Kennedy was Wrong

Every President whose words are remembered, are normally remembered for only a few words said in the course of their career. (Lincoln our only presidential poet being the exception that proves the rule.) But Kennedy said something that was taken as a massive display of patriotic rhetoric. The phrase for which he is most remembered is, "Think not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
It sounded good. It was, however, wrong. It is the epitome of nationalistic rhetoric run amok. People do not exist to serve their country, countries exist to serve their people. When governments cease to serve their people, then they should be removed and replaced.
There is no legitimate purpose for government than to serve its citizens. There is no other purpose, and citizens need to be demanding of their government -- we may disagree on how or what services should be delivered, but we should never support a government which exists to self-perpetuate itself.
In America when we think of what it means to be an American, it means subscription to a package of ideals which were the ideals of the deist enlightenment thinkers who conceived it. Those ideals are developing and are evolving towards the more romantic and higher ideals which are embodied in the Declaration of Independence. That ongoing development and evolution is highly dependent upon the citizens making demands upon that government.
While it is appropriate to call upon citizens to help each other, and to do things for each other, and to build strong communities, it is not appropriate to ask the citizenry to abjectly submit to a concept of a nationhood that is to be defended at all costs and against all odds. That kind of devotion is sacredly restricted to defending our brothers and sisters -- our fellow citizens, not some abstract notion of a fatherland or homeland.
This is not an easy concept to understand and many beloved Americans are hard to understand. Probably the hardest to understand is Robert E. Lee. Offered command of the Union forces, he chose Virginia over America. He did not seem to be terribly devoted to the preservation of slavery as an institution, but he led a fight on the side of the slaveholders. What did Lee think Virginia was and why was he more loyal to it, than the nation he had previously taken an oath to defend? Was it an abstract notion of a certain government, a geographical location, a culture? These are imponderables which historians and social thinkers will debate and mull over so long as American history is taught.
I find Lee the ultimate enigma. But I have thought, and continue to think, that Lee rendered his greatest service to his fellow Americans after he surrendered and after he lay down his sword. He did so by sternly admonishing his generals and leaders not to convert their struggle into a partisan guerrilla war, and afterwards downplayed militaristic ideals, going so far as to intentionally walk out of step in parades at his college.