It used to be that the conspiracy bug was almost exclusively confined to right wing extremists - Birchers, Klansmen, McCarthyites, and a mish mash of anti-government, anti-communist (where many believed the commies had already taken over the US government), and anti-UN psychopaths. According to the eminent historian Richard Hofstadter’s brilliant essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics , these pathetic people felt that they had no control over their lives, that “an invisible hand” was directing their destiny and the destiny of the nation.

Scholar Daniel Pipes expounded on this theme more recently with his book Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From. Pipes traces the history of conspiracy mongering from the Middle East, to Western Europe (where regular pogroms against the Jews were the result) and it’s arrival here in America with its roots in the anti-Masonic, anti-Illuminati groups of the 19th century.

Now James Piereson, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, president of the William E. Simon Foundation, and former executive director and trustee of the John M. Olin Foundation, has written a book that posits the theory that the JFK assassination “compromised the central assumptions of American liberalism” thereby devastating the left as no other event did before or has since. This led American liberals to several wrong historical conclusions which gave flight to a conspiracy culture of their own.

The book, Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism, is not the first effort to use the Kennedy Assassination as a starting point to show where liberalism lost its way. Theodore H. White’s brilliant autobiographical In Search of History made basically the same point; that the unfulfilled promise of the JFK presidency haunted liberals down to this day. From tragedy, there emerged a culture of paranoia that saw the “invisible hand” at work - not of Masons or Communists, but of right wing extremists both in and out of government. White also commented on the takeover of the liberal ideology - his ideology - by hard left Stalinists as New Deal Democrats like Humphrey were marginalized as a result of their support for the Viet Nam war.

John Miller interviewed Piereson for the National Review. It should be noted that Piereson is a well respected academic whose main interest over the years has been to promote an ideologically neutral atmosphere in our educational system - in other words, a “classically liberal” education. While he is generally identified as being a moderate conservative, Mr. Piereson has not been shy about taking on the right over issues such as teaching evolution in classrooms and prayer in schools.

Miller begins the interview by asking how the JFK assassination changed American politics:

JAMES PIERESON: Kennedy’s assassination, happening the way it did, compromised the central assumptions of American liberalism that had been the governing philosophy of the nation since the time of the New Deal. It did this in two decisive ways: first, by compromising the faith of liberals in the future; second, by undermining their confidence in the nation. Kennedy’s assassination suggested that history is not in fact a benign process of progress and advancement, but perhaps something quite different. The thought that the nation itself was responsible for Kennedy’s death suggested that the United States, far from being a “city on a hill” and an example for mankind, as Kennedy had described it (quoting John Winthrop), was in fact something darker and more sinister in its deepest nature.

The conspiracy theories that developed afterwards reflected this thought. The Camelot legend further suggested that that the Kennedy years represented something unique that was now forever lost. Liberalism was thereafter overtaken by a sense of pessimism about the future, cynicism about the United States, and nostalgia for the Kennedy years. This was something entirely new in the United States. It was evident in the culture during the 1960s. George Wallace tried to confront it in the electoral arena in 1968, as did Richard Nixon — though it was somewhat difficult to do so because neither Lyndon Johnson nor Hubert Humphrey represented this new orientation. It was not until this mood of pessimism was brought into the government during the Carter administration that it could be directly confronted in the political arena, which is what Ronald Reagan in fact did.

Miller challenges Piereson on the notion that 11/22/63 meant more than 9/11:

We know from looking back over the decades that Kennedy’s sudden death cast a long shadow over American life, which I have tried to describe. Many of us thought that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 would also have great consequences for the way Americans looked at politics, the parties, and national security. In particular, some felt that the attacks might drive out of our politics the tone of anti-Americanism that had been a key feature of the American Left from the 1960s forward. That did not really happen. The liberal movement today remains far more the product of the 1960s than of the terrorist attacks and their aftermath. Indeed, the terrorist attacks now seem to have had very little effect on the thinking of American liberals who view the war on terror and the war in Iraq through the lenses of the Vietnam War. That is not true of conservatives. In that sense, the terrorist attacks have simply deepened the divide between liberals and conservatives. What is surprising, then, is what little enduring effect the terrorist attacks have had, particularly for liberals.

I have written many times on this site with all the earnestness that I can muster that it is absolutely imperative that if we are going to survive as a nation and win this war against the terrorists and the states that continue to enable them, the left simply must join this fight. Until liberals embrace the notion that the War on Terror or whatever you choose to call it is real and not some political ploy designed by President Bush to win elections, or set up a dictatorship, or destroy the left itself, we have no hope of either confronting the menace or winning through to victory. The intellectual framework for the survival of the west has always been best outlined by classically liberal writers and thinkers. Today, they are missing in action and it hurts the cause terribly.

