imbalance
Silver Member
- Jun 30, 2011
- 1,202
- 166
Kennedy wasn't really a liberal at all, btw.. he was a cold warrior. Nixon was far more left.
Nixon does not fall into any traditional classification imo. I still can't decide whether he was one of the US' best or worst executive leaders. Either way, I can easily call him the most important as far as the world today resulting from his unilateral Nixon Shock and establishment of global petrodollar hegemony.
I agree that JFK was not a modern liberal. Classical liberal perhaps as his economic views were often libertarian-leaning:
John F. Kennedy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaTo the Economic Club of New York, he spoke in 1963 of "... the paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and revenues too low; and the soundest way to raise revenue in the long term is to lower rates now."
I should add that I wasn't born until the 80s so how much can I actually know lol
with respect to nixon, it's always been my opinion that if he hadn't been paranoid and crazy, or hadn't gotten 'caught", he'd have been considered one of our best, if not the best of our modern era presidents.
i don't believe there's such a thing as "classical liberal". i know it's been pointed out to me that the term has been used in the past, but not in the self-serving way it's being used by some on the right today.
that said, i think there are presidents who try to do the right thing regardless of whether the right thing is "left" or "right"... i don't think in this political climate such people get very far.
I agree with all of this. I'm sure there's a degree of subjective bias as to what I've observed in real time since my awareness of politics began in the 90s, but in investigating the US' history post-19th century I genuinely perceive a growing general tension and distrust of government that began during George HW Bush's presidency. With the now 24-hour news cycle today, the propaganda ministers are as loud and unscrupulous as ever. You'd like to think that with more access to information/communication, citizens would be less vulnerable to the manipulators. But unfortunately, what I think we're seeing is that increased access to information/communication has simply given the manipulators greater access to vulnerable sheep now perpetually exposed to rhetoric. Thus the perfect conditions for brutally partisan political climate.