Kennedy

Alberto Gil-Carias
9/11/11
English 12/ Class E/ Ms. Mishkin
Quote Analysis

“If a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor,not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.”
–John F. Kennedy

This quote, mentioned by John F. Kennedy in hisInaugural Address in January 20th 1961, represents the ideology of world peace and alliance. This system of ideas evokes a seemingly practical and simple goal; end the world’s problems by erasing our keensense of self-interest and cooperating with one another. It is in forming a world alliance in which we ignore our differences and give without expecting in return that lays the definite antidote forwar, violence, hatred, disease, and poverty. So, the question remains: if there exists such an antidote at our grasp that will end such a malevolent disease, why are we foolishly ignoring its existence?Humanity constantly struggles with its common problems, but they never stop to think and finally realize that we are the sole promoters of the barriers that have forever prevented us from reachinga unanimous decision to end poverty, disease, tyranny, and war. Seen from an alternate point of view, one which I unfortunately still struggle to legitimately believe, and can only grasp to ponderupon; it is pitiful for us humans that instead of annihilating them completely, we just cynically watch them cause infinite deaths and destruction. This is because, although we won’t admit it, we knowthat those same problems are what set us economically and socially apart. It is unbelievably hard to stop seeking to be better than those around us and conform to equality because it is engraved in ourvery human nature and has become our instinctual need to do so. This is why world peace, although seemingly simple, is literally impossible unless the vast majority of people from all ethnicity...