Archive - June 22, 2016

The Peace Corps is always accused of being overrun with ‘bleeding heart liberals” since the first days of the agency when Eisenhower declared  the agency was a “juvenile experiment,” and Richard Nixon said it was another form of “draft evasion.”  This was when the Daughters of the American Revolution warned of a “yearly drain” of “brains and brawn”…for the benefit of backward, underdeveloped countries.” However, the following year, Time magazine declared in a cover story that the Peace Corps was “the greatest single success the Kennedy administration had produced.”  Still we had many good Americans who hated the agency. While Leo Cecchini, a good Republican, did not support Kennedy, (not sure he supported the Peace Corps) he did hastily join the agency to avoid being drafted in 1962 and went as a PCV to Eritrea from 1962-64, where he was a very successful PCV and returned home to a brief career at . . .