Deeply II

"Kennedy communicated, first of all, a deeply critical attitude toward the ideas and institutions which American society had come in the fifties to regard with such enormous self-satisfaction.  Social criticism had fallen into disrepute during the Eisenhower decade. In some influential quarters, it was almost deemed treasonous to raise doubts about the perfection of the American way of life.  But the message of Kennedy's 1960s campaign had been that the American way of life was in terrible shape, that our economy was slowing down, that we were neglectful of our young and our old, callous toward our poor and our minorities, that our cities and schools and landscapes were a mess, that our motives were materialistic and ignoble, and that we were fast becoming a country without a purpose and without ideas.  As president, he proceeded to document the indictment.  In so doing, he released the nation's critical energy. Self-criticism became not only legitimate but patriotic.  The McCarthy anxieties were forgotten.  Critics began to question the verities again, and defenders of the status quo no longer had the heart, or nerve, to call them Communists.  The President, in effect, created his own muckraking movement."

--Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "A Thousand Days", 726

Quoted in Harrison Edward Livingstone, ":High Treason 2", page 33-34