May 29 marked the 100th anniversary of John F. Kenney’s birth, which has triggered multiple Camelot retrospectives. Seldom do they omit JFK’s power to inspire, often illustrated with his most famous quote: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.” However, while many find it inspirational, it has been put to more ominous use. And comparing those words with those of Patrick Henry, who shares the same birthday, illustrates why.
Kennedy’s speech was inspired by a Kahlil Gibran article whose Arabic title translates as “The New Frontier.” It said, “Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you, or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in the desert.” But Kennedy dramatically altered its meaning.
Clearly, politicians who benefit by abusing their positions are parasites. In America, with Washington supposedly limited by the Constitution to few, enumerated powers solely to advance the general welfare, such abuses are even more blatant. The same holds for everyone seeking special government treatment.
However, extending “ask what you can do for your country” from politicians and special treatment seekers to citizens turns America’s foundation on its head. Asking citizens to sacrifice for the country, with the government a misleading proxy for society, implies we were made for government’s benefit, rather than it for ours.
That is how “ask what you can do for your country” has been employed to create innumerable government policies helping some by imposing involuntary burdens on others, sacrificing America’s broad interests to political causes and favorites.
Kennedy was also addressing “what together we can do for the freedom of man.” But financing the unjustifiable policies that dominate politics sacrifices others’ life, liberty and pursuit of happiness rather than advancing freedom. And America’s federal government was explicitly limited to the few goals we actually share, such as defense against aggression and invasions of our common, inalienable rights, which describes liberty, not goals where some with shared interests force the costs of advancing them onto others, which is diametrically opposed to liberty. As Milton Friedman once put it, the latter is “at odds with the free man’s belief in his own responsibility for his own destiny … .[It] implies the government is the master … the citizen, the servant.”
The words of Patrick Henry, America’s “Orator of Liberty,” reinforces the large gap between JFK’s “ask not” and the liberty which inspired both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Consider some of them:
Liberty ought to be the direct end of your government.
We wish to be free … we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending.
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Liberty is the greatest of all earthly blessings.
In the language of freemen, stipulate that there are rights which no man under heaven can take from you.
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.
When the American spirit was in its youth … liberty, sir, was then the primary object … the foundation of everything.
The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government – lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.
No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by … frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
If our descendants be worthy of the name of Americans they will preserve and hand down to their latest posterity the transactions of the present times … to preserve their liberty.
Many have found JFK’s “ask not” inspirational. But it has been utilized for many purposes that are directly opposed to American liberty. That is why we need to also remember the unmatched potential and inspiration liberty offers us, which Patrick Henry’s words make clear. We must recognize that rhetoric, however inspirational, does not advance American’s interest when it leads us away from liberty
Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University, an adjunct scholar at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a research associate of the Independent Institute, a member of the FEE faculty network and the Heartland Institute’s Board of Policy Advisors. His books include “Apostle of Peace” (2013) “Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies” (2014) and “Lines of Liberty” (2016).
