Literary Review

 Literary Review of the Unraveling of America by Allen Matusow

The book by Matusow describes the 1960s through different persepectives. The first section details the importance of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his presidency in allowing America to improve despite the existence of socialism. Kennedy's presidency displayed how classical liberalism helped improve the United States by fighting for Civil Rights, using Keynesian economics to get the country out of a recession, created jobs, prioritized schools, wanted to send a man to the moon in the Space Race against the Soviet Union, created the Peace Corps, and fought agaist socialism. Kennedy was a bureaucrats nightmare for choosing to improve the United States through jobs and educations consistent with Christianity, Democracy, and capitalism. (Nixon is described in positive terms at times while he was a crook while Kennedy was criticized concerning the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy was described having a "personal vendetta against Castro" while Castro had nuclear weapons pointed at the US in Cuba. It seems that Kennedy was defending the US against Cuba and there was no vendetta, but actually removal of nuclear threats. Kennedy is described being impressive throughout the book yet at times is criticized unfairly in the book. This is while racist affluent socialists in SDS are described being a part of the Civil Rights Movement.)

The book also significantly contrasts the mid 1960s when the disillusionment from Kennedy's assassination attempted to discourage Americans from being idealistic and courageous (Socialists envied JFK including Hoover, Sullivan and Nixon for being an impressive and innovative leader who practiced empathy and was a real Catholic Christian). The socialists attempted to cause a racial and class war between American citizens because the US had improved under Kennedy who was a classical liberal. The "counter culture" movement was created by socialists to prevent any further improvements by conservatives and classical liberals in the US. The socialists wanted Americans fighting against Americans based on race. (Racist socialists wanted to keep segregation and were oppressing and persecuting the Civil Rights Movement activists. The intention was for racist socialist bureaucrats to radicalize African Americans and minorities into aggression and violence against Caucasian racists so that bureaucrats could propagate further conflict and division so that there was no unity. The Civil Rights Movement kept civility and prevented a race war that was intended by the socialist bureaucrats in the 1960s.) Then the socialists in 1964 and 1965 attempted to foment class war. The bureaucrat socialists denied grants to Civil Rights activists like Farmer for ending segregation on buses, trains, and airplane while they gave grants to socialist "intellectuals". The socialist propaganda promoters gave free paychecks to poor socialists in order to instigate race and class war. Socialist "intellectuals" made propaganda to instigate class and race warfare identifying themselves with the oppressed while being affluent. (While being affluent they also helped themselves to tax payer funds.)  The intention was not equality but fomenting division and chaos. Despite all of this, Americans citizens still kept integrity and did not give in to incivility and violence. Idolatry was seen shapeshifting since the 40s from socialist nazism to beats to hippies to materialism to SDS to racism to marxism to rock and roll to the Liberation Party to weatherman to Black Panthers to communism to bureaucracy. Socialism is deception and does not have a stable basis. Despite the different iterations of tempting to disobey the commandments of Moses, socialism fails. We are created to practice empathy and not envy.