JFK's Inaugural Address - 1961 Throughout history, Presidents have used the Inaugural Address as an opportunity to help the mental framework of the American people and

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Kyle Milgram

11/4/05

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JFK’s Inaugural Address - 1961

Throughout history, Presidents have used the Inaugural Address as an opportunity to help the mental framework of the American people and to the greater world.  In order to effectively do so, those who craft the address must exhibit a mastery of rhetoric. More so than in other writing pieces, an Inaugural Address by nature appeals more to the rhetorical element of emotion. This is due to the fact that the address is intended to move its audience with powerful and socially lasting statements.

The rhetorical element of emotion was especially vital to the address of former President John F. Kennedy.  Kennedy’s emotion presented the whole free world with a responsibility to spread freedom, justice, and to rid the world of evils. In addition, he calls upon the American people to stand strong as the backbone of the attempt to win the “long twilight struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war.”

Kennedy wanted the people to be reenergized about defending freedom, a hallmark of American society. To do so, he looks to this country’s past and how each generation of Americans have been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. His intentions were to stir up patriotism; make Americans realize that almost all of the previous generations have, at one time or another demonstrated their loyalty to the freedoms we all know and love. Today (1961) our duties as US citizens are no different. “We dare not today forget that we are the heirs of that first revolution…and we are unwilling to permit the slow undoing of the human rights to which this nation has always been committed to…The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.” The address further calls upon enthusiasm by attempting to make this particular demonstration of national spirit more special then the times before when he said “Let every nation know…that we shall pay any price…to assure the survival and the success of liberty!” (And we paid that price of 56,000 soldiers in Vietnam).

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With communism beginning to spread on the other side of the globe, Kennedy attempted to reach out to America’s rivals in hopes of getting across a desire for peace and prosperity. “Let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.” This statement laid the foundation for the actual actions that the Kennedy Administration took to make this happen. Later in 1961, The Peace Corp was initiated to further advance third world countries and a ban on nuclear ...

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