The Kennedys: July 26, 1999 issue of New Thinking

July 26, 1999 New Thinking:
The Kennedys

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July 26, 1999

The Kennedys

By Gerry McGovern

There are those who hate the Kennedys and there are those who will always love them. Being Irish, it is not difficult to understand where my allegiances lie. The election of John F. Kennedy was like the turning on of a light for many Irish people. It signified a sort of reawakening of hope for a people who had for long lived in the shadows of history.

There was ‘one of our own’ walking tall through the new world, with ease and nobility – as if it was his right. To me as a child it said that I had a right to dream great dreams, to walk forward confidently with hope.

There is a modern sport played today. And the prey is very often politicians. Many people say that they are sick of politics, that they couldn’t even be bothered voting. So, you expect a doctor, do you, to make you well, to heal you and make you believe again?

What right do you or I have for a doctor in these matters? What arrogance that we the public should feel that someone should come to cure us of our cynicism.

I have met a number of politicians in my time. I can attest that the average politician has more concern for society than many of the average citizens I have met. Because we the public have a habit of getting concerned with politics when politics concerns us.

When we want something or when something is being taken from us. Many of us have very little time to raise our eyes above our narrow concerns and see a larger, longer view of things.

This is perfectly illustrated by a debate that is raging about the Internet right now. There are ads in the United States which demand that the Government keeps “its hands off the Internet.” Oh, what short and narrow memories there are! Have we forgotten so quickly that the very reason the Internet exists is because of sustained Government support?

That the Internet is an ultimate reward from the investment over many years of taxpayers’ money by Government officials who had vision. That it is highly unlikely that the Internet would ever have existed were it left up to private business. That, in fact, when the Internet showed its first major growth in the early Nineties, many industry titans either ignored it or tried to create their own proprietary Internet.

The Internet flourished because it made computers meaningful and useful to the larger society. Those who tell the Government to keep their hands off the Internet do so because they have their hands on it!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating absolute Government control here, but we are fools if we think our rights are better protected by walking blind into the open arms (and databases) of private business.

John Kennedy JR. was described by the editor of Time as, “one of the least cynical people I’ve ever met.” When told that people were cynical about politics, he replied that, “People are less jaded than you think.”

I believe that too. I believe in the romantic and the idealist. I believe that politics has no inherent duty to heal us and make us believe, but that we have a duty to care about politics. After all, politics is about the making of our world. And when we lose the idealist and the romantic, the light will surely have gone out.

Gerry McGovern

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The Internet is an ultimate reward from the investment over many years of taxpayers’ money by Government officials who had vision.