September 14, 1960
"...if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties...then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

Did Kennedy feel the need to defend liberalism? Liberalism has been under coordinated assault on two fronts – first, on the part of "Big-Business" interests which enlisted Lewis Powell, who in 1971 wrote the Powell Memo for the conservative leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce that laid out a multifaceted blueprint to diminish Liberalism’s appeal - that would roll back many of FDR's New Deal protections for Americans, as well those from later moderate administrations [ "HEIST: WHO STOLE THE AMERICAN DREAM FULL ENG 2011" - [ Ссылка ] ].

The second organized front against Liberalism was aimed against liberal ideology, and came from the Neoconservative movement spearheaded by neoconservative philosopher Leo Strauss, beginning in the 1960’s, described in the BBC documentary:
The Power Of Nightmares: Part 1 Baby Its Cold Outside (2004) - [ Ссылка ]
The Power Of Nightmares: Part 2 The Phantom Victory (2004) - [ Ссылка ]
The Power Of Nightmares: Part 3 The Shadows In The Cave (2004) - [ Ссылка ]

The following is an excerpt from the book review of "Leo Strauss and the American Right" by Shadia Drury, professor of philosophy at the University of Regina.
[ [ Ссылка ] ] :

"...Their job, at first, is to wean America away from its "love affair" with liberalism. To do this they will drive a wedge between liberalism and democracy....Democracy is the rule of the people, or rule according to the will of the people or the majority." It can easily be used to suppress liberalism. By demagogic manipulation democracy, through a populist appeal, can be turned against liberalism.
The essential first task... is to produce ideology...to attack liberalism and gain power.
"Strauss thinks that a political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat, and following Machiavelli, he maintains that if no external threat exists, then one has to be manufactured." The fundamental political categories are "us" and "them." A sense of perpetual crisis and war cements the society together with absolute loyalty to the gentlemen. But the categories "us" and "them" do not stop at external enemies. The sense of crisis makes the struggle against internal enemies an even more desperate war of "us" against "them."

"Ayn Rand - Godmother of GOP Philosophy?" - [ Ссылка ]

"Ronald Reagan - a Democrat?.....Yes, seriously!" - [ Ссылка ]

"Medicare - John F. Kennedy vs [now Republican] Ronald Reagan" - [ Ссылка ]

Continuing from Kennedy's speech:

"But first, I would like to say what I understand the word "Liberal" to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a "Liberal," and what it means in the presidential election of 1960.
I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves...."

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