Sublime

JFK.

He was as important to the founding of a modern and multiethnic twentieth- and twenty-first century America as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and Samuel Adams were to the creation of the republic in the eighteenth century. This is not hyperbole. It is fact—observable, discernible, undeniable fact.

The 1824 election came down to a contest between a member of the English elite, John Quincy Adams, and a member of the Scots-Irish lower class, Andrew Jackson.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN struck off the chains of black Americans, but it was Lyndon Johnson who led them into voting booths, closed democracy’s sacred curtain behind them, placed their hands upon the lever that gave them a hold on their own destiny, made them, at last and forever, a true part of American political life.

“President Kennedy’s eloquence was designed to make men think; President Johnson’s hammer blows are designed to make men act.”