I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving with your family or friends. Thomas Paine cautioned in his 1776 Common Sense not to confuse society with government. "Society in every state is a blessing," he wrote, "but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one." 

Thanksgiving is all society and no government. That's what makes it so great.

Earlier in the week, we marked a rather sadder anniversary: the assassination of President John Kennedy. After almost sixty years his real killers have still never been identified. Whether Lee Harvey Oswald was one of them - shooting from six stories up, through a tree, off the stone guy... - is anyone's guess. But most people believe there was at least one other shooter and therefore a conspiracy.

Many believe Kennedy was killed by people in the U.S. intelligence community because he planned to withdraw troops, about 16,000 at the time, from Vietnam. That certainly is possible, but when you really look into what was going on at the time, it's, well, complicated.

If Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes is accurate in its portrayal of the administration, The Kennedys were anything but noninterventionists. Bobby in particular was particularly enthusiastic about covert actions, involving himself directly in operations even though he was officially Attorney General.

And then there are the plans for withdrawal. Yes, Kennedy was planning on withdrawing troops based on the McNamara-Taylor report of October 2, 1963. But there were certain conditions placed upon withdrawal in the report. It reads in part:

"2. A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.

In accordance with the program to train progressively Vietnamese to take over military functions, the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963."

That sounds familiar, doesn't it? "We'll withdraw as soon as their own army is ready to take over."

It sounds a lot like the U.S. empire in 2011, before they spent another ten years in Afghanistan. As in Afghanistan, the U.S.-trained troops in South Vietnam collapsed soon after the U.S. left (although not quite as fast). The whole 10-year debacle accomplished nothing. 

But next time it will be different, right?

So much for government. On the society front, we have another major holiday coming up next month and you definitely want to keep the government out of this one, too. If you haven't already, you can download a free copy of my new e-book, An Anti-State Christmas, at antistatechristmas.com.

It's also available in paperback here. It'll cost you less than a fiver and makes a great stocking stuffer!

Like the music on Tom Mullen Talks Freedom? You can hear more at tommullensings.com!