PRESIDENTIAL SPEECH: KENNEDY'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS

Presidential Speech: Kennedy

Presidential Speech: Kennedy's Inaugural Address

On January 20, 1961 newly elected president John F. Kennedy delivered his inaugural address to a nation in the midst of an ongoing "Cold War" with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). In order to put this speech in context one must understand that the previous decades may be characterized as politically tense as the associated conflicts between the two super powers intensified. Anti- communist sentiment and fear was high in the wake of congressional hearings, the Red Scare, the McCarthy era, and the nation's reaction to the 1957 launch of Sputnik, a Soviet satellite which signaled a significant development in the Cold War (Dunar, 2006). In this address Kennedy touched on a number of issues that fed this fear and endeavored to bring about a dialog between the east and the west in order to...
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