Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Gerry Regan on November 23, 2013 at 3:29pm

I think JFK gave the Irish and Irish Americans a keener sense of the abilities, a firmer belief in the immense possibilities of political life, and life in general. While confidence in the power of political change was set back with his death, JFK still provided a beacon for us, to the present day!

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Rónán Gearóid Ó Domhnaill on November 24, 2013 at 2:41am

It would probably not endear him to many today and not often mentioned but JFK had great admiration for Hitler.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2329556/How-JFK-secretly-AD...

He also said in 1945 after the camps had been discovered:

"Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived... he had a mystery about him in the way that he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him. He had in him the stuff of which legends are made."

I believe Kennedy was the president who sent troops to Vietnam, which ultimately was not good for America. The anti communists were left in the lurch at the Bay of Pigs.

I heard somewhere and I hope it is untrue that many in the America establishment feared that a Catholic president would mean Rome Rule.

He was definitely an inspirational leader on whom your current leader tries unsuccessfully to model himself, but he was not perfect and through his infidelity perhaps no saint.  

• ▶ Reply