Piereson believes a large part of the problem is that the left has their eyes focused on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza:

Liberals who were rational and realistic accepted the fact that Oswald killed JFK but at the same time they were unable to ascribe a motive for his actions. They tended to look for sociological explanations for the event and found one in the idea that JFK was brought down by a “climate of hate” that had overtaken the nation. Thus they placed Kennedy’s assassination within a context of violence against civil rights activists. They had great difficulty accepting the fact that Kennedy’s death was linked to the Cold War, not to civil rights. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., in his 1,000-page history of the Kennedy administration, published in 1965, could not bring himself to mention Oswald’s name in connection with Kennedy’s death, though he spent several paragraphs describing the hate-filled atmosphere of Dallas at the time — suggesting thereby that Kennedy was a victim of the far right. The inability to come to grips with the facts of Kennedy’s death pointed to a deeper fault in American liberalism which was connected to its decline.

Gerald Posner points out in his conspiracy debunking book on the assassination Case Closed that theorists have gone to extraordinary lengths to absolve Oswald of any connection to the crime at all. He traces the theories on Oswald’s involvement from the notion that he was an assassin hired by the CIA or FBI through the “patsy” phase to where now, Oswald is thought of by many conspiracists as an innocent bystander. Anything but the truth about Oswald’s political leanings.

To be fair, it is doubtful that Oswald really understood Communism or any other ideology for that matter. He embraced it because it set him apart, made him different. And for someone as brutally neglected as Oswald was when he was young, basking in the glow of attention as a result of his contrarian political stands - especially in the Marine Corps - it must have given him an enormous amount of satisfaction.

As historian William Manchester points out in his seminal work on the assassination Death of a President, “Lee Harvey Oswald shot the President of the United States in the back to get attention.” Rather than looking for complex, multi-level reasons for why Kennedy and Oswald’s paths crossed that tragic day in Dealey Plaza, sometimes the simplest explanations are the most plausible.

Piereson weighs in on Oliver Stone’s fantasy film JFK:

The Oliver Stone movie was foolish to the extent it was held up as an account of the Kennedy assassination. Using Jim Garrison as a credible authority on the Kennedy assassination is akin to citing Rosie O’Donnell as an authority on the collapse of the Twin Towers. It is not possible to claim that Kennedy was shot from the grassy knoll without at the same time claiming that the autopsy (which said he was shot from the rear) was wrong or fabricated. The conspiracy theories do not arise from any evidence but from a need to believe that Kennedy was shot by someone other than Oswald.

Garrison, the ambitious, homophobic New Orleans DA who prosecuted Clay Shaw for the murder of JFK made Mike Nifong look like a pillar of legal rectitude. The fact that the jury returned a verdict in 45 minutes of not guilty should tell you everything you need to know about Garrison’s out of control prosecution. (One juror said after the verdict that the reason they took so long was that several jurors had to use the washroom.) Making Garrison out to be a hero in the film was perhaps the most outrageous calumny in the history of Hollywood. The damage done to the historical record by Stone should never, ever be forgotten.

Finally, Miller asks Piereson about Jack Ruby:

MILLER: Would liberals have had an easier time of it if Jack Ruby hadn’t killed Oswald?

PIERESON: If Ruby had not intervened, Oswald probably would have tried to stage some kind of “show” trial in which Kennedy’s policies in Cuba would have been raised as a central issue. Oswald proudly acknowledged that he was a Communist. If the case had been brought to trial, Oswald would have certainly been convicted. In that case, it would have been far more difficult for liberals and the Kennedy family to maintain that JFK was killed because of his support for civil rights. There would have been less talk of conspiracies; less anti-Americanism from the left; perhaps it would have further reinforced the anti-communism of post-war liberalism. There is no question that Ruby changed the equation a great deal.

Recent theories about the Mafia’s involvement in the assassination include not only Ruby as silencer but Oswald as trigger man thanks to a distant uncle of Oswald’s who worked for New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello. The thought of any one of those gabby losers working for the Mafia on a hit the magnitude of the Kennedy assassination is outrageous on its face. Besides, federal agents had Marcello, Sam Trafficante, and Sam Giancana - all three implicated by conspiracists in the assassination - under close surveillance for years prior to the death of Kennedy and not a word was uttered by any of them that would prove they had anything to do with the murder.

I think Piereson is right. I believe that the assassination so unbalanced the left that they have yet to find their way back. Spinning ever more fantastic conspiracy theories to explain electoral losses, describe their political enemies, and generally view the world with a suspicion and paranoia once reserved for the mouth breathers on the right, the left has truly lost their way. Perhaps it will take someone like Senator Obama - a sunnyside up sort of liberal - to reinvigorate the movement and bring it back down to earth.

And then perhaps, we can all go to war together rather than the left hanging back while seeing monsters under the bed.

Said Rick Moran @ 12:51 pm | Permalink   

1. Rick. This is a very interesting and thoughtful post. I had not gone back nearly as far as the Kennedy assassination to ponder why the Left is what it is today. With Carter’s weak reputation, and Clinton’s impeachment, I have assumed that Clinton’s white house and his younger supporters (and his press secretary) unleashed the venom that actually became rhetoric for the Dems. Now I have some more thinking to do.

   Maggie
   Maggie’s Notebook

   Comment by Maggie M. Thornton — 6/25/2007 @ 7:12 am

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