A March 25 Adirondack Daily Enterprise guest commentary by Doug Hoffman (“DOGE fiscal reforms will save our nation from bankruptcy”) quoted John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address of Jan. 20, 1961:

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

This quote was brought up in the context of all of us bearing up to the pain of the Trump/Musk DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) cuts to the federal budget to save us from an ever-increasing national debt.

There is more to this speech, and I remember it well because the words and sentiments meant a lot to me and influenced my decisions throughout my life. Here are some additional lines from Kennedy’s speech:

“My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

“To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required — not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

We will “struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.”

Unfortunately, these sentiments now appear to have been said “A long time ago in a country far, far away …”

A few weeks ago, Thomas L. Friedman — in a March 11, 2025, column in the New York Times — recast Kennedy’s speech into the Trump/Vance version:

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that today’s America will pay no price, bear no burden, incur no hardship, and it will abandon any friends and cuddle up to any foes in order to assure the Trump administration’s political survival — even if it means the abandonment of liberty wherever that be profitable or convenient for us.

“So, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for President Trump. And my fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, ask how much you are ready to pay for America to defend your freedom from Russia or China.”

It looks as if in our last election, we chose power over liberty. Trump has the power to deport people (even American citizens) without due process. The Founding Fathers must be rolling over in their graves. Remember the line for the Declaration of Independence: “all men are created equal?” All men are equal in the sense that, since we are all human, we are born with certain inherent, natural and unalienable rights. Those rights include “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Kennedy’s 1961 call to “ask what you can do for your country” led to the establishment of the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. His words also sparked a sense of unity and responsibility, urging citizens to actively participate in shaping their nation’s future. It led to volunteerism, both at home and abroad, in order to fight against “the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease …”

Today, both the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps face gutting budget and staff cuts from DOGE, as happened at USAID. Increased efficiency is an admirable goal, one that I would support, along with the elimination of graft, corruption and fraud, but that is not what DOGE is doing. It is not optimizing programs, but rather eliminating them without consideration for a more effective alternative. These programs help people in need, and in the case of the Peace Corps and USAID, are agencies that provide what is called “soft diplomacy.” (Soft Diplomacy’s goal is to influence by attracting and convincing. Hard Diplomacy’s goal is to influence by economic and military coercion.) When USAID delivers a bag of rice to needy people in Africa, for instance, the bag clearly has an American flag on it.

St. Paul said in 1 Corinthians: “And now there remain, faith, hope and charity, but the greatest of these is charity.” And Christ said in Matthew 25:40-45, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

How did a people who, by and large, call themselves Christians lose sight of these admonitions?

Despite Donald Trump’s claims of an invasion by murders, rapists, gang members, etc., numerous studies (see National Library of Medicine and the CATO Institute online sources posted online) have shown that undocumented immigrants commit less crime than native-born Americans. The problems we have (per the CATO Institute) are outdated immigration laws and an underfunded vetting system. Immigrants can wait years for the process to be completed.

This I believe: Immigrants aren’t our enemy. It is the people and circumstances that make them immigrants that are the real enemy. As Kennedy said, we need to “struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.”

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David Staszak lives in Saranac Lake.