PoliticACL

With prominent anti-war and anti-death-penalty spokesman Steve Earle on the bill at Austin City Limits, there was always going to be a dash of politics. But an unexpected and lengthy round of political applause was reserved for British post-prog rocking headliners (and belated The White Stripes fill-ins) Muse.

They began their encore by playing a recording, and projecting on the screens, highlights of a speech delivered by President John F. Kennedy at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on April 27, 1961. Their edited version is repeated here in full. Just for fun.

"The very word 'secrecy' is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence, on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no secret is revealed. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people, confident that with your help, man will be what he was born to be, free and independent." - John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963