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    New Frontier Culture: Inside the Mind of John F. Kennedy
    New Frontier Culture: Inside the Mind of John F. Kennedy
    New Frontier Culture: Inside the Mind of John F. Kennedy
    Ebook72 pages1 hour

    New Frontier Culture: Inside the Mind of John F. Kennedy

    By Michael N Field

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    New Frontier Culture is both a remembrance and an essay on the ideas, policy theories and career of John F. Kennedy. It shows the origins of Kennedy's ideas in his life experience and examines how he adapted his fundamental beliefs to the political exigencies he faced during his campaign for the presidency and during his tenure in office.

    Kennedy's ideas had their origins in his exposure to the events of the 1930s. To him, the encompassing issue was the conflict between democracy and tyranny. Dictatorships, he believed, drawing on the experience of the 1930s, held a material advantage over free societies in that the dictatorship could compel its citizens to contribute their energies to the distatorship's causes. Kennedy saw a powerful need for a charismatic leader who would persaude and mobilize the free peoples of the West in their conflict with the totalitarian menace of Soviet communism.

    Kennedy sought to become that leader and all was bent in the service of that idea. The persona he created and all of the innovative ideas he advocated, commitment to the space race, international outreach, advocacy of civil rights at home, increased military preparedness, the strategic doctrine of Flexible Response, the counterinsurgency concept, all were directed at the same single aim.

    Kennedy believed and often said that the masses of people around the world who were uncommitted held the balance of power in the struggle between the totalitarian Soviet Union and the free West. Much of his rhetoric and many of his initiatives were directed at the aim of winning the allegiance of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

    In the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1963, Kennedy had his long-awaited confrontation with the totalitarian leader, represented in his mind by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. His geopolitical theory, what I call his political system, did not envision what lied beyond the confrontation, but throughout 1963 he grew in command and stature and successfully promoted his iconic brand of civic inspiration worldwide. There can never be another.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMichael N Field
    Release dateAug 23, 2014
    ISBN9781310202155
    New Frontier Culture: Inside the Mind of John F. Kennedy
    Author

    Michael N Field

    I was born on the South Side of Chicago in 1948. I attended the Chicago Public Schools in the Woodlawn, Hyde Park and South Shore neighborhoods on the South Side. I started college at Southeast College, a branch of Chicago City College now known as Olive-Harvey College. in 1967. I transferred to four-year college in 1968 and in 1974 received my B.A. in history from Roosevelt University in Chicago. I have yet to earn a graduate degree although the idea still is on the table. From the mid-1970s through 1990, I took numerous courses in public colleges in California in natural science and journalism. In the early 2000s, I took upper division and graduate credit courses in literature at Stanislaus State University in Turlock, California. During my career, I worked for six years as a general assignment and sports reporter for several newspapers in the Central Valley of California. During that time, I also had the opportunity to publish a number of editorial columns for two of the newspapers I worked for. I also have worked in commercial publishing and fund raising.

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      Book preview

      New Frontier Culture - Michael N Field

      Introduction

      New Frontier Culture is intended as an essay of ideas. Its purpose is to show that John F. Kennedy, U.S. president, was a political theorist and a man of ideas and then, further, to show how his ideas motivated his conduct of policy and his effort to create, through example, persuasion and adherence to a course of policy, a new kind of civic culture in America and around the world.

      New Frontier Culture is by intention also part remembrance. It often is laudatory in the manner of much Kennedy writing, but sometimes also severely critical and even dubious in tone. The writing itself is circuitous and atmospheric. The style has a purpose, to evoke memory in those who have a personal memory of this singular political giant and to evoke in those who have no memory the sense and feeling of what having that memory might be like.

      As with other historical figures, there are among historians, political writers and journalists many views of John F. Kennedy and his presidency. Still today, some see him as the ideal man. Others emphasize his acumen as a practical politician. Some consider that he was driven by a dualistic morality rooted in his Roman Catholic upbringing. The critical views emphasize the issues of personal risk taking, dubious associations, and recklessness in the conduct of policy.

      The thesis of this work is that Kennedy early on in his adult career developed a system of ideas, then carried these forward throughout his adult career and into the presidency. These first were stated in the book Why England Slept, published in 1940 just after he finished undergraduate college. Why England Slept was an edited and retitled version of Kennedy’s Harvard senior thesis.

      In the summer of 1963, when I was a teenager, I saw Edward Kennedy close up in a Chicago park at a non-political event. This was early in the morning and there were few people around and no one nearby. I was there with another teenager who wanted to collect his autograph.

      At the age of 31, Kennedy was as sharp a tack and looked like an athletic college senior. Although I later went over to the conservative side and sometimes mocked him on account of his personal and physical downfall, I long had hoped that I would complete and get published this biographical essay and be able to send Kennedy a copy.

      When I saw Kennedy speak at the 2008 Democratic National Convention, I could see that the hand of god hovered over him. I had already electronically published a shorter, though otherwise very similar version, of New Frontier Culture. Although I knew that I would not come up with a final and definitive version any time soon, after the convention, I wrote Kennedy a letter describing the work and telling him where on the internet it could be found.

      A couple of months later I received a reply back, which I think represents an endorsement of the work and its message, made more touching because I never did shrink from being forthright about the negatives when forthrightness was called for.

      Sen. Kennedy wrote:

      Oct 1, 2008

      Dear Mr. Field:

      I want you to know that all the Kennedy family is comforted and inspired to know the President’s memory is alive in the hearts and minds of those who shared our love for him

      President Kennedy would not want us to mourn his death, he would wish us to celebrate his life. We can do this by remembering the hope his brief shining years on earth brought to this nation and to all the world. If we can keep this hope alive through his memory and through our commitment, then we are contributing to a living memorial and his death will not have been in vain.

      I thank you for sharing your thoughts with me, and for your own important role in keeping President Kennedy alive for this and future generations.

      Sincerely,

      Edward M. Kennedy

      Well said, and hard to improve upon.

      Michael N. Field

      Renton, WA

      August 18, 2014

      CONTENTS

      New Frontier Culture

      1. The Clarion Call

      2. The Kennedy Persona

      3. The Political System of John F. Kennedy

      4. The Coming of the New Frontier

      5. Exhortations

      6. The Hinge of Fate

      7. The Camelot of John F. Kennedy

      8. Before and After Kennedy

      Background and Notes

      The Body and the Body Politic

      Lyndon Johnson

      Dwight Eisenhower

      Robert Kennedy

      The Catholic Church

      Addison’s Disease

      PT 109

      The Sins of the Fathers

      Why England Slept

      Nikita Khrushchev

      Lee Harvey Oswald

      The Afterlife

      FAQs

      1. The Clarion Call

      On a cold, bright day in January 1961, in Washington, D.C., a young man, or a man who at least was young for a major world politician, took the oath of office as president of the United States. His hallmarks, shown in the recent campaign, were qualities such as a powerful aggressiveness which manifested itself in calls for sacrifice and commitment, a personal style replete with humor and sophistication, and a kind of preternatural clarity of expression which impressed, if not mesmerized, many people. Beyond this, he presented himself as possessing a carefully structured

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