Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll remembers a different sort of Democrat this week in ASK NOT:

I grew up in a rock-ribbed Republican family. My mother’s family hated FDR, who at the time was President for Life like Papa Doc in Haiti. Mama will go to her grave believing that their family was discriminated against by the local Democrats in the Dust Bowl in the Dirty ’30s. At nearly 95, she still speaks bitterly of the grapefruit and oranges of mythic proportions that Democrat families received from some government agency which theirs did not. It may sound trivial to you, but it made a huge impression on a poor little girl who got a single orange for Christmas. I think if the local Democratic party wanted to win her over, they should present her with a dozen enormous grapefruits from Texas and a note saying, “Sorry we’re late. Our bad. Didn’t mean to skip your house there in Astoria, SD in 1934.”

So I was hardly inclined to be impressed by the Kennedys. But I was a teenage girl, not vision-impaired, and had never seen anything quite like this clan. I thought JFK was “really neat.” Sure, he was “old,” like all adults. But he was handsome and witty and articulate; he was a war hero. Like our family, his had lost the oldest son to the War. His wife was unlike any woman I had ever laid eyes on, some sort of sophisticated creature from another planet with her big sunglasses and lovely clothes. She sure as heck didn’t shop at Penney’s or wear the dowdy cotton housedresses my grandmas and aunties wore on the farm.

And the whole sprawling athletic family spoke with that Massachusetts accent that sounded so exotic next to our soporific speech pattern that could be called Minnesota Nasal, perfected by Walter Mondale, bless his heart. Not to throw stones in a glass house: I can’t stand to hear myself on tape to this day.

Yes, yes, yes, we’ve all been treated to the exposure of every minute facet of JFK’s life and proclivities since then. Unlike you and me, evidently he was an imperfect person. Several of the remnants of that family seem to be batcrap crazy. Who knows? Maybe it has a deleterious effect on children when their fathers are murdered by either a Communist creep or a Palestinian loser with the same first and last name. But, my, what a figure Jack Kennedy cut at that time and place. Especially to a small-town 14-year-old girl.

Our family listened to President Kennedy’s magnificent 1961 inaugural speech, remembered now mostly for “Ask not what your country can do for you; but for what you can do for your country.” It made me so proud to be an American. My parents did not vote for him, but even they thought it was a good speech. And he never attacked his fellow Americans once for belonging to the other party. Or pranced about crowing to half the electorate, “You lose! I won!” Imagine!

Let me quote just a few paragraphs, conflating some prose. The original is available for you to Google any time. Take a look. You will weep at how far this country’s leadership has departed from the ideals he expressed then.

He asserts “… that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” {oh-em-gee, did a DEMOCRAT say THAT??? With the God thing and all? Catholic clinger!}

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” {Exactly like Obama, except that he will support any foe and oppose any friend while trying to lose every conflict slowly enough so that it’s the next guy’s problem.}

“To those nations who would make themselves our adversary…we dare not tempt them with weakness.” {What? No such thing as an adversary. Just friends we haven’t caved to yet. Weakness is Putin being on “the wrong side of history.” Tremble, Putin, tremble.}

And, of course, the big finish with “Ask not what your country can do for you.” Seriously?

Can you imagine any Democrat who hoped to be elected saying any of that today? Why, today it’s ALL about what your country (read: “taxpayers”) can do for you! Been a thoroughly-unrepentant criminal? Not a problem. We’re issuing an edict that no potential employer can even ASK! Hightailed it away from your platoon to join up with the enemy? Not a problem. Welcome home! Invite your parents to the White House! Enter the country illegally? Not a problem! Have a baby and some foodstamps! Got a penis but feeling kind of girlish today? Aw, go ahead, shower with the girls! Only bigots could possibly oppose that.

Work any of this address into a Ted Cruz stump speech and watch the Democrat media hacks lose their minds. Today, the leftists in the Democratic Party would consider JFK a heartless Tea Party “loon,” a “Taliban-wing” religious nut; a saber-rattling, anti-government zealot, probably belonging on a domestic terrorist watch list for dissing “the state.”

And just by the by, not ONE “I” statement in the whole address. No, not one.