November twenty second, twenty twenty three. Today marks a terrible anniversary in the United States that deserves commemoration and remembrance. This is the day, sixty years ago that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. He was the youngest man ever elected to the office of President of the United States, a hero of the Second World War, a congressman, a United States Senator, a keen observer of the world.
The first volume of a two volume biography of the life of President Kennedy was recently published by the historian Frederick Logoval. The opening of the book is dramatic and remarkable. It has a young John Kennedy, a keen observer of whatever was happening around him, looking out on the streets from above Berlin, from the Hotel Adlon near the Brandenburg Gate. He sees the Nazi swastikas, he sees the jack booted SS, the uniforms, the menace. Yet he sits there wondering will
there be war? Certainly Europe was teetering on the edge, but it seemed improbable, unbelievable, that the world could soon be in flames, that war would forever change John Kennedy's life. He was a lieutenant junior grade in the United States Navy in the Pacific, commanding PT. One nine. When it was sliced in half at night on a moonless, dark Pacific night by a Japanese destroyer. John Kennedy swam with an injured crewman, towing him for miles in open water
shark infested sees until they made landfall. He was a bonafide hero, as was his brother Joseph. His older brother killed on what could happily be described as a suicide mission over the skies of Europe early in the war. The death of his older brother changed the destiny of John Kennedy. He was elected to Congress in nineteen forty six and then the United States Senate in nineteen fifty two.
In nineteen sixty, he was, at forty three years old, the youngest man ever elected to the office of President of the United States. He demonstrated a judiciousness, a wisdom, and the most important quality of the early nuclear age, restraint. When the world teter on the edge of nuclear war, it was John Kennedy's wisdom that saved humanity. There's almost certain that American ground forces would never have been deployed
to Vietnam had John Kennedy lived. Assassination is a brutal crime because it is not just the murder of an individual. It is the murder of the aspirations of a people. It is the extinguishment of the vision of a leader, and an altering of history. For all time, the United States has been plagued by assassination. It has taken from us some of our greatest leaders and our most noble.
It took from the nation. Abraham Lincoln, a man of wisdom and deep morality, at the end of a war that killed over a million people, said these words, with malice towards none and charity towards all. Let us seek to bind up the wounds of the nation, to care for the widow and the orphan. It took from us another combat veteran of the Union Army, James Garfield, in
eighteen eighty. Assassination stole America's promise. In the latter half of the twentieth century, Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, the assassin's bullet changed the arc of history. It bended it away from justice. It took away the people's voice, and we are lesser for it. One of the tragedies of recent history is the tabloidization of John Kennedy's life, the serialization of it. It's been turned into an episode
of the Crown. Literally a thousand docuseriies and tawdry tabloid television specials have obscured the dignity, the elegance, the wisdom, the humanitarianism of the man who, like all people, was flawed and a sinner. But that doesn't matter, because when John Kennedy raised his hand and he swore the thirty five word oath that George Washington took, he never betrayed it. He saved the American nation at a time of profound danger, and he inspired young people a generation towards public service.
I was born just outside of the shadow of his assassination. It was the defining event for the baby boomer generation. Every person in that generation remembers exactly where they were at the moment they learned that President Kennedy had been killed. But we should not remember President Kennedy through the prism of his assassination and death, but rather through his life of service. There are some speeches that every American should see and watch and absorb and listen to to refresh
their commitment to American civics and our American civilization. Here are some of them. John Kennedy's inaugural address, the greatest in American history. There is John Kennedy's last speech at Amherst College when he celebrates the role of art in American life and the importance of the artist in a democracy.
There is the speech that he delivers shortly before becoming president, when he is President elect to the massage its legislature, and he talks about the shining city on a Hill that was referenced first by John Winthrop in describing the burdens and challenges of the Massachusetts Bay Colony at the beginning of a rupture in history, the beginning of a
new epoch. These speeches tell us something, show us something, demonstrate something about the vigorousness of the American spirit, its character, its youthfulness. And lastly, there is this speech, the speech that explained to the American people why we must explore, why we are called to exploration. When we think about this in the age of artificial intelligence, in the age of profound disruption and change, it is this speech that should be our north star our polaris. Think about the
excitement of discovery, think about the journey ahead. When you listen to these words, that some the magnificence of this moment and the luckiness we all share to be alive in it. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was a remarkable man from
a remarkable American family. If you visit his gravesite in Arlington National Cemetery, you will see there, of course his wife, Jacqueline, and his infant child, but also his brothers, Senator Edward Kennedy the youngest, Robert Kennedy, who ran his campaign, served as Attorney General and then a United States Senator, who himself was assassinated in nineteen six, and his brother Joseph, a hero of the Second World War in the Army Air Corps who died fighting fascism Nazism in disguise of Europe.
This was a family like any brothers. That's not uncommon. What's uncommon is the devotion to service in the nation, and it should be remembered today, and it should be celebrated today, and it should be honored today. One of the darkest in American history