Obama Commencement Speech at Notre Dame Echoed JFK's at American University
By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
One thought on Barack Obama's much discussed commencement speech at Notre Dame. People have dissected it for substance and policy angles (I especially commend my colleague Dan Gilgoff's analysis), especially as regards abortion. But it also struck me as significant in terms of being another step in his oft-stated, sometimes dismissed desire to change the way we debate things in politics.
It struck me that in his Notre Dame speech, Obama was trying to do for our domestic culture wars what John F. Kennedy tried to do for the Cold War 46 years ago when he delivered a commencement address at American University. Kennedy then argued that our competition with the Soviets did not have to be existential. He said:
If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
Almost a half-century later, JFK's sentiments may not seem revolutionary, but at the time they were. "Public cant about communist dangers in the fifties and sixties made it almost impossible for an American politician to make the sort of speech that Kennedy gave," the historian Robert Dallek later wrote. "It was a tremendously bold address that carried substantial risks."
Who knows, maybe in 50 years we'll look back at Obama's attempt to dial back the rhetoric of the culture war in the same way.
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Tags: speeches | Barack Obama | American University | University of Notre Dame | John Kennedy | Obama administration
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Reader Comments
re President's speech at Notre Dame
It was most impressive a shrewd assessment of what the young would like to hear appealing strongly to thair idealism like a sugar coated sweet but beneath that sweetness was and is moral poison.
He urged the young to protect God's creation and implied that fair minded words and a willingness to bridge cultural divide were what was needed to overcome the big problems facing society but abortion destrys the greatest aspect og God's creation the human person.
Now in discussing the future of Guantanamo inmates he says we will need new terminology just as we did to enable the passage of abortion laws blatantly admitting that the manipulation of language was one of the tactics used to get abortion laws passed Doesn't this ring any bells? At what other period in history was language used to rob a part of the human family of their legislative rights and to rob them of their citizenship?
President Obama is without doubt a talented, charming and charismatic young man but he is wrong about abortion Just as there was no middle ground in regard to slavery there is no middle ground in regard to abortion.
MORAL CHAOS
Obama is not responsible for the chaos of the Catholic Church - but he is for his own immoral positions.
Abortion - the killing of the unborn - for the sake of personal convenience, after acting irresponsibly, can never be anything but wrong. Only the immoral, intellectually dishonest could pretend otherwise.
Cold War Russia compared to Abortion?
Pretty thin comparison here. To have our favorite JR Senator who condones and Federally supports the murder of un-born Americans while declaring throwing water in a Terrorists face as illegal "torture" renders his opinion worthless in the eyes of many Americans.
Stand by your convictions or stand for nothing.
Can't have it both ways.
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