16 Comments

  1. With better priorities the elapsed 50 years could have averted much of the energy vs environment tensions that now cause so much consternation. Thank you for sharing this remarkably prescient speech.

    1. I was an engineer at SONGS that was laid off when it was decided to close the plant. Luckily, I found another job in nuclear power. Apparently, most of my colleagues have also been able to land other jobs in nuclear. The down side is having to relocate away from California (as screwed up as it is). In my case, my job will be working closely on one of the AP1000’s being built.

      When things settle down a bit (probably in a few weeks), I will give my thoughts on SONGS.

    1. I don’t know about Oswald / Big Oil but JFK was adamant about restraining nuclear weapons proliferation. He was strongly considering a first strike on China’s nuclear infrastructure before they could develop a bomb (described tin the book “Spying on the Atom”). JFK was also forcefully demanding that Israel open it’s nuclear facilities to international, or at least US inspectors (described in the book “Israel and the Bomb”). The tension resulted in the Israeli Prime Minister resigning.

      Both efforts were abandoned after JFK’s assassination.

  2. Simply an excellent speech.

    JFK was enough of a visionary that he set us on the course to get to the moon prior to 1970. It is nothing short of a shame that so many people have shifted toward becoming so anti-progress in the time period from the 1970’s through today.

    1. What did Americans get out of landing a man on the moon though? Only the ability to stick a finger up at the Rooskies…

      1. Along with many residual technological advancements. The entire Cold War in general is a big factor in the development of many technologies, such as the wonderful World Wide Web.

        1. The Internet in general yes (as it developed from the ARPANET, which was a Department of Defense sponsored project), but not the World Wide Web, which was developed at CERN.

  3. Thanks for posting this Rod.

    JFK was one of the few political leaders within my lifetime (born 1948) that proved able to communicate in an understandable and straightforward manner. The contrast between his words and those from more recent leaders is genuinely remarkable. What a loss.

  4. From Winston Churchill:

    True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

    It hs been a while for the US and the western world.

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