PEACE CORPS IN THE 21 ST CENTURY: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS

Chapter 1Introduction: Peace Corps and the 21 st centuryHow many of you who are going to be doctors, are willing to spend your days inGhana? Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in theForeign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world? On yourwillingness to do that, not merely to serve one year or two years in the service,but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think willdepend the answer {sic} whether a free society can compete. I think it can! And Ithink Americans are willing to contribute. But the effort must be far greater thanwe have ever made in the past. 1At two o’clock in the morning on October 24, 1960, Presidential candidate JohnF. Kennedy revealed his idea for the Peace Corps to a crowd of anxious University ofMichigan students. That night on the steps of the Student Union Building, Kennedybegan to harness the enthusiasm and optimism of a nation putting World War II behindthem. The youth of America—for whom the news of battles and the sacrifices ofwartime were either vague memories or written and oral history—were raised onnewsreels showing the slow and painful recovery of a war-torn Europe. The combinationcreated a young generation eager to help. Kennedy’s youthful exuberance, winninglooks, and idealistic words made the Peace Corps seem like a logical next step in thisprocess of healing. Simultaneously, Cold War tensions weighed heavily. The impendingthreat of the atomic bomb meant that Americans had the options either to stay at homeand wait for the giant flashbulb in the sky or to do something to make things better.