What if we'd had talk radio and cable in 1961?

John F. Kennedy's 1961 inaugural address is considered one of the greatest speeches in American history, but Kennedy had the advantage of not having to face the criticism and whining of talk radio and 24-hour cable news pundits. How would Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck react to Kennedy's speech? I can only imagine.

You know, you really have to look deeply into this speech to catch some of the obscure meaning the new president has hidden in it. Just look at this — "For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life ..." Can he be serious? Does he really think we can wipe out humanity? And as for poverty, he's apparently never heard that Jesus said, "The poor will always be with you." Is he expecting us to join hands with the commies and sing Kum-bay-ya while we give away our wealth to the stone-age tribes in the undeveloped world?

And look at this: He says he wants to "bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations." He can't be serious! Does he want America to ask the United Nations' permission to fight back if we come under attack by the Soviet Union? That's what he says right there in his speech! "All nations" are going to control how we wield our military power. You've got to remember, this is a guy who lost his PT boat in the Pacific, but instead of going down with the ship like a good skipper, he skedaddled to a nearby island to sit out the war. Anybody whose daddy wasn't a millionaire former ambassador would have been court-martialed, but he gets a medal. And 16 years later, he wants to ask for other nations' permission before fighting back! If we do what he says, we are no longer a sovereign nation. We might as well go back to 1776 and say, "Long live King George III"!

The new president says, "If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." Since when is it government's job to save anybody? A free society saves those who want to save themselves. It's a free market. It's competition. That's what has made this "free society" so great. But now he wants to ruin all that by declaring that we should "save" the poor. That's a contradiction, my friends. You can't be a "free society" and give special favors to one group. You do that, and it's no longer a free society.

Now here's the clincher, Kennedy wants us to "ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country." He's got it exactly backwards. Thomas Jefferson had it right: Governments are "instituted among men" to serve their best interests, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." We made the government. It should serve us, not the other way around.

This new president has it exactly backwards. Now you say, he's young, the youngest man ever elected to the White House, but, friends, we don't have time for him to grow up and learn his way around, maybe read the Declaration of Independence for once. We've got to do something now to straighten out the mess he's created with his first presidential speech!

I'm old enough to remember watching Kennedy's inaugural address 50 years ago. I'm glad I got it straight up without the critiques.