and so my fellow Americans ask not what
your country can do for you ask what you
can do for your country
I pledge you that we shall neither
commit nor provoke aggression that we
shall neither flee nor invoke the threat
of force that we shall never negotiate
out of fear and we shall never fear to
negotiate
terror is not a new weapon throughout
history it has been used by those who
could not prevail either by persuasion
or example but inevitably they fail
either because man are not afraid to die
for a white life worth living or because
the terrorists themselves came to
realize that free men cannot be
frightened by threats and that
aggression would meet its own response
and it is in the light of that history
that every nation today should know be
he friend or foe that the United States
has both the will and the weapons to
join free men in standing up to their
responsibilities all three men wherever
they may live
a citizens of Berlin and therefore as a
free man I take pride in the words ich
bin ein bier Lena the path we have
chosen for the present is full of
hazards as all paths are but it is the
one most consistent with our character
and courage as a nation and our
commitments around the world the cost of
freedom is always high but Americans
have always paid it and one path we
shall never choose and that is the path
of surrender or submission we choose to
go to the moon we choose to go to the
moon in this decade and do the other
things not because they are easy but
because they are hard because that goal
will serve to organize and measure the
best of our energies and skills because
that challenge is one that we're willing
to accept one we are unwilling to
postpone and one we intend to win and
the others too I believe in an America
where the separation of church and state
is absolute for no Catholic prelate who
tell the president should he be Catholic
how to act and no Protestant minister
would tell his parishioners for whom to
vote when no church or church school is
granted any public funds or political
preference and when no man is denied
public office merely because his
religion differs from the president who
might appoint him
or the people who might elect him I have
therefore chosen this time in place to
discuss a topic on which ignorance too
often abounds and the truth too rarely
perceived and that is the most important
topic on earth peace what kind of a
peace do I mean and what kind of a peace
do we seek not a Pax Americana enforced
in the world
by American weapons of war not the piece
of the grave for the security of the
slave I am talking about genuine peace
the kind of peace that makes life on
earth worth living the kind that enables
men and Nations to grow and a hope and
build a better life for their children
not merely peace for Americans but peace
for all men and women not merely peace
in our time
but peace in all time we are confronted
primarily with a moral issue it is as
old as the scriptures and is as clear as
the American Constitution the heart of
the question is whether all Americans
are to be afforded equal rights and
equal opportunities whether we are going
to treat our fellow Americans as we want
to be treated if an American because his
skin is dark cannot eat lunch in a
restaurant open to the public if he
cannot send his children the best public
school available if he cannot vote for
the public officials who represent him
if in short he cannot enjoy the full and
free life which all of us want then who
among us would be content to have the
color of his skin changed and stand in
his place who among us would then be
content for the counsels of patience and
delay one hundred years of delay of path
as President Lincoln freed the slaves
yet their heirs their grandsons are not
fully free they are not yet freed from
the bonds of injustice they not yet not
yet freed from social and economic
oppression and this nation for all its
hopes and all its boasts will not be
fully free until all its citizens are
free
the very word secrecy is repugnant in a
free and open society and we are as a
people inherently and historically
opposed to secret societies to secret
oaths
and a secret proceedings we decided long
ago that the dangers of excessive and
unwarranted concealment of pertinent
facts far outweighed the dangers which
are cited to justify it even today there
is little value in opposing the threat
of a closed society by imitating its
arbitrary restrictions even today there
is little value in insuring the survival
of our nation if our traditions do not
survive with it and there is very grave
danger that an announced need for
increased security will be seized upon
by those anxious to expand its meaning
to the very limits of official
censorship and concealment that I do not
intend to permit to the extent that it's
in my control