic evidence.  In Oswald's Ghost, the film makes a very good case about how much LHO was underestimated - that he was too stupid, too incompetent, too this or too that to do any of the things that he had done on his own (get dishonorably discharged from the Marines, defect to the Soviet Union, marry a Russian woman and then return back to the U.S.) w/o the help of foreign governments or their agencies. 

Question:

Which JFK murder conspiracy / theory do you personally think has the most credibility?  Why?  Use info from Oswald's Ghost, article "Death of a President", and outside sources if necessary. 

Due Wednesday May 5 - 200 words minimum. 

Sources:

1. Timeline of JFK and LHO's lives from PBS's website for Oswald's Ghost: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/oswald/timeline/
2. Review of Gerald Posner's Case Closed, http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/parnell/sl2.htm 
3. Norman Mailer, Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery
4. Josiah Thompson, Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination
5. The Warren Commission - http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/index.html
6. Robert Dallek, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917 - 1963
7. Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Marina and Lee
8. Edward Jay Epstein, Inquest
9. Mark Lane, RUSH TO JUDGEMENT

Journal #13B - 40 different ways to look at JFK

After reading and listening to the different views of President Kennedy's life as seen through different biographers' eyes, it's time for your opinion/assessment.

John Kennedy's biographers are usually broken into two groups: one group works to reinforce the image of Kennedy as icon, as the ideal president. They tend to gloss over the difficult stuff in his life with the idea that it's not important to know that kind of info about him. These biographers also stress his good qualities and downplay his bad qualities.

The second group of biographers are iconoclasts; they are trying to poke holes in the JFK myth by finding evidence to refute many of the cherished (and false) stories about the Kennedy family, clan, and presidency. These biographers are like realist authors - they give you the gritty details of a person's life; the fact that this person was the president doesn't seem to phase them.

The American people have consistently voted JFK (along with Lincoln) as their greatest American President, yet historians have given him the title "Most Overrated" in American Heritage magazine. When looking at his Congressional record, he didn't do much. Almost the same thing can be said for his Presidential record; how significant were the Peace Corps and the race to the moon in the long run?

Your job: answer the following questions:
1. Share your assessment of the man and his job as president by looking back at your notes on the 8 sections of the book. Explain your reasoning with specific examples.
2. Where should biographers draw the line on their subjects? How much is too much and how little is too little?It really boils down to what the main job of a biographer is.

250 words minimum. -Due Wednesday - 2/13/08

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page - Great link to a tribute website to a JFK archivist, Mary Ferrell.

What Would Kennedy Have Done?

Colleen was wondering:

Kennedy only had his "1000 days" as President and he was able to accomplish a lot. What do you think he could have achieved if he hadn't been assasinated? Could he have achieved more than what Johnson did as his successor or less? Do you think it would have been better for the U.S. if he had continued being president, or was it better his time in the White House ended?

Editor's Note: when answering this question, think about what Johnson was able to accomplish (CR and Voting Rights Acts, War on Poverty, Great Society) and what he failed to do (Vietnam). Was Johnson able to succeed and fail b/c he was who he was? Would JFK have succeeded better or worse based upon his own personality, strengths and weaknesses?

Jackie Kennedy in Dallas - what would you have done?

Why didn't Jackie try to protect her husband the first time he was shot?

Also why was her first instinct when he was shot the second time to try and jump out of the car and grab his skull?

Wouldn't everybody's first instinct (without thinking if their loved one was shot) to be to grab them and try to protect them?

What would you do?

Christina L.

A BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/22/newsid_2451000/2451143.stm

An assassination conspiracy page (from Germany!?) http://www.jfk-assassination.de/index.php

Journal #6 - 40 Ways to Look at JFK

After reading and listening to the different views of President Kennedy's life as seen through different biographers' eyes, it's time for your opinion/assessment.

John Kennedy's biographers are usually broken into two groups: one group works to reinforce the image of Kennedy as icon, as the ideal president. They tend to gloss over the difficult stuff in his life with the idea that it's not important to know that kind of info about him. These biographers also stress his good qualities and downplay his bad qualities.

The second group of biographers are iconoclasts; they are trying to poke holes in the JFK myth by finding evidence to refute many of the cherished (and false) stories about the Kennedy family, clan, and presidency. These biographers are like realist authors - they give you the gritty details of a person's life; the fact that this person was the president doesn't seem to phase them.

The American people have consistently voted JFK (along with Lincoln) as their greatest American President, yet historians have given him the title "Most Overrated" in American Heritage magazine. When looking at his Congressional record, he didn't do much. Almost the same thing can be said for his Presidential record; how significant were the Peace Corps and the race to the moon in the long run?

Your job: answer the following questions
1. Share your assessment of the man and his job as president by looking back at your notes on the 9 sections of the book. Explain your reasoning with specific examples.
2. Where should biographers draw the line on their subjects? How much is too much and how little is too little?
It really boils down to what the main job of a biographer is. 250 words minimum.
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Great link to a tribute website to a JFK archivist, Mary Ferrell.