John F. Kennedy Quotes
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
Kennedy, John F. "Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America." Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1962, United States Government Printing Office, 1963, p. 164.
In 2005 an Egyptian writer, Usama Anwar Ukasha, criticized one of the Prophet’s companion’s role for causing dissention and divisiveness in Islamic history. Some called for his legal punishment for slandering a holy figure (see {588714}) and a law case was brought to force him to divorce his wife—so that she would not be “contaminated by his heretical thoughts. Al-Bana argued for freedom of thought and speech on such subjects. His view was particularly important since he was the brother of Hassan Al-Bana, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, a powerful fundamentalist organization. Note that Al-Bana’s call for intellectual freedom does not go so far as to say that it should be legal to criticize The Prophet Muhammad and it illustrates how far even modern Islam has to go to meet reasonable standards of freedom of thought and speech.
While stating this and perhaps believing it, he still was the President of an autocracy where diversity was not tolerated at all. Religious police roamed the nation beating men whose beards were not long enough or women they believed improperly dressed, politicians who held diverse views were not allowed to run for the Parliament or even the Presidency, religious dissenters were executed for heresy.
At the time of this quotation, Dr. Rice was the Provost of Stanford University and did not imagine that she would represent an ultra conservative administration that opposed affirmative action of all types. She was then a leader in handling the compromises necessary to manage “hate speech” and the doctrines of political correctness.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, often referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his work as president concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A Democrat, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the U.S. Congress prior to becoming president.
