Marx is proven wrong once again: for it is the closed Communist societies, not the free and open societies which carry within themselves the seeds of internal disintegration.
John F. Kennedy
The Public Record
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person elected president, at 43 years, and the first Catholic president. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A member of the Democratic Party, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the United States Congress before his presidency.
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And nothing carries the spirit of this American idealism more effectively to the far corners of the earth than the American Peace Corps.
In the end, the crucial effort is one of purpose, requiring the fuel of finance but also a torch of idealism.
Neither money nor technical assistance, however, can be our only weapon against poverty.
But if these programs were ever to be ended, our failures in a dozen countries would be sudden and certain.
Government aid can only supplement the role of private investment, trade expansion, commodity stabilization, and, above all, internal self-improvement.
What we do ask--and all that we ask--is that our help be used to best advantage, and that their own efforts not be diverted by needless quarrels with other independent nations.
We are not purchasing votes for the cold war; we have gone to the aid of imperiled nations, neutrals and allies alike.
Wherever nations are willing to help themselves, we stand ready to help them build new bulwarks of freedom.
The men and women of this hemisphere know that the alliance cannot succeed if it is only another name for United States handouts--that it can succeed only as the Latin American nations themselves devote their best effort to fulfilling its…
I do not underestimate the difficulties that we face in this mutual effort among our close neighbors, but the free states of this hemisphere, working in close collaboration, have begun to make this alliance a living reality.
I am especially proud that this country has put forward for the 60's a vast cooperative effort to achieve economic growth and social progress throughout the Americas--the Alliance for Progress.