We are not afraid to entrust the American people…

By Gary Burge | Published: September 3, 2007

A quotation in a post by Mark Cuban led me to reminisce about how it was to have a president whom most Americans respected and many revered. It is one of my favorite sayings by John F. Kennedy:

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

President Bush might be coached to sincerely speak those words today, but all one hears is the hollow echo of an administration that is afraid of its people.

But when President Kennedy said them in 1962, one believed them, and was lifted by the spirit of a country that was at once powerful and loved in the world.

Oh, Johnny, what have we squandered…

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  • http://n466pg.blogspot.com Daveg

    JFK was believed because there weren’t the millions of competing thoughts/opinions/facts flying around like we have today. Bush is not the first despised president, although he may be the most despised, and I contend that you will never see another president that can maintain a non-despised quotient above, say, 45%. The internet and the loss of media credibility is the cause of that.

  • About Gary Burge

    I am an experieced web programmer, techno-activist, romantic idealist, who never quite left the sixties, even though I became quite successful in the Internet space.

    My business philosphy is different now than when I toiled in the bigco world. About a decade ago I experienced a life-altering epiphany: I was sacrificing my personal life and health to feed a corporate monster.

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