Let us remember JFK's legacy

The shocking images of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas 60 years ago Wednesday are etched so firmly into our nation’s psyche that we need not dwell on their gruesome reality here. Let us reflect instead on what should be the lasting legacy of JFK, America’s youngest-ever elected leader, how today’s embrace of internet conspiracies threatens that memory, and how his death signaled a new era of political violence in America.

After Kennedy finished his last campaign swing in 1960 — including a rally at the old Commack Arena — there was an unmistakable sense of excitement as the 43-year-old candidate flew home to Cape Cod to await the returns. His election over Republican Richard Nixon promised a new beginning after the steady but sleepy Eisenhower years. Kennedy’s inaugural speech, full of soaring idealism, asked what Americans could do for their country, rather than merely for themselves. His challenging words were backed by the fact that JFK, too, had served his nation during World War II, which claimed the life of his older brother and nearly his own in the Pacific.

During his all-too-brief presidency, Kennedy set in motion many ideas and programs still with us today. He proposed sweeping changes in civil rights, medical care for the poor and elderly, and equality in immigration laws, which were eventually enacted by successor Lyndon Johnson in his name. Millions remain grateful for his Peace Corps abroad and anti-poverty programs at home. Boldly, Kennedy created America’s space program that would send an astronaut to the moon by decade’s end. In his speeches with their Churchillian cadence — and during his tense but successful handling of the Cuban missile crisis against rival nuclear power the Soviet Union — Kennedy never let us forget that democracies must always be vigilant against tyranny.

Kennedy, ever the political realist, said he believed in idealism “without illusions.” He voraciously read history books and was grounded in facts and figures, not specious claims. That sense of practical idealism is why today’s wild internet chatter and unhinged theories about who killed JFK are so distressing. Since that fateful day, a cottage industry of books, films and TV shows has suggested a foul plot killed Kennedy. In recent years, these conspiracy theories have taken on an even darker and far-fetched tone. To the chagrin of many Kennedy family members, this lunacy includes JFK’s nephew, Robert Kennedy Jr.

JFK’s death, followed by the assassinations of his brother, New York Sen. Robert Kennedy, and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and attempts to kill presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, also ushered in an age of political violence, a new era of vulnerability in our political system that still reverberates today.

“Life is never easy. There is work to be done and obligations to be met — obligations to truth, to justice, and to liberty,” John F. Kennedy said in 1963.

Let that commitment to our foundational principles be his legacy.