May 25, 1961

Just over eight years later, on September 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped off onto the surface of the moon. When this speech was given, less than sixteen years had passed since the Japanese had unconditionally surrendered to General MacArthur on the deck of the battleship Missouri, at anchor in Tokyo Bay. Kennedy's generation -- my father's generation -- had defeated the greatest military powers on earth and, in the process, conquered and occupied huge swaths of the surface of the planet. And then gave it back. Thereafter, they resolved to go to the moon, and they did that too.

One wonders how much of the energy of the generational rebellion of the 1960s and '70s was a reaction to the knowledge that those coming of age at that time could never hope to achieve such things. Our fathers had endured the Great Depression, defeated Germany and Japan, gone to the moon, and then went out to cut the grass.

There were truly giants in the earth in those days.