My sister-in-law sent me a link to an article about parents demanding the right to withdraw their children from a video-ed address by President Obama - the message: work hard in school, education is very important. Assorted school boards have been very proactive on this - saying the video will not be shown during school time, some saying it's 'political' and won't be shown at all.

When President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, there were reports of school children cheering in the classrooms when they heard he was dead. (In Plano, Texas, I think - it wasn't wide spread, but it did happen and it was Texas.

Was the Kennedy Assassination a conspiracy?  I have no idea. In favor of the conspiracy theory: the killing of Oswald by Ruby -- I can believe in the Dallas Police Department incompetence -- but Ruby as the killer seems a bit odd. The gun fire: apparently, the gun used wasn't capable of shooting that many bullets that quickly. Everyone knows the arguments against the lone gunman theory; tv documentaries and a couple of movies have made them part of folk knowledge.

Against the idea of a conspiracy: it's hard to believe the conspiracy itself could have remained intact; somebody should have talked, there should have been a death bed confession by now. It was a long time ago and we won’t ever know.

More urgently, the general climate around Obama reminds me of the general climate around Kennedy before the election. It's much worse now than it was then. There were people, like the Cuban refugees in Miami, that hated Kennedy. There were others that hated the Civil Rights Movement. There was the Mafia. There was a rumor that Kennedy was going to pull out of Viet Nam. 

I heard about the assassination in the cafeteria at the University of Houston. It was at the end of lunch service and I took my tray to the cashier. She was crying. "They've shot President Kennedy in Dallas."  My first reaction was disbelief - you can't just shoot a president. I didn't have a television or radio at the time, so I spent a couple of hours driving around, listening to the news on the radio in the car.

I've got a copy of the Warren Commission Report somewhere. I read it and believed it. Blaming a crazy person with a gun in the Texas Book Depository was a lot more comfortable  than the alternatives. I think even those more critical than I was had a feeling that the country had to be stabilized - we had to draw together.

My high school history teacher commented that assassinations of American presidents are always seen as lone crazed gunmen - the political objectives of such people are dismissed. This was in 1959, before Kennedy's election and death. Since Kennedy's assassination, American history has been changed by 'lone crazed gunmen.'

I've been watching the news with considerable disbelief. People come to Obama's meetings with automatic weapons and signs implying, or directly stating, assassination would be a good thing. Where's the Secret Service in all this? I remember reading about a seventh grader in Rhode Island or Connecticut - one of his gave an assignment: write about what you would do if President Bush visited our city. Being a wise-ass twelve year old, he wrote what he thought was a very funny essay about shooting bush. The school called in the Secret Service, who yelled at him and his family, and he apologized. So why was a man with gun strapped to his thigh carrying a sign saying the tree of liberty is watered with the blood of tyrants allowed to demonstrate outside a meeting Obama is attending?

Then there are the lies about the health care bill from members of Congress. Obama's going to kill your grannie. Disabled children will have to go before death panels to  get health care. Obama has no right to be president - he was born in Kenya. He's a socialist. He's a Muslim. He's going to talk to assorted Axis of Evil folk instead of bombing them and thus must be a traitor. Are people like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin trying to get Obama assassinated?

Then there’s race. Poor whites in the American south (and not just the south)  have consistently voted against their own economic interests when race is an issue. The US has not moved beyond race - a lot of younger people have, but there are still some around that see a non-white president as an affront. Just as there were those that believed a Roman Catholic in the White House meant a direct line to the Vatican and the Pope dictating US policy.

Where are the Republicans you would expect to behave responsibly? People like John McCain let the lunatics and whack jobs say anything they please, with no dissenting voice, out of political expediency.

Maybe all those assassinations (with the exception of Martin Luther King) were crazed lone gunmen. But crazed lone gunmen come out of a context - and those who are creating a situation where political disagreement is not simply a political matter but one of Good versus Evil are creating a situation that produces such people.

Liberals are at a disadvantage in this kind of context. They hesitate to lie, although they are willing to spin. They don't approve of preventative confinement - you jail people for what they do, not the way the think. They negotiate - a mistake when the other side is negotiating in bad faith. They assume most people will respond to rational argument. 

Almost anything I said here about liberals would also have been true of 1950's and 1960's Republicans. That's changed. Moderate Republicans took advantage of the John Birchers and the Fundamentalist Christians to get elected - then the lunatics decided to run for office themselves and won.

Liberals need to turn to the Dark Side, but God only knows what kind of Dark Side they've got. Law suits involving Defamation of Character? TV ads that appeal to fear and xenophobia? (It worked for Johnson against Goldwater.) Despite my liking for him, Bill Clinton has a Dark Side. (As governor of Arkansas, he sent a brain-damaged man to the electric chair, refusing to sign a clemency order because he knew it would prevent his election as president.) So there is a Dark Side. How long does the spoon need to be to sup with the devil?

I assume everyone, including politicians, has a moral line in the sand: this far and no further. Johnson, Clinton, Nixon -- there are things they would not do to be elected. But Obama’s opponents, and the economic interests that encourage them, seem to assume that The Forces of Good can do anything expedient.

Maybe Obama should have a long talk with BIll Clinton over a couple of beers. And avoid Texas. Obama should definitely not visit Texas.