Captain Future's Diary

I’ve posted at dkos and elsewhere on the significance of two days in June 1963, as a highlight of JFK’s presidency, especially in terms of the future.

(I combined the commentary on RFK and speech excerpts that appear here as posts that were frontpaged at dkos and Booman Tribune.)

President Kennedy gave the American University speech on June 10. Major excerpts appear elsewhere on this page. The next day, he gave an impromptu address to the nation on Civil Rights. Responding to turmoil and violence in the South that spring, he proposed what would become after his death the Voting Rights Act, in terms of simple justice. “In short, every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated.”

I put these both in historical context in the diaries at dkos and Booman Tribune. But what I want to emphasize here is this: What is striking about these two eloquent statements today is the premium they place on using imagination as a crucial tool in political life. The imagination to step back and see things whole. The imagination to empathize on a personal level. The imagination to seize new ideas, and the imagination to know the right time for them to be heard.