IN A MUCH QUOTED PASSAGE in his inaugural address, President
Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask
what you can do for your country." It is a striking sign of the
temper of our times that the controversy about this passage cen-
tered on its origin and not on its content. Neither half of the
statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his gov-
ernment that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society.
The paternalistic "what your country can do for you" implies
that government is the patron, the citizen the ward, a view
that is at odds with the free man's belief in his own responsibility
for his own destiny. The organismic, "what you can do for your
country" implies that government is the master or the deity, the
citizen, the servant or the votary. To the free man, the country
is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something

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