How many people today recall that event?

For many, those few seconds on a street in Dallas holds a horrific fascination. Others consider the moments to be a turning point in American history. One commentator even called it the most critical event in the United States in the 20th Century. (We at TPOL do not agree.)

For readers too young to remember, we are talking about 22 November 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was shot and later died, while Governor John Connelly of Texas, riding in the presidential “bubble top” limousine with Kennedy and his wife, was wounded.

(That is the 22nd. Not the 23rd, as a regional radio talk show host repeated several times. Today, not Thanksgiving Day this year, is the anniversary.)

There is no question that the murder of Kennedy was an important event in American history, and perhaps even world history. But it is not good to overstate the importance. The 20th Century is filled with events which have shaped today’s world. Usually for the worse. Especially for the Fifty States. Was Kennedy’s killing more important than McKinley’s murder on 6 September 1901 (he died on 14 SEP 01 of gangrene)? Or Edith Wilson serving as acting POTUS during Wilson’s incapacity? Or Nixon’s resignation? Or Wilson getting Congress to declare war in 1917? Or dozens of other events?

The end of “Camelot” has created all kinds of myths, and certainly lots of speculation. The cover-ups over the next several years have created more conspiracy theories than perhaps anything except UFOs. Clearly, the corrupt Texan Lyndon B. Johnson’s occupancy of the White House resulted in a good many nasty things, as well as ushering in an era of false prosperity of “guns and butter” and saw (in LBJ’s and RMN’s regimes) the massive growth of power of the FedGov. (Or really, the beginning of a steep slope). But we can trace much of the immoral and frankly unconstitutional power of DC way back to Honest Abe and Woody Wilson and especially Franklin Roosevelt.

But certainly JFK’s killing resulted in far more impacts – negative impacts – than Garfield’s killing in the 1880s or McKinley’s in 1901. And less than the death of FDR. And there appears to be, sixty years later, far more evidence that JFK’s murder was part of an internal coup than any of those previous assassinations. And it is more important to the course of history because the FedGov is and was so much more powerful in the 1960s and today than in the past: more intrusive and more difficult to endure.

If anything, the killing of JFK speeded up the process of a more powerful FedGov.

Many are fond of pointing out that by modern Democratic Party standards, JFK would be a strong Republican. (Modern, not early 1960s Republican.) He most likely would be dead now – even if he lived to a ripe old age. (He would be 106 – the oldest ex-President so far is Jimmy Carter at 99.) But is it reasonable to assume that just as the Clintons, Obummer, Uncle Joe and other Democrats have gone farther and farther into the dark size, so too would John Kennedy? After all, his ne’er-do-well little brother Teddy certainly did.

Things to think about.