So liberals....how does JFK's speech "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" fit into your welfare world???
Perfectly...
It is a call to PUBLIC service, not private greed.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
President John F. Kennedy
'Surely you jest.
You have the most wealthy souls in America calling for public service. Tell me you realize this at the time.
Here is an idea...educate yourself. The Kennedy legacy is public service.
President Kennedy gave one of my favorite speeches less than a month before his murder.
On Oct. 26, 1963, President John F. Kennedy gave a Convocation address as part of the ground breaking ceremonies for the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College.
Excerpt:
"Privilege is here, and with privilege goes responsibility. And I think, as your president said, that it must be a source of satisfaction to you that this school's graduates have recognized it. And I hope that the students who are here now will also recognize it in the future. Although Amherst has been in the forefront of extending aid to needy and talented students, private colleges, taken as a whole, draw 50 percent of their students from the wealthiest 10 percent of our nation. And even state universities and other public institutions derive 25 percent of their students from this group. In March 1962, persons of 18 years or older who had not completed high school made up 46 percent of the total labor force, and such persons comprised 64 percent of those who were unemployed. And in 1958, the lowest fifth of families in the United States had 4.5 percent of the total personal income, the highest fifth, 45.5 percent.
There is inherited wealth in this country and also inherited poverty. And unless the graduates of this college and other colleges like it who are given a running start in life, unless they are willing to put back into our society those talents, the broad sympathy, the understanding, the compassion—unless they're willing to put those qualities back into the service of the Great Republic, then obviously the presuppositions upon which our democracy are based are bound to be fallible.
The problems which this country now faces are staggering, both at home and abroad. We need the service, in the great sense, of every educated man or woman to find 10 million jobs in the next 2 1/2 years, to govern our relations—a country which lived in isolation for 150 years, and is now suddenly the leader of the free world—to govern our relations with over 100 countries, to govern those relations with success, so that the balance of power remains strong on the side of freedom, to make it possible for Americans of all different races and creeds to live together in harmony, to make it possible for a world to exist in diversity and freedom. All this requires the best of all of us.
And therefore, I am proud to come to this college, whose graduates have recognized this obligation and to say to those who are now here that the need is endless, and I'm confident that you will respond.
Robert Frost said it:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I hope that road will not be the less traveled by, and I hope your commitment to the great public interest in years to come will be worthy of your long inheritance since your beginning.
