They are famous words: “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” They were uttered about midway through John F Kennedy's inaugural speech in 1961, during the times of perhaps peak tension between the West—the US and the liberal democracies of Western Europe—and the Eastern bloc countries led by the USSR. Both superpowers, the US and the USSR had emerged from WWII as the two countries vying to lead the world into the future, each laying the claims of their revolutionary forebears that their ideological system itself was responsible for their stunning political, economic, and military victories on scales unmatched by all other political movements through history. 1961 in particular was a time not only of great uncertainty about the future, and the prospect of war with the Soviet Union, but also a period marking perhaps the high water of America's disproportionate economic and military influence over the world; it was a time when the rhetoric of American exceptionalism was believed not only among the most patriotic of Americans, but by vast segments of the entire world.
