On this day in 1963 John F. Kennedy gave his great speech speaking of human dignity and freedom. Four months later he would be murdered in Dallas.
I must admit while I have no love for communism, I’m not much more a fan of capitalism. The human heart calls for freedom and responsibility, for the individual and the communal, and any system of human relationship must account for both. The problem with both communism and capitalism is how each ignores one of these inescapable needs.
But standing in Berlin at that moment in history, what I think Kennedy was really looking at, at least in substantial part, was not the dichotomy between capitalism and socialism but between freedom and totalitarianism.
That said, such words called out from an island of freedom in a sea of totalitarianism should be our words…
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