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The madness begins.

Article Excerpt
Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism, by James Piereson (Encounter, 253 pp., $25.95)

PITIFULLY few subjects in American history have received, or wasted, as much ink as the Kennedy assassination. Conservatives, however, have written very little about the assassination, for among conservatives Kennedy has never commanded the reverence or infatuation he has from the left. Even those on the right who admire Kennedy for his tax cuts and his anti-Communism have been very reluctant to dive into the discussion.

James Piereson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has bucked the trend with his provocative and innovative new book. Concentrating on the effects of the event rather than the event itself, Piereson contends that the Kennedy assassination set in motion the sharp leftward turn of liberalism in the late 1960s. The young president's death, says Piereson, shook liberals' confidence in the future and in their own country, transforming them from optimists to pessimists and sapping them of the positive energy that had driven them--and the greater part of the nation--for many decades.

Like most conservatives, Piereson does...

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