John F. Kennedy - Secret Societies

All we need to do is learn history, and we would fix this. Too many people are happily content with staying deep asleep without any ambition to educate themselves. Their passion for knowledge and their curiosity has been snuffed. We only need to look back to John F. Kennedy to understand we have been warned, we have been told, and still we do nothing.

From the speech given by John F. Kennedy, president of the United States, at the dinner of the bureau of advertising, American Newspaper Publishers Association, Waldorf-Astoria hotel, New York, New York, April 27, 1961.

The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society. And we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.

Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.

That, I do not intend to permit, to the extent that it's in my control. [...] But I do ask every publisher, every editor, and every news man in the nation to re-examine his own standards and to recognize the nature of our country's peril. [...] Today, no war has been declared, and however fierce the struggle may be, it may never be declared in the traditional fashion. Our way of life is under attack.

Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe. The survival of our friends is in danger. And yet no war has been declared. No borders have been crossed by marching troops. No missiles have been fired. [...] no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. [...] the danger has never been more clear, and its presence has never been more imminent. It requires a change in outlook, a change in tactics, a change in missions, by the government, by the people, by every businessman or labor leader, and by every newspaper.

For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence. On infiltration instead of invasion. On subversion instead of elections. On intimidation instead of free choice. On guerillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly-knit, highly-efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations.

Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.