Let's reflect on the 50th anniversary of one of U.S. history's virtuoso bully pulpit performances – not one but two speeches, delivered on consecutive days in June 1963. They are a matched rhetorical pair of landmark addresses, one focused on peace abroad and the other on justice at home.
On June 10, 1963 President John F. Kennedy told the graduating class at American University that he had "chosen this time and this place to discuss … the most important topic on earth: world peace." He spoke as a leader empowered by his deft handling of the Cuban missile crisis but also as one more keenly aware than ever of how precarious the Cold War made human existence. He was not, he said, seeking a "Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war" nor "the peace of the grave or the security of the slave" but "genuine peace ... not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace for all time."
Achieving that, he argued, required not only persuading the Soviets that peaceful coexistence was possible, but Americans as well. He warned against seeing "only a distorted and desperate view of the other side," and said that Americans should not view "conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats."
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