By Doug Draper
It is hard to let the third week of this January, 2011 pass without making some mention of the 50th anniversary of the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address – considered by some to be one of the most stirring speeches of the last century.
The address was delivered on January 20, 1961, as frigid a day in Washington, D.C. as the days we are experiencing in the northeastern U.S. and Canada now.
Yet for those of us who are old enough to be alive then and to remember watching that inaugural address on our old black and white tubes at home (this writer wasn’t quite 10 years old at the time, but somehow engaged), Kennedy’s words warmed us with the promise of a bright and shining future for his country and the world. A young and charismatic new president stood up there on the steps of his nation’s Capitol, ready to “pass the torch” to a new generation we wall wanted to hope would make a better world.
“Ask not what your country can do for you,” read one of the most iconic lines of that address. “Ask what you can do for your country.” It was a call to all of us for selfless community service that we have rarely heard since from a national leader.
Less than three years later, this young and charismatic president was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, and we were all left wondering what would happen to the hope and promise of that inaugural day in 1961. I suspect many of us who remember are wondering still.
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What rings true for me on this, is your comment, Doug, of “selfless community service’. If that is the only legacy of this young, charismatic, but flawed President, it is good enough for me.
Look to Our Glorious Leader in Canada today, who now wishes to have the ‘selfless community service (“All politics is local: Tip O’Neil, a Democrat of Kennedy’s time) branded with the moniker “The Prime Minister’s Voluntary Awards”. I can barely stand it.
Those of us who do volunteer, locally, provincially, federally, where ever and however, should be allowed to do so in peace and quiet, expecting no reward but serving our communities. No labels, thank you so much, Prime Minister Harper.
I do know that is not what you expected from this article, but it is just one jaded reader’s opinion.
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I was living in the USA in my early twenties. I had bought into the Nixon idea that a Catholic President would be sending tons of taxpayers money off to Rome, Italy. That never happened. Jackie redecorated the White House and replaced the worn out carpets and bought new crockery and set style and class to Washington DC. They were a breath of fresh air to the musty old Capitol. The days of Camelot was her. I look back at those days as days of vigour and the US was the hope of the world. Every day was exciting and full of promise and volunteerism has been a part of my life since. The torch had been passed. George
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While historical amnesia is a tool best brandished by the political Right, John F. Kennedy exemplifies the willingness of many North Americans to martyrize popular figures on presumptions of “what could have been” logic. These nostalgic interpretations are understandable, given the actions of subsequent administrations, but largely inaccurate considering the condemning evidence left behind. Much like the nation’s current leader, Kennedy made promises of hope and change only to maintain, and often extend, the hawkish foreign policies of his predecessors. In the popular memory, Kennedy’s charisma and relatability have overridden his administration’s Cold Warrior disposition, particularly toward the developing world, and secured his legacy as a liberal hero. Although LBJ may have escalated the war in Vietnam, a truth that rightfully stains his place in history, few acknowledge Kennedy’s culpability in the conflict’s origins. The same “liberals” that applaud Kennedy’s views on civil rights conveniently disregard the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, among other attempts to suppress popular movements and return the Third World to American investors. Kennedy may have been credited with saving the world from the brink of nuclear apocalypse, but he also helped lead it there by using Latin Americans, Africans, and Asians to fight a war over confused ideologies. I may not have been around in the early Sixties to experience the Kennedy’s presidency, but I do know that people in countries around the world, Cuba being but one of them, continue to feel its consequences.
I tread cautiously with historical revisionism, however, if we insist on remembering this figure based on “what could have been” logic we must conduct it from a more realistic perspective. How would Kennedy have handled the escalation of the Vietnam conflict? Would JFK be remembered, like Johnson, as a war-mongering president that allowed an unwinnable war to inspire a social revolution in America? Would Kennedy have emerged as the central target for student protests and the anti-war movement?
While Americans continue to await the reincarnation of a figure from an imagined past, a phenomenon which has undoubtedly created unreasonable expectations for Mr. Obama, we can only hope that a leader emerges with the characteristics for which Kennedy is remembered rather than those he actually demonstrated. Great people are scattered throughout history, but we need to become more selective in who we remember as heroes.
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I was a clerk at a drug store in 1959 when fidel Castro took over Cuba most Americans were happy at first for Cuba until Castro started herding people into an arena and started executing thousands of Cubans for weeks on end this execution without trial horrified people in the States and when Castro announced he was always a communist since 1949 that was the final straw of any good will by the ordinary Joe in the US of A. the Bay of Pigs fiasco was the usual mess of the CIA who are screw ups at the best of times, they make the Keystone Kops look like genius’s in comparison. The CIA never new anything about Castro or his plans or affiliations in the then Communist World.
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To clarify, my concern here is with the nostalgic position occupied by Kennedy in the North American memory despite the multiple examples, Cuba being but one, of Kennedy-era imperialism in the developing world (see Haiti, Peru, Ecuador, Algeria, the Congo, etc.). Kennedy may have represented the emergence of young Americans as a new political force, but he also exuded an ultra-traditional “we know best” philosophy as much as his recent predecessors and constructed his foreign policy accordingly.
In regards to Castro, as well as contemporary leaders such as Chavez or Morales, please keep in mind that the same sources that have tirelessly justified American “diplomacy” since the 19th Century have simultaneously downplayed the desire of its indigenous benefactors to live free of foreign domination. Acknowledging Cuba’s national autonomy, or the universal education and healthcare provided to its people, would do little to further the US government’s corporatist ambitions in the region (which the revolutionary government has successfully resisted for a half century).
In closing, I respectfully challenge you to provide evidence of these alleged arena massacres (Fox News not permitted).
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