The Torch has been Passed....

November 22, 2005 11:27 AM

Audio link to the Inaugural Address delivered January 20, 1961.
posted by squalor (18 comments total)

From a time when men were men and sheep were nervous.
posted by spock at 11:40 AM on November 22, 2005

Um...this is surely a great site, which I learned about from MeFi...last time.
posted by peacay at 11:43 AM on November 22, 2005

Assassinated 42 years ago today. Somehow there's still stuff to learn about it. And "On 19 May 2044, the 50th anniversary of the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, if her last child has died, the Kennedy library will release to the public a 500-page transcript of an oral history about John F Kennedy given by Mrs. Kennedy before her death in 1994."
posted by Plutor at 11:44 AM on November 22, 2005

Apologies peacay - it was just that there seemed to be no mention of today's significance anywhere in the mediastream today. I thought I'd read or listen to something JFK said as a sort of personal commemoration, but when I heard this:

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. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it.

it just seemed so apropos given today's political situation that I got carried away and decided to share it with you.
posted by squalor at 12:13 PM on November 22, 2005

Man, when I hear that quote ("The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans") - I expect these words to follow:

"Lesson 3"....

(Got to have soul.)
posted by kuperman at 12:14 PM on November 22, 2005

Well, i saw the post on the front page, and knew that it was a commemoration - today's just one of them days. For all of his flaws, indeed he seemed sometimes to be a patchwork of them, JFK is simply in another league to all of todays pols. He thought deeply, he spoke in real sentences, he transmitted visions of better days to people awaiting inspiration. He makes Reagan's soubriquet 'The Great Communicator' look like a pisstaking nickname, in all its tawdry, scripted hollowness.

'.'
posted by dash_slot- at 1:03 PM on November 22, 2005

Not everyone who reads Metafilter is American. This is a comment on both the relevance of this and what the hell it is about. The date of his assassination is not common knowledge to everyone in the world, and it would have helped this FPP to at least add some background.
posted by fire&wings at 1:55 PM on November 22, 2005

it just seemed so apropos given today's political situation

I dispute the appropriateness of the quote on two grounds.

First, there isn't any threat to the United States that comes remotely close to the "maximum danger" posed by the Soviet Union, including Islamic radicalism/militant Jihadism/Islamo-fascism. The Soviet Union had a huge army and several thousand ICBMs pointed at the US.

Second, the US consistently overstated the threat posed by the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, from the "missile gap" to Team B. (Whoa. George [H.W.] Bush got a team of true believers to second-guess the CIA? Like that could ever happen again!)
posted by kirkaracha at 2:52 PM on November 22, 2005

Kirka: there is too such a threat. It's just not Iraq. Ever heard of Iran, North Korea?

Just sayin'...
posted by twiggy at 3:13 PM on November 22, 2005

The date of his assassination is not common knowledge to everyone in the world, and it would have helped this FPP to at least add some background.

And yet you seem to have figured it out somehow. Clever lad!

P.S. - Unclench.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 3:52 PM on November 22, 2005

Twiggy, are you high? NK could hit Anchorage, maybe seattle. Iran could maybe smuggle one in. Any one of the members of the former Soviet Union still has enough nuclear ordnance to make the whole USA look like the Mojave. Orders of magnitude.
posted by notsnot at 3:53 PM on November 22, 2005

North Korea has a huge army and maybe a couple of ICBMs, Iran has neither, so sorry, no sale.
posted by kirkaracha at 3:55 PM on November 22, 2005

If this is an acceptable FPP (the audio won't even play for me - leaving the entire, unexplained, content of the FPP thus:

John F. Kennedy: Inaugural Address

Presented by AmericanRhetoric.com)

then I will gladly unclench.
posted by fire&wings at 3:55 PM on November 22, 2005

This is only related by the thinnest of threads, but one of my favorite speeches is Robert Kennedy's speech after the assassination of Martin Luther King (Link is to transcript, there is a link to the audio there).

And yeah, rhetoric in America, uh, blows. Can you imagine any modern American politician quoting a Greek poet?
posted by jlub at 4:29 PM on November 22, 2005

awww. some bastard went and ruined fire&wings whole day by not posting in a manner of which he approves. everybody, all together now:

AAAWWWWWWWWW!
posted by quonsar at 6:26 PM on November 22, 2005

robert kennedy would have turned 80yo this past sunday, november 20.
posted by brandz at 6:36 PM on November 22, 2005

First, there isn't any threat to the United States that comes remotely close to the "maximum danger" posed by the Soviet Union

No, there is a threat that far more dangerous, a threat from within. That threat has already caused more damage to the United States than all those years of the cold war.
posted by Goofyy at 11:14 PM on November 22, 2005

What Goofyy said - doubled in spades
posted by donfactor at 5:37 AM on November 23, 2005