This is line of reasoning is certainly thought provoking
Reader comment on item: Lee Harvey Oswald's Malign Legacy

Submitted by Ken Besig (Israel), Nov 22, 2007 at 04:26

Since I came of age in the late 1960's I can still remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when the principle at my school announced that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. Several years later I was in college when liberalism turned into a new form of Brownshirt Fascism and the Left wing Stormtroopers turned universities from centers of higher education into centers of neo Marxist and anti American indoctrination. After I graduated I went on to serve in the American Army and still proudly wear the title of Viet Nam veteran although many of my classmates saw that as despicable. Now I live in the Jewish State of Israel, and what few liberal friends, even some of the Jewish ones, I once had have long since dropped me as a result of that.

I certainly can see how James Pierson could come to the sort of conclusions he reached, and as an American who actually participated in the experiences he cites first hand, I must say he makes a lot of sense. By the same token, I can only suggest why I think the extreme liberal camp was so darned successful in selling their twisted version of liberality to America's youth, and then to the country at large.

First of all, by 1965, the fruits of the WWII "baby boom" were becoming young adults and somewhat politically aware. Secondly, this group, of which I was a part, was as far as I know, the largest single generation of children ever to be born in America and perhaps the world. Thirdly, we were the best nourished, best educated, and most financially prosperous generation, not to say spoiled, in the history of mankind. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, we were fully aware of the inequalities and injustices that pervaded American society, especially after seeing literally dozens of American cities burned and pillaged by American Blacks demanding equality, and experiencing the assassinations of Martin Luther KIng and Bobby Kennedy.

Thus since there were so many of us, any conclusions we came to would carry pretty heavy weight, no matter how absurd these conclusions were, and since we had so much money and free time on our hands, we were also free to impose those conclusions on everybody else, which we did on just about every campus and city in the country.

However, I believe that it was the Viet Nam War, and especially our resentment of the draft which provided the manpower for it, which really gave the so called New Left, along with the Soviet dominated American Old Left, a real and effective chance to pervert and twist our thinking. These two radical groups, and others, like Students for a Democratic Society, took our serious concerns about racial and financial inequality in America, and turned it into a dislike for and eventually a distrust of our own country.

Most of us are aware of the old Bernard Shaw saying, which goes, "If a person isn't a socialist at age twenty, he has no heart, but if he is still a socialist by age fifty, he has no brain." Well, if my generation wasn't turned into card carrying socialists, an awfully large number of us came to really loathe capitalism, and the America that embraces it.

And nowadays, we are the dominant force in American politics and culture, and our loathing, resentment, and dislike of capitalist and unjust America has created a new bogeyman and a new fascism to embody our feelings. That of course, is President George Bush, who if I didn't know better and only listened to the American Left and liberals, would believe that the President had horns, a tail, was colored red, and carried a pitchfork. I can only imagine, with a real and abiding sense of dread, what American liberals will resort to if by chance another Republican is elected President in 2008.

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