Nov. 22, 1963: In Memoriam
(I) When Our Leaders Were Leaders, and Articulate
(A) The Highest Ethical Standards. “No responsibility of government is more fundamental than the responsibility of maintaining the highest standards of ethical behavior by those who conduct the public business. There can be no dissent from the principle that all officials must act with unwavering integrity, absolute impartiality, and complete devotion to the public interest. This principle must be followed not only in reality but in appearance. For the basis of effective government is public confidence, and that confidence is endangered when ethical standards falter or appear to falter.”1
(B) Separation of Church and State. “[There are] real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues — for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers.
“But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured — perhaps deliberately, in some quarters . . . . So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again — not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me — but what kind of America I believe in.
“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute — where no Catholic prelate would tell the President . . . how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote — where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference — and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish — where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source — where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials — and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
“For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew — or a Quaker — or a Unitarian — or a Baptist. It was Virginia’s harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson’s Statute of Religious Freedom. Today I may be the victim — but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.
“Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end — where all men and all churches are treated as equal — where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice — where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind — and where Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.
“That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe — a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.
“I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the First Amendment’s guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so — and neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test — even by indirection — for public office. If they disagree with that safeguard, they should be out openly working to repeal it.
“I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none — who can attend any ceremony, service, or dinner his office may appropriately require him — and whose fulfillment of his presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual, or obligation.
“This is the kind of America I believe in — and this is the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we might have a ‘divided loyalty,’ that we did ‘not believe in liberty,’ or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened the ‘freedoms for which our forefathers died.’
“And in fact this is the kind of America for which our forefathers died . . . .
“I ask you tonight to follow in that tradition — to judge me on the basis of my record in fourteen years in Congress — on my declared stands against an ambassador to the Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial schools, and against any boycott of any public schools (which I have attended myself) — instead of judging me on the basis of these pamphlets and publications we all have seen that carefully select quotations out of context from the statements of Catholic leaders, usually in other countries, frequently in other centuries, and always omitting, of course, the statement of the American bishops in 1948 which strongly endorsed church-state separation . . . .
“Whatever issue may come before me as President — on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling, or any other subject — I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise. . . .”2
(II) Weird Beard
“Tell you something, dear hearts, Big D is ner-vus tonight. Getting real close to the time. Notice how people saying scaaaary things. Feel night come rushing down. Don’t y’all sense it around you? Danger in the air. You can see it in the streets. Billboards. Bumper stickers. Handbills. They’re saying awful things about our leaders. I’m walking down the street this morning and there’s a zigzag thing painted on a storewindow and it hits me all at once like it’s a swastika. Do you think I’m making it up? I’m not making it up. Let me pass a thought through the ozone just to get your clock unwound. How do we know it’s really him that’s coming to town? Don’t you know the rumors he travels with a dozen lookalikes when he goes into no man’s land? Just to disorient the enemy. So maybe we’re getting Jack Seven or Jack Ten. Or all of them at once in different locales. I can understand the need, myself. Or might be I’m just receptive to other people’s fantasies. Some things are true. Some are truer than true. Oh the air is swollen. Did you ever feel a tension like right now? You know what Dallas is like, don’t you, in the universal scheme? We’re like everywhere. Or we’re like everywhere wants to be. Dress alike, talk alike, think alike. We’re a model for the country. I’m not making it up. But the little itchy thing is seeping out. Don’t you feel it oozing to the surface? People say he’s riding Caroline’s tricycle into town. Not tough enough to lead us to Armageddon. All the ancient terrors of the night. We’re looking right at it. We know it’s here. We feel it’s here. It has to happen. Something strange and dark and dreamsome. Weird Beard says, Night is rushing down over Big D.”3
1 President Kennedy, special message to Congress on ethics in government, April 27, 1961.
2 Sen. J.F. Kennedy (D. Mass.) on the campaign trail, Houston, Texas, September 12, 1960.
3 KLIT Dallas DJ Russ “Weird Beard” Knight broadcasting on Nov. 21, 1963, as portrayed in Don DeLillo’s Libra. (NY: Penguin 1988.)
