There are many ways and names and descriiptions and labels and devices and attempts that can be used to reconcile our present condition as it pertains to how we are ruled. Just to name a few: rule by genuine law - such as the Constitution, versus rule by no law - such as martial law; factual law versus fictional law. The latter is a distinction necessitated by the situation of how history points out that there was a time when the distinction was generally not necessary because the situation was pretty much taken as obvious by the people of that era.... but, over time, well, things change, and those changes eventually brought the need for distinction to be made. The fact that a USDoD and a CIA and the like exists at least to the extent that we are now here discussing them as though they do exist and have so for some time is itself ample evidence that there has been at least a minimal period (or periods) when rule by no law had superseded and held sway over rule by law.

Among the individual laws authorized by the Constitution as a system of laws was the balance of power. The Congressional branch was authorized to make laws. The Judicial branch was authorized to interpret the laws made by Congress. The Executive branch was authorized to manage and authorize the laws as made by Congress and interpreted by the Judicial branch. Redundant as this is, the condition of our present-day environment in this context is such that it is worth the effort of being repetitive just in hopes that people take note of how the Constitution did not authorize the Judicial branch nor the Executive branch with law-making powers. Got that? In other words, devices like legislating from the bench - election 00' a specimen example of such, Executive Orders, and National Security Memorandums and National Security Directives and derivatives of such law-making acts are not the result of factual law being in force. If actual, real, genuine law was not in force, a next most likely rationale for the prevalence of these acts today is due to periods when the force and rule of fictional law-making powers held sway. Martial Law is among the laws not authorized by the Constitution. In Article 1 Section 9, the Constitution did assert that the right to Habeas Corpus was not to be suspended UNLESS the safety of the public required such during times of rebellion or invasion. With the passage of time and liberal interpretations applied accordingly, the Judicial branch eventually developed round-about ways of interpreting Article 1 Section 9 as license to create Martial Law AKA suspension of the Constitution, in the interests of public safety. With the passage of time, the premise of "public safety" was massaged and shaped to eventually take on what people in the present have been trained to think of as "in the interests of national security". There is a simple ploy involved here, one that has and continues to be exploited, often and repeatedly, at the expense of the people. If there is a juicy nugget of power that by all rights is normally outside the reach of those with their hands at the levers, if this power is only authorized under certain exceptional or extreme times, you can't bet your sweet life on the fact that those with their hands on the levers - the ones who are always seeking the next juicy hunk of power to add to their repertoire - will do whatever they must to create the illusion[s] necessary to deceive / convince the people that they are in fact experiencing such extreme, exceptional periods even AND ESPECIALLY when they are not ... "in the interests of national security", you see?

Again, to just take the JFK address in question here at face value, JFK clearly included a passage wherein he spoke directly to the situation over the notion of "security". In plain terms he said that this notion security" would be increasingly used as a device by those with their hand on the levers of government power to justify their gradually amassing more power to themselves by way taking more power away from the citizenry .... "because we want to keep you citizenry people safe and secure". Also note the resultant effect; as certain people are able to take more power away from other people, the latter increasingly come under more control by the former.

Just off the top of their head, can anyone think of or remember a time - any time, any date, if you know of one or even think or suspect you know of one, don't be shy, please speak up and let yourself be heard - during the past 230 years that this country experienced a period of rebellion and or invasion such that this genuinely warranted and justified the "unless" portion of Article 1 Section 9 being put into force for at least some amount of time?