The End Of A Kennedy Era Of Shared Sacrifice – A Postcard From Cape Cod

By Doug Draper

“Ask not what your country can do for you.  Ask what you can do for your country.”

Those words,  spoken by the late President John F. Kennedy following his inauguration on January 20, 1961,  inspired generations of Americans to service and self-sacrifice on behalf of their country, their communities and less fortunate others.

The Kennedy family compound on Cape Cod. Photo by Doug Draper

Today, it is hard to imagine almost any political leader on either side of the Canada/U.S. border speaking those sorts of words for fear of being derided by the masses as a “socialist” or something worse.

‘Putting our country before ourselves? We want a tax cut!’

I thought about those words and how far so many of us – Americans and Canadians – have strayed from them as I walked this past November 23 along a Cape Cod beach in Hyannisport where the Kennedy compound looks out over Nantucket Sound. The spirit behind them now seems as broken as a set of old wooden stairs leading up from the beach to the backyard of the compound where John and brothers Robert and Ted (all of them gone now) once picnicked with family and friends following a game of touch football.

This November marks 50 years since Kennedy was elected president with his pledge for a “new frontier” where self-sacrifice and contributing to the greater good of the community trumped dog-eat-dog self-interest. And as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert recently noted, it is surprising how little media attention has been given “to the golden anniversary of that pivotal campaigning, one of the most celebrated of the entire post-World War II period.”

Steps from a Hyannis beach to the Kennedy compound have enjoyed better times.

As Herbert went on to say, Kennedy was elected president at a time when “self-interest and the bottom line had not yet become the be-all and end-all” – when he could call on and count on countless thousands of people to volunteer their time and energy to a newly created Peace Corps for helping others living in conditions of hardship all over the world. By contrast, concluded Herbert, “we are now in a period in which cynicism is running rampant, and selfishness and greed have virtually smothered all other values, Simple fairness is not a fit topic for political discussion and no one dares event mention the poor.”

It is a shame, because with so much hardship people are facing in today’s world, including the poverty and joblessness in our own countries, and with our infrastructure crumbling and our health care and other social services fraying, we need that collective spirit of shared sacrifice and commitment to the common good more than ever before.

I would argue that the long-term health and our prosperity of our communities and countries depends on that kind of spirit more than it does on giving yet another tax cut to those fortunate enough to millionaire corporate executives and those still fortunate enough to have well-paying jobs.

Unfortunately, that collective spirit seems as distant now as the Kennedy era and the promise of a new frontier.

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