JFK’s inaugural address resonates as Americans choose nation’s path
By Chris Honoré
Recently, a friend who is writing a book in which former President John F. Kennedy is a central character sent me a paragraph from JFK’s inaugural address.
I found the entire speech online and was surprised at its timelessness. And while reading the beautifully crafted and eloquent sentences, which were delivered in that familiar cadence on that bitterly cold day in January 1961, I found myself thinking of former President Donald Trump’s inaugural address, in which he coined the phrase “American carnage” while describing his now-familiar dystopian view of our nation and its urban landscape.
Below find three paragraphs from Kennedy’s extraordinary speech that seem still so uniquely relevant:
“In the long history of the world only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger.
“In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.
“All of this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first thousand days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”
We are that generation. Our vote is our singular and collective voice, our power, our belief in democracy made manifest. And in this moment E Pluribus Unum will take on a new meaning.
Email Ashland resident Chris Honoré at [email protected].
