Fundamentalist pastors allied with military and GOP figures against Kennedy’s moderate anticommunism

Evidence

That same year, fundamentalist pastors were among those who rebuffed President Kennedy when he challenged the Soviet Union “not to an arms race, but to a peace race.” And they came to the defense of men like General Edwin Walker, who had been admonished by the Department of Defense for his attempts to indoctrinate troops with right-wing anticommunist materials supplied by fundamentalist evangelist Billy James Hargis. Walker resigned his post so that he would no longer be subject to “the power of little men,” as he put it, but Goldwater joined Senator Strom Thurmond and other Republicans to call for Senate hearings on the “muzzling” of the military. In the fallout of these events, Kennedy gave a speech at the Hollywood Palladium in November 1961, reproaching “those on the fringes of our society” who were easily wooed by “an appealing slogan or a convenient scapegoat” and warning against “the discordant voices of extremism”—against those who called “for a ‘man on horseback’ because they do not trust the people.” Thurmond responded by denouncing “pussyfooting diplomats.” — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 98

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘man on horseback’ charge and Thurmond’s ‘pussyfooting diplomats’ retort is a compact episode for an essay on how the far right framed its attack on mainstream Republican moderates.