The New Frontier

The following is a speech excerpted in the last issue of the DC: The New Frontier comic book series:

But I think the American people expect more from us than cries of indignation and attack. The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high — to permit the customary passions of political debate. We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future.

Today our concern must be with that future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do...

Abroad, the balance of power is shifting. There are new and more terrible weapons — new and uncertain nations-new pressures of population and deprivation. One-third of the world, it has been said, may be free-but one-third is the victim of cruel repression-and the other one-third is rocked by the pangs of poverty, hunger and envy. More energy is released by the awakening of these new nations than by the fission of the atom itself...

The world has been close to war before — but now man, who has survived all previous threats to his existence, has taken into his mortal hands the power to exterminate the entire species some seven times over...

An urban population revolution has overcrowded our schools, cluttered up our suburbs, and increased the squalor of our slums.

A peaceful revolution for human rights demanding an end to racial discrimination in all parts of our community life has strained at the leashes imposed by timid Executive leadership.

A medical revolution has extended the life of our elder citizens without providing the dignity and security those later years deserve. And a revolution of automation finds mines and mills of America, or their training or their need to pay the family doctorm, grocer and landlord.

There has also been a change — a slippage — in our intellectual and moral strength Seven lean years of drouth and famine have withered the field of ideas. Blight has descended on our regulatory agencies-and a dry rot, beginning in Washington, is seeping into every corner of America — in the payola mentality, the expense account way of life, the confusion between what is legal and what is right. Too many Americans have lost their way, their will and their sense of historic purpose...

For I stand tonight facing west on what was once the last frontier. From the lands that stretch 3,000 miles behind me, the pioneers of old gave up their safety, their comfort and sometimes their lives to build a new worid here in the West.

They were not the captives of their own doubts, the prisoners of their own price tags. Their motto was not "every man for himself" — but "all for the common cause." They were determined to make that new world strong and free, to over,come its hazards and its hardships, to conquer the enemies that threatened from without and within.

Today some would say that those struggles are all overthat all the horizons have been explored-that all the battles have been won — that there is no longer an American frontier...

But the New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises, it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, butwhat I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not their pocketbook — it holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.

But I tell you the New Frontier is here, whether we seek it or not. Beyond that frontier are uncharted areas of science and space, unsolved problems of peace and war, unconquered pockets of ignorance and prejudice, unanswered questions of poverty and surplus...

I am asking each of you to be new pioneers on that New Frontier. My call is to the young in heart, regardless of age-to the stout in spirit, regardless of party-to all who respond to the scriptural call:

"Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed."

For courage-not complacence is our need today — leadership — not salesmanship. And the only valid test of leadership is the ability to lead, and lead vigorously....

Can a nation organized and governed such as ours endure? That is the real question. Have we the nerve and the will? Can we carry through in an age where we will witness not only new breakthroughs in weapons of destruction-but also a race for mastery of the sky and the rain, the ocean and the tides, the far side of space and the inside of men's minds?

Are we up to the task? Are we equal to the challenge? Are we, willing to match the Russian sacrifice of the present for the future? Or must we sacrifice our future in order to enjoy the present?

That is the question of the New Frontier. That is the choice our nation must make-a choice that lies not merely between two men or two parties, but between the public interest and private comfort-between national greatness and national decline-between the fresh air of progress and the stale, dank atmosphere of "normalcy" — between determined dedication and creeping mediocrity.

All mankind waits upon our decision. A whole world looks to see what we will do. We cannot fail their trust; we cannot fail to try.

ACCEPTANCE ADDRESS

By JOHN F. KENNEDY, Senator from Massachusetts

Delivered to the Democratic National Convention, Los Angeles, California, July 15, 1960

Why, oh why, don't leaders speak like this anymore?

I have begun to think that when I think that I don't know the answer to a question the fact is that I do know the answer, but I just don't like it so I ignore it. Maybe I know the answer, and so do you, to the above question I posed, semi-rhetorically. Maybe, the answer is that leaders do talk like that, it's just that we don't have any for-reals anymore. I hope that I just don't the answer though.