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In his 1961 inaugural address, John Kennedy highlighted "the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself." He asked for "a grand and global alliance" against them, and said "history (will be) the final judge of our deeds...."
On June 14, 1956, Senator Kennedy gave Harvard's Commencement speech. This writer heard it. Politicians today speak differently. He was reasoned, scholarly, effective, and impressive.
He said when freedom is threatened, politicians and intellectuals "should be natural allies, working more closely together for the common cause against the common enemy."
He ended quoting what an English mother once wrote the Provost of Harrow, saying "Don't teach my boy poetry; he is going to stand for Parliament."
"Well, perhaps she was right," said Kennedy, "but if more politicians knew poetry and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live on this commencement day of 1956."
On November 22, 1963, state-sponsored assassins took him. Decades of global lawlessness, permanent wars, state terrorism, and tyranny followed.
History's verdict is clear. America's "common enemies" won. Kennedy couldn't have imagined how decisively, or most anyone a half century ago.
Given today's bipartisan rogue governance, humanity's threatened. At issue is will there be another or much time left at all! The prospect's real and frightening.
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