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Speech
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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.
“
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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.
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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?
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