Wednesday, November 22, 2006

 

This Day in American History

On this day in 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, a lefty who had defected to the Soviet Union, shot and wounded Texas governor John Connally and shot and killed President John F. Kennedy. Oswald, a former Marine rifleman, with a sharpshooter rating, fired three shots in under 9 seconds from a 6th story window with a WWII Italian Mannlicher-Carcano rifle in 6.5 mm at a moving target, and only missed once. The bullet from his first shot went through Kennedy's neck and through Connally's back and arm and into his leg, from which last wound it later fell in the hospital and was discovered on a stretcher looking pretty pristine (the magic bullet). Oswald's last shot blew up Kennedy's head on the right side. Pretty good shooting. All of the successful presidential assassins in this country were men of the left, either Democrat, Communist, Anarchist or too weird for easy description.

Comments:
There have been 4 presidents who have been asassinated;

Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth who was a southern sympathizer, yes. Democrat? Not that I have been able to determine but if he were, it would have been only b/c the majority of southern politicians were Democrats. You remember the South, don't you? It became the Confederacy and support the institution of slavery.

James Garfield by Charles Junius Guiteau, who was almost certainly both a Republican and metally ill, despite having been a member of the Oneida Community for 5 years where he was extremely unpopular.

William McKinley by Leon Czolgosz who was an anarchist to be sure but isn't Anarchism close to Libertarianism?

Jon F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald, unless you believe the conspiracy theorists, who was a Communist or a marxist, but not a Democrat.

Thank you for your anticipated apology to modern Democrats

As ever,

T
 
Booth was certainly a Democrat. Oswald was certainly a Communist. Czolgosz was certainly an Anarchist (not cognate with Libertarians--shame on you). Guiteau was something but I have been unable to formulate a fair description. I don't believe he was a Republican (please tell me why you think that?)and if I had to put it in a single word which does not really cut it, I'd call him a Utopian (which I put on the left side of the political aisle) he certainly lived on a commune and it wasn't a Republican commune. So I believe I have identified the political identities of each of the four presidential assassins absolutely accurately. An apology will have to await when I am wrong. Thanks for the chance to shine intellectually.
 
Rog,

2 things make me think he was a Republican. He wrote a speech in support of Grant called "Grant v. Hancock" but when Garfield won the 1880 Republican noimination, he changed the title to "Garfield v. hancock" w/o changing any of the substance of the speech, thereby attributing Garnt's achievemnets to Garfield.

Although the speech was only delivered twice, Guiteau believe he was responsible for Garfield's election and sought an ambassorship, first to Vienna, then to to Paris. Finally, on May 14, 1881 he was told personally by Secretary of State James Blaine never to return.

To victors go the spoils so iut seems unlikely that he was anything but a Republican, however whack he was.

Do I really have to search the registry or will you concede?

T
 
Thanks for sticking with it Tony but yes you have to search the poll registries before I will believe Guiteau was a Repbulican rather than a sociopathic, delusional opportunist. I have no doubt you can find it though. And Jimmyp thanks for the reminder of what is really lasting. A little harsh about Kennedy (he might have made a half assed Republican today without changing a single principle). Hate the cheating part, as you do. I don't often tell this but when my school announced that Kennedy had been shot and killed my fellow students cheered. I was in 5th grade. I think it was the Yankee/Catholic thing. Most everyone's parents were Democrats.
 
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