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James Piereson

Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism Paperback – November 5, 2013

by James Piereson (Author)

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James Piereson examines the bizarre aftermath of John F. Kennedy's assassination: Why in the years after the assassination did the American Left become preoccupied with conspiratorial thinking? How and why was Kennedy transformed in death into a liberal icon and a martyr for civil rights? In what way was the assassination linked to the collapse of mid-century liberalism, a doctrine which until 1963 was the reigning philosophy of the nation?

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

James Piereson is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York City, and a frequent contributor to various journals and newspapers, including The New Criterion, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and The Wall Street Journal. He is editor of The Pursuit of Liberty: Can the Institutions that Made America Great Serve as a Model for the World? He lives in New York City.

Product details

ASIN : 1594037434
Publisher : Encounter Books; 2nd ed. edition (November 5, 2013)
Language : English
Paperback : 288 pages
ISBN-10 : 9781594037436
ISBN-13 : 978-1594037436
Item Weight : 15 ounces
Dimensions : 6 x 0.75 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,474,289 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,146 in Political Conservatism & Liberalism
- #10,829 in History & Theory of Politics
- #78,235 in United States History (Books)

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42 ratings

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Oh goody, more Kennedy worship.

Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2020

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Seems to misunderstand the political spectrum of left to right – calls Protestantism and anti-communism “far right”; seems to think the Klan was a right-wing organization (uh-huh. please look up Senator Byrd. The Klan was the terrorist arm of the democrat party); seems to think Germany’s National Socialists were some sort of “right-wing” organization because they hated communists – internecine war – purity purge

Written by a statist Kennedy worshipper in 2007 – attempt at resurrecting his legacy

MY NOTES:
- Until Kennedy, Americans believed the “far right” was the main enemy of progress and order
- In response to Kennedy’s death, this became the narrative:
- 1) the nation at large is to blame (98)
- 2) something is deeply wrong with America
- 3) conspiracy theory
- 4) communism could not possibly be to blame (97) – this was LBJ’s main concern
- 5) civil rights, not cold war focus (101)

“Reform” under Wilson-FDR-Kennedy-Johnson had been a tool for optimistic improvement. After Kennedy, “Reform” became a call for punishment for national guilt (207) – address grievances and parcel out blame. Especially racial grievances.

The cultural & political interpretation of Kennedy’s assassination became detached from the facts of the crime – a committed Marxist murdered Kennedy. (96)

FDR’s New Deal changed America from a market society to an administrative society – huge growth in government jobs – security through government jobs – government can solve all the problems!
There can be no rational opposition to “leftism” (11)

This book was written in 2007 by an aspirational liberal leftist – disappointed in leftism. Considers himself to be one of the “thoughtful liberals.” Thinks America got derailed:
- The 1960’s left turned to conspiracy theories, abusive insults of political foes, and hatred of America (prosperity, free economy, representative republic) – all under attack
- No more faith in government to solve problems (204)
- Left after Kennedy thinks America is a malignant development in world history
- Leads to Obama’s new imperative: reduce America’s influence & national pride
- No longer future-oriented democrat party; Focused on revenge

Reagan took over the mantle of optimism. Optimism lives with Republicans since the 80s

6 people found this helpful

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Michael S. Snyder

Ruling Class lies and their ongoing negative effects explained.

Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2016

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In the 1950s, the United States was prosperous and self-confident. The Progressive Ruling Class was consolidating the programs brought into being by FDR and launching a few more, like the Interstate Highway System and the Federal takeover of education, but all with relatively little conflict as the Constitution was forgotten under the Warren Court. Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best actually represented much of what we aspired to. In 1961 the younger generation, lead by the charismatic Jack Kennedy and his stylish wife Jackie, added the dynamism and modernity that the Eisenhowers had lacked. When Kennedy was shot by a Communist, who supported Castro in his ongoing conflict with the Kennedys and their Mafia associates, the Ruling Class was shocked and unwilling to admit that their fellow socialists might have perpetrated such a gauche act. So they blamed the assassination on the sickness of American society.

The wholesale repudiation of America by the youth of the 1960s and the ongoing efforts of today's Progressives to subordinate the United States to the United Nations and reduce it to the economic malaise and atheist cultural rot of Europe are a direct consequence of the refusal by the Ruling Class to admit that Marxism, not American defects, killed Kennedy.

Mr. Piereson does an admirable job of explaining the facts and their disastrous effects on contemporary America. Although he doesn't try, he explains how we could have been so foolish as to elect and then reelect an anti-American atheist schooled in Marxism and hatred of freedom. If you've ever wondered how we got from James Madison to Barack Obama, this book explains the last few miles of that sad road.

