john f kennedy
Lone leaders
What goes on in the mind of a leader who tires of building consensus and just strives to get things done?
Fifty-two years after the Houston ministers speech
The great newish online journal Religion & Politics alerted me to the fact that today is the anniversary of JFK's speech to the Houston ministers.
Courage to compromise
Richard Lugar symbolizes something great but fragile about the American system of government: it relies on partisanship tempered by wisdom.
JFK's privatized religion
John F. Kennedy's famous
Houston speech on church and state during
the 1960 presidential campaign elicited Rick Santorum's after-the-fact disgust. Though Santorum
misrepresents the speech in some ways--Kennedy didn't say anything about
limiting religious institutions and leaders from speaking on public issues--he
is right to find the speech theologically lame.
Why appeal to conscience when you can misrepresent the church instead?
Candidate John F. Kennedy: If
the time should ever come--and I do not concede any conflict to be remotely
possible--when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or
violate the national interest, then I would resign the office.