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The New American Dream is to Escape American Reality
Why Trump and the Right will never make America great
In a 1962 speech, President John F. Kennedy argued that artistic achievement was “one of the enduring sources of national greatness.” Great American writers, artists and musicians didn’t just inspire our own people but in fact spoke to the deep truths of the human condition.
Centuries from now, Kennedy said, America’s greatness would be measured not in terms of the wars we won but in the influence our culture had over the course of human history.
If we can make our country one of the great schools of civilization, then on that achievement will surely rest our claim to the ultimate gratitude of mankind.
Kennedy delivered his remarks at a fundraiser for the construction of a National Cultural Center. He would not live to see it built, but today it bears his name: the Kennedy Center.
I had the good fortune to see many productions there during the decade I lived in DC, from operas like Tosca and Madame Butterfly, to Broadway musicals like Wicked and The Book of Mormon. I remember on one occasion they delayed the start of the opera because Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia were stuck in traffic, a very DC moment indeed.