6 people found this helpful

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Don Martin

I loved Kennedy. I think the author correctly characterizes Kennedy ...

Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2015

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This was truly an interesting and incisive book. As a student at Columbia during the Kennedy years I was familiar with the rationalist liberal position, and worries about the radical right.

A Catholic commuter kid from Queens, I loved Kennedy.

I think the author correctly characterizes Kennedy as. Pragmatic politician, one who was decidedly anti communist, but " not afraid to negotiate." He was a casualty of the Cold War killed by a communist. The John Birchers of the left made "all of us" responsible for his death.

I remember an interview in which Kennedy said he was "an idealist without illusions" and one where he sought to advance the notion that his family was not merely nouveaux riches but instilled with a bit of noblesse oblige which is Gaelic for public service is an honorable calling.

Liberals and the Kennedy family, the author suggests, did not like the Cold War narrative and so they dressed him anew as a latter day Lincoln.

The Cold War really was a "long twilight struggle." Kennedy was killed at midday but in another sense it really was dusk.

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Athanasius

How You Write Cultural History

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 17, 2020

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This is a masterclass in how you write cultural and social history. You live it, absorb it, become intimately familiar with the facts of it, turn them over in your mind, get them all lined up and when you're ready and have everything clear in your head, you come out with something like this. Clear, concise, articulate and completely bereft of sociological jargon or verbose obfuscation. You won't find a single "endogamy" or "hegemony" in this book. What you will find is a simple analysis of what the hell happened to America - and the west more generally - in the wake of the Kennedy assassination.

Piereson begins with by pointing out the obvious, massive fault line in liberal and leftist thinking which is hidden right out there in plain sight. The idea of automatic progress. It's so ingrained in our society that we not only take it completely for granted, we don't actually think about it at all. It's just something that IS. Only it isn't, and Piereson notes that the prevalence of this thinking in the decades prior to the Kennedy assassination is the foundation of the cultural madness that followed. Because what is recorded in every history book, and which nobody ever stops for a second to ponder, is that Lee Harvey Oswald was a Communist. Once Oswald did what he did, we had a black swan event. The left were not supposed to act like this. Political violence is a right wing thing, isn't it? Well, no, it isn't necessarily, and here was the living proof of it. The reaction that followed is what has been derailing the left for the past sixty years.

It is almost entirely forgotten nowadays that Kennedy was not particularly a man of the left. His iconic liberal status was something that was awarded to him posthumously and as part of the move to put his murder on the right, but as a congressman, he had worked closely with, and actually had great respect for, Richard Nixon. And although it's never spoken of today, he was a personal friend of Eugene McCarthy, who was a regular guest at the Kennedy compound and actually dated two of JFK's sisters at different points. He was, at most, centre right, with a classical liberal overview, positioning himself - as any career politician might - to appeal to the widest possible electorate. And he was most emphatically anti-Communist. He inherited the Bay of Pigs operation from Eisenhower, but as president, he could have stopped it with a word. He didn't because he agreed with it. Ditto the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was prepared to go to war to stop the deployment of Russian missiles in Cuba, and that's not the act of a woolly liberal.

So how did he come to be perceived as he was? Piereson goes into some detail on this, but it's not eyes-glazing-over detail. It's simply put, but the genesis of it appears to be in a throwaway comment by Jackie Kennedy to the effect that "he didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights. He had to be murdered by some silly Communist." If you unpick this, you'll see the whole rotten mess in a single sentiment. Firstly, the shock that the bullet came from the left, not the sweaty, deep south, KKK right. Second, the assumption that, whereas the right is evil, the left is merely "silly". And thirdly, the point at which the whole, propagandistic media and academic establishment swung in behind the ACTUAL Kennedy conspiracy, the one that laid the murder at the door of the right, not the left where it belonged.

Jackie thereafter quite deliberately arranged JFK's funeral as a mirror of the Lincoln funeral, but, as Piereson points out, the American Civil War was the end, not the beginning of a cultural conflict, and Lincoln's memory was not usurped in support of something he was not aligned with in life. There was no massive, right wing conspiracy to murder John F Kennedy, notwithstanding the decades of fuel that idea has provided for film makers, novelists and people who hold themselves out as serious historical and social commentators. JFK was not killed by a "culture of hate" within America, a supposition the left has been peddling for decades. He was killed by one of their own because he was standing foursquare in opposition to them, and they've been burying that fact ever since.

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