The Hammock Papers: Welcome.

07 October 2025

Welcome.

Shikler, John F. Kennedy, 1970

Can a nation organized and governed such as ours endure? That is the real question. Have we the nerve and the will? Can we carry through in an age where we will witness not only new breakthroughs in weapons of destruction – but also a race for mastery of the sky and the rain, the ocean and the tides, the far side of space and the inside of men’s minds? We and the Russians now have the power to destroy with one blow one-quarter of the earth’s population – a feat not accomplished since Cain slew Abel.

For the Russian peasant has looked up from his hoe to fling Sputnik into outer space – opening not a new frontier of hope for all mankind, but a new and somber frontier of fear. We cannot hope to escape a prolonged and powerful competition with Soviet power – a competition which demands that we act from enlightened impulses but never act impulsively.

Can we meet this test of survival and still maintain our traditions of literary freedom and dissent? I think we can. For it is the enduring faith of the American tradition that there is no real conflict between freedom and security – between liberty and abundance. Through centuries of crises, the American tradition has demonstrated, on the contrary, that freedom is the ally of security – and that liberty is the architect of abundance.

So let the debate go on – and may the best ideas prevail.

For only in this way can we as a self-governing people choose wisely and thoughtfully in our task of self-government. And it is only in this way that we can demonstrate once again that freedom is the handmaiden of security – and that the truth will make us free.

The Communists, on the other hand, have no such inner strength – and this is one of our advantages. When a Russian novelist questions some of the basic tenets of Soviet society, his name is reviled and his book is banned. Foreign ideas and books are resisted like a plague, not considered on their merits. The world as it is reported in Soviet books must correspond with the world as it is viewed through the eyes of the party. No critic of the regime, no independent thinker, is given a passport to travel. No citizen advances in the Communist community without rigid adherence to party dogma. All this, in the long run, can only lead to weakness.

I want to make sure that never happens in this country. I want to make sure we know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the "Bill of Rights" is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty. Let us not be afraid of debate or dissent – let us not avoid criticism or non-conformity – let us encourage it. For if we should ever abandon these basic American traditions in the name of fighting Communism, what would it profit us to win the whole world when we would have lost our own soul?

But to keep that faith alive – to keep that message meaningful at a time of doubt and despair and disunity – will require more thought and more effort on your part in the press – and on our part in government – than ever before. It will require leadership better equipped than any since Lincoln’s Day to make clear to our people the vast spectrum of our challenges.

John F. Kennedy, from his remarks made at the Cleveland Press Book and Author Luncheon, Cleveland, Ohio, April 16, 1959

Whither leadership?

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL