JFK and God

Speech “ One of the break-in drills for new  Dragon users is reading selected speeches—so the program can tune itself to your voice and speech pattern.  This is something it did very quickly, by the  way.  Anyway, I selected JFK's Inaugural Address.  When the speech was televised live, on 20 Jan, 1960,   I was out with a rented gas powered snow shovel, clearing neighborhood drive-ways.  There was a mighty blizzard going on, and I worked from early morning until 9:00 at night.  I cleared about $100, which is about $2 billion in today's money, before my dad tracked me down and made me stop.  I don't think I read the full text before (or any of it, actually.) His words, back then, were rather unremarkable; pretty standard stuff for any 1960 audience. The "Ask not what your country  .." line (that Kennedy copped from Junenval, a ca. 60 BC roman satirist) is really all most people remember.  But speak these opening words today.  Out loud. “ Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, President Truman, Reverend Clergy, fellow citizens: We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom--symbolizing an end as well as a beginning--signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath our forbears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago. The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God. ” If you voted for Obama,  maybe you'll understand why so many of us despise, fear, and hate him—and neo-Democrats equally.  If we were a great nation through the mid twentieth-century—and we were by any accounting— what makes you think we can continue that greatness by trading core principles for the empty words and promises of a 21st century Fuhrer? ”