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There is no more important message that could be delivered to the American people in 2025 than the ones JFK was set to deliver on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.
People ask what they can do, given what we’re experiencing in America. A good start is by dusting off some John F. Kennedy speeches.
It is hard sometimes to appreciate and clearly see John Kennedy from 2025.
He seems fuzzy and a bit distorted.
It is very difficult to understand John Kennedy—his brilliance, wisdom and idealism—when viewed through a filthy filter of cynicism.
John Kennedy was a patriot, an idealist, a peacemaker and a warrior. He was profoundly privileged and stunningly empathetic.
He had a servant’s heart. He had a vision for better. He was deeply attached to the lessons of history and qualities of character necessary to survive the storms ahead. He possessed wisdom and restraint in the most dangerous hours in human history.
John Kennedy was the president of the United States, but he truly honored the only title in America that outranks that one: citizen.
The assassinations of the 1960s have altered the trajectory of the 21st century—just as did the murders of the 1860s and 1880s shaped the 20th.
The United States remains mired in a political crisis that is rooted in near electoral stalemate, intimations of violence, recrimination, accusation, disparagement, mockery and contempt.
The Trump era has endured for 10 long years. What it will be remembered for is just now beginning. Everything that has come before has just been a breathless preface.
Donald Trump created a dangerous extremism in American politics that has taken command of the United States government. The reaction across the country ranges from enthusiasm to indifference, while generating a tsunami wave of capitulant cowardice that has drowned the credibility of the American media, business and technological elite. It is distressing and depressing, but not the least bit surprising.
The rise of America’s Vichy elite is no mystery. It came on a hydrofoil.
Mark Zuckerberg
John Kennedy had unfinished business. A lot of it.
It is time to pick up his unfinished work. The country would do well to think more often of its 35th president and his undelivered final words in Dallas, Texas.
There is no more important message that could be delivered to the American people in 2025 than the ones he was set to deliver on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.
These are the last lines of the last speech ever typed for President Kennedy, intended for remarks on November 22, 1963, at the Democratic State Committee in Austin:
For this country is moving and it must not stop. It cannot stop. For this is a time for courage and a time for challenge. Neither conformity nor complacency will do. Neither the fanatics nor the faint-hearted are needed. And our duty as a party is not to our party alone, but to the Nation, and, indeed., to all mankind. Our duty is not merely the preservation of political power but the preservation of peace and freedom.
So let us not be petty when our cause is so great. Let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when our Nation’s future is at stake. Let us stand together with renewed confidence in our cause–united in our heritage of the past and our hopes for the future–and determined that this land we love shall lead all mankind into new frontiers of peace and abundance.
I’d like to ask that you listen to (or read) this speech from President-elect Kennedy to a Joint Convention of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, The State House, on January 9, 1961.
It is often referred to as the “City on a Hill” speech:
Here is my idea: Democrats should adopt this speech as the party platform, modernize it, and use it as the basis to resurrect the Democratic Party’s shattered reputation.
The Democratic Party should stand for a single powerful idea, and adopt it forevermore as the party’s North Star and the nation’s preeminent creed.
All men and women are created equal and endowed by their creator with inalienable rights that include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The Democratic Party should embrace these powerful freedoms in the United States and everywhere in the world where they struggle to survive and thrive:
Freedom of speech
Freedom of religion
Freedom from hunger, disease and violence
Freedom from fear
The Democratic Party should repudiate public corruption and transform itself into America’s ethical party.
The Democratic Party should appreciate that it is the antidote to our national poisoning and bitterness.
When it rises again it can be restorative to our broken spirit, morality, decency, vibrancy and patriotism.
It can be the balm to the poisonous outbreak of pettiness and selfishness that it embraced with the great gaslighting of 2024, and helped spread across the country by losing to Donald Trump.
The failure cannot be forgotten until it is redeemed by victory. There will be no winning for Democrats if the cause of defeat is not faced and reckoned with.
John Kennedy was 43 years old when he gave this speech. It is eight minutes long, and it is exquisite and inspiring.
JFK talks about setting forth on a journey. He talks about responsibility and duty. He talks about gratitude and a connection that exists and binds all Americans through the generations.
He talks about Massachusetts and the elemental role that the cradle of American liberty has played in kindling the birth and advancement of American freedom. He talks about his grandparents and his hopes for his yet-born grandchildren. He talks about opportunity and danger.
Listen to his words as he talks about America being at the edge of a “perilous frontier.” He summons the foundations of our national greatness.
JFK quotes Governor John Winthrop aboard flagship Arabella as a new world is imagined and a government is created.
We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.
He applies a test for service.
JFK calls for leaders to be measured as men (and women) of (i) courage, (ii) judgement, (iii) integrity and (iv) dedication.
He says to those to whom much is given, much is expected and owed.
Listen to his words.
Hear and absorb them.
Let them stir within you a dedication to this country at a moment of new danger. John F. Kennedy saw the future in 1961 and understood his moment with perfect clarity.
He would have understood this one as well.
The test has not changed.
Just the people taking it and the standards applied towards passing it.
The United States has a rotten president and a rotten cabinet.
It is the greatest collection of imbeciles, weirdos, liars, conspiracy theorists and unqualified hacks ever put together for any purpose, anywhere at any time for any occasion ever in these United States of America.
We have failed the test for now, but the Democrats should heed the words of JFK and start fighting back with better—against terrible.
Steve Schmidt
Steve Schmidt is a political analyst for MSNBC and NBC News. He served as a political strategist for George W. Bush and the John McCain presidential campaign. Schmidt is a founder of The Lincoln Project, a group founded to campaign against former President Trump. It became the most financially successful Super-PAC in American history, raising almost $100 million to campaign against Trump's failed 2020 re-election bid. He left the group in 2021.
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