[This essay is the first in a proposed series exploring the nexus of rightist thought and the education of young people at the secondary level.]
The headlines proclaim it, and every right-wing coded media figure agrees- the kids are fat, sedentary, and addicted to screens. No one exercises anymore, and we are losing the manly strength that won our country from the wilderness and defeated hostile forces at home and abroad. An insidious leftist ideology is partially to blame, teaching the youth that fitness is fascist, but so too is rampant materialism and the ease of modern life, so intoxicating in the warm bath of dopamine it offers to those who surrender to idleness. Something must be done.
The year is 1960.
Apropos, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the last remaining political throwback to that era, recently went viral for a video of a shirtless outdoor lifting session. This occasioned a lot of commentary, most centered around Kennedy being completely jacked (though some haters criticized the amount of weight he was putting up, not taking into account that it was a drop set and that Kennedy is almost 70). But perhaps the most jarring thing was the spectacle of an avowed progressive being in shape, as this is atypical, given the leftist proclivity for fetishizing weakness and victimhood. But while RFK Jr. is a progressive, he is also a Kennedy, and that fact is significant, because it points to an overlooked part of the Kennedy legacy- the role that his uncle, John F. Kennedy, playing in creating the last great wave of enthusiasm for physical education, and what that means for the future.
“Ask not what T-ah-T can do for you, but what you can do on T-ah-T”.”
By 1960, the generation that had won WWII, including Kennedy, was approaching or entering middle age and the boomers were then in early youth. America bestrode the world like a colossus, factories were churning out products, universities were churning out graduates, and couples were churning out babies. Nevertheless, there was a sense of palpable unease behind it all, a fear that having won the greatest conflict in history, America would sink into decadence. The recent conflict in Korea had pitted Americans against men of the third world conditioned by harder lives of labor and deprivation, and the results were decidedly and uncomfortably mixed.
Taking office in 1960 as the youngest man ever elected president,* John F. Kennedy sought to project a public image of youth, vigor (a word he loved), and physicality. He sailed, played football, and otherwise pursued a strenuous life at every opportunity. Much was made of his heroism in war, rescuing comrades from his sinking ship by swimming with them for miles before being in turn picked up from a desert island. Privately, Kennedy had suffered from poor health all his life, had been given last rites four times as a youth, and knew he would never grow old. This knowledge made him commit to living life to the fullest, which included an astonishing amount of personal recklessness that could have cost him his career and family. For better or worse, he let nothing hold him back, and he wanted the same for his country.
