Dearborn — New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a theater kid turned progressive activist, iced his inaugural speech with possibly the most unAmerican declaration a politician has ever made: “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
At the moment Mamdani was giving his speech, I stood some 600 miles away at the passenger side door of a sleek black 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible limousine codenamed “SS-100-X,” perfectly restored and preserved within the nation’s largest time capsule: The Henry Ford Museum of American innovation, known to most Metro Detroiters simply as “The Henry Ford.” “
This isn’t just any beautiful old car from a bygone era of Pax Americana. It was President John F. Kennedy’s official car, where both he and his dream for America died on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, from an assassin’s bullet fired by a Marxist Socialist.
SS-100-X rests today in the front main concourse of the museum, which started as the personal collection of historical American artifacts by Henry Ford and stands as a silent reminder of what could have been, a tragic reminder of when rugged individualism was a virtue and strong motivating force for America.
Mamdani’s speech was rife with socialist class warfare themes. Most of his speech was about himself, his own struggles, and his mandate as radical socialist. It was a perfectly nauseating college campus commie protest speech meant to impugn the virtue of a founding American ethos.
So how does this differ from that young Democrat star from the early 1960s?
I went back in time to 1960 and began to read the many speeches JFK gave across the country, but specifically Metro Detroit. Young radical progressives would find these transcripts alien.
“Rugged individualism” was not a phrase explicitly used by JFK when he spoke to Michigan voters in Detroit, Ann Arbor, Warren, and elsewhere in the state as he campaigned relentlessly across the Midwest laying the bricks for what would one day become known as the Blue Wall.
But his tone and manner were rugged and spoke directly to the masculine fortitude of the working-class man.
In a speech to voters on October 6, 1960, at Cadillac Square, JFK said: “Give me your mandate. Give us the men. For I believe the job can be done. During the dark days of World War II, Winston Churchill appealed to America for help, pleading ‘Give us the tools and we will finish the job.’ Today—in 1960—when America faces challenges and perils greater than ever before, I say to all Americans who want to build a better America—”Give us the job for we have the tools.”
Only a few days later on October 14, 1960, Kennedy spoke on University of Michigan campus and made his famous speech birthing the idea of the Peace Corp, while also using language that flirted with his belief in what people can do for their country rather than what government can do for them:
“Your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend the answer whether a free society can compete. I think it can. And I think Americans are willing to contribute. But the effort must be far greater than we’ve ever made in the past.”
Kennedy sought his most aggressive and rugged policy doctrine speaking to his own U.S. servicemember brethren on August 26, 1960, at the VFW convention in downtown Detroit. His plea was simple and meant to reignite the fire that once defeated Axis powers and refocus that flame towards the Soviets and Chinese Communists:
“Today the challenge is somewhat different—not only because the enemy has the power to destroy us—but because he also seeks, by economic and political warfare, to isolate us. He intends to outproduce us. He intends to outlast us. And the real question now is whether we are up to the task—whether each and every one of us is willing to face the facts, to bear the burdens, to provide the risks, to meet our dangers—and to provide for them.”
Unlike Mamdani, and in stark contrast to modern day political messaging writ-large, Kennedy’s speeches were devoid of grievance, culture-war motifs, and class envy. He spoke of equality, not the equity standard that the left loves to tout.
Also, unlike Mamdani, JFK was a strident anti-communist. Indeed, Mamdani and his Democrat Socialist of America comrades condemned the arrest of the illegitimate socialist Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Hard to imagine Kennedy, who embargoed Communist Cuba and outmaneuvered the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis, tweeting out cope over a South American commie tyrant.
JFK’s power to motivate a nation founded on rugged individualism during the darkest and fought days of the Cold War is a lesson which I keenly learned from an 82-year-old Livonia resident named Gordon who immigrated from Scotland to America with his family after World War II. A U.S. Navy Vietnam-era veteran, an electrician, a former hockey player, football player, and bodybuilder. An unbreakable man whose parents, daughter, and best friend died in his arms without him losing grace.
A tough and patriotic man. A working-class Michigan man weary of feckless weakness and moral relativism. An American man clinging tightly to the American ethos.
He regularly visits the Henry Ford and always walks towards and stands quietly by SS-100-X for a brief few minutes, looking at the empty rear passenger seat before walking away with a tragic expression.
“He was my guy,” Gordon says. “He was our guy. He motivated men to reach for the stars. He didn’t start the space race; it was already within us. He asked us to do something hard and we did it.”
As Democrats elsewhere attempt to pull America towards the warmth of collectivism and the suicidal laziness of socialism, we should remember one Democrat who spoke to the Michigan’s rugged individualism and asked:
“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”
Jay Murray is a writer for Michigan Enjoyer and has been a Metro Detroit-based professional investigator for 22 years. Follow him on X @Stainless31.
