January 21, 2005: Headlines: Presidents - Kennedy: Speaking Out: Inaugurals: Aspen Daily News: Kennedy, for all his personal and sexual demons, understood without equivocation that the New Frontier he foresaw needed the clean-burning fuel of personal sacrifice. If America were to get what it wanted in the world, then we would have to give without necessarily expecting anyone would give anything back in return
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January 21, 2005: Headlines: Presidents - Kennedy: Speaking Out: Inaugurals: Aspen Daily News: Kennedy, for all his personal and sexual demons, understood without equivocation that the New Frontier he foresaw needed the clean-burning fuel of personal sacrifice. If America were to get what it wanted in the world, then we would have to give without necessarily expecting anyone would give anything back in return
Kennedy, for all his personal and sexual demons, understood without equivocation that the New Frontier he foresaw needed the clean-burning fuel of personal sacrifice. If America were to get what it wanted in the world, then we would have to give without necessarily expecting anyone would give anything back in return
Kennedy, for all his personal and sexual demons, understood without equivocation that the New Frontier he foresaw needed the clean-burning fuel of personal sacrifice. If America were to get what it wanted in the world, then we would have to give without necessarily expecting anyone would give anything back in return
Give them liberty
By Thomas Watkins/Aspen Daily News Staff Writer
Let the word go forth that the inaugural address of President John F. Kennedy in 1961 shows that nearly half-a-hundred years later we the people are not willing to bear any burden or pay any price - large or small - to bring our ideals to a suffering world.
Kennedy, for all his personal and sexual demons, understood without equivocation that the New Frontier he foresaw needed the clean-burning fuel of personal sacrifice. If America were to get what it wanted in the world, then we would have to give without necessarily expecting anyone would give anything back in return. Kennedy asked: "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." The Peace Corps and sundry other agencies were founded to spread our red-white-and-blue goodness to the world in systematic fashion. No one in the New Frontier doubted altruism might benefit us as a nation down the line, but there was a selflessness inherent in the quotidian acts of sacrifice that bespoke the best of what lies within us as a country.
The price to be paid for these programs was immediate and personal in the 1960s, with idealistic Americans packing off for years of sacrifice in remote and underdeveloped countries. People were energized in other ways as well. At great personal cost and sacrifice - at the cost ultimately of his health - my own father ran for Congress in 1964 because he was so inspired by Kennedy's call to serve. As the Vietnam War radicalized the Sixties, people paid the price to fight for their freedoms - racial, sexual, political, and otherwise.
In his Inaugural Address this week, President George W. Bush, after the slimmest of electoral victories, reached back with all his might for a Kennedyesque invocation, a rallying cry that could be heard throughout the world. In the address, Bush said "freedom" 27 times and "liberty" 15, as if they might ring by mere repetition.
"All who live in tyranny and hopelessness," he intoned, "can know the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."
One could ask - or ask not - if the Iraqi people have yet to stand up for their own freedom, but that is perhaps another question for another inauguration day. The point herein is that America was attacked by terrorists September 11, 2001. The mastermind of the plot, Osama bin Laden, has never been found "dead or alive," to quote the President's own wild Western words. Though bin Laden and 14 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia, we retaliated by attacking Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that did not exist.
For want of those weapons we now brandish our freedom like a sword and our liberty like a saber.
Here's the kicker from President Bush's Inaugural Address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one."
And there you have it: freedom and liberty are now officially installed as state-mandated anti-terrorist devices, just as the tsunami became not a humanitarian crisis but an "opportunity" to spread our influence, according to new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In the Bush Administration, freedom in the world is not so much about them as it is about us and our need for assurances of security after 9/11.
"Americans, of all people," Bush said in his address, "should never be surprised by the power of our ideals."
President Bush is of course right about the abiding power of liberty and freedom. The United States of America exists as a nation because of that power. But what price freedom? The lives of 1,000 dead American soldiers - or 10,000? The flesh of 10,000 wounded - or 100,000? Those who have sacrificed in Iraq with their lives and limbs have paid the ultimate price, all in the name of "freedom." But their sacrifice takes place thousands of miles away, for reasons unclear, and their bodies lie behind a curtain with caskets unphotographed under penalty of law.
We the people, in contrast, can continue our individual lives, unbothered by any sacrifice that might bring freedom and liberty to the oppressed at some immediate personal cost. In his 1961 Inaugural Address, it was President Kennedy who said we must "let the oppressed go free." But now we ask not what we can do for our country, but what other countries might do for us.
As President George W. Bush might paraphrase the words of a great American patriot: Give them liberty or give us death.
Michael Conniff is the Editor-at-Large at the Aspen Daily News. He can be reached at michael@aspendailynews.com.
When this story was posted in January 2005, this was on the front page of PCOL:
| Ask Not As our country prepares for the inauguration of a President, we remember one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century and how his words inspired us. "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." |
| Latest: RPCVs and Peace Corps provide aid Peace Corps made an appeal last week to all Thailand RPCV's to consider serving again through the Crisis Corps and more than 30 RPCVs have responded so far. RPCVs: Read what an RPCV-led NGO is doing about the crisis an how one RPCV is headed for Sri Lanka to help a nation he grew to love. Question: Is Crisis Corps going to send RPCVs to India, Indonesia and nine other countries that need help? |
| The World's Broken Promise to our Children Former Director Carol Bellamy, now head of Unicef, says that the appalling conditions endured today by half the world's children speak to a broken promise. Too many governments are doing worse than neglecting children -- they are making deliberate, informed choices that hurt children. Read her op-ed and Unicef's report on the State of the World's Children 2005. |
| Our debt to Bill Moyers Former Peace Corps Deputy Director Bill Moyers leaves PBS next week to begin writing his memoir of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Read what Moyers says about journalism under fire, the value of a free press, and the yearning for democracy. "We have got to nurture the spirit of independent journalism in this country," he warns, "or we'll not save capitalism from its own excesses, and we'll not save democracy from its own inertia." |
| Is Gaddi Leaving? Rumors are swirling that Peace Corps Director Vasquez may be leaving the administration. We think Director Vasquez has been doing a good job and if he decides to stay to the end of the administration, he could possibly have the same sort of impact as a Loret Ruppe Miller. If Vasquez has decided to leave, then Bob Taft, Peter McPherson, Chris Shays, or Jody Olsen would be good candidates to run the agency. Latest: For the record, Peace Corps has no comment on the rumors. |
| The Birth of the Peace Corps UMBC's Shriver Center and the Maryland Returned Volunteers hosted Scott Stossel, biographer of Sargent Shriver, who spoke on the Birth of the Peace Corps. This is the second annual Peace Corps History series - last year's speaker was Peace Corps Director Jack Vaughn. |
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Story Source: Aspen Daily News
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