Anyone wo reads this blog, and gets beyond the KP/whiteknight stuff and reads when i get political will see that I am right of center. This upcoming election I am more than a little queezy about John McCain as he is not right of center enough for me, but he will get my voted based on his story. I admire what he went through, and what a little lesser of a man could have easily have avoided had he just left his men behind in the camp rather than staying. He was offered many times to go home based on who his family was, the VietCong wanted the other prisioners to see him leave based on his name as a way to break them.
He stayed and they beat him harder for it.
But this post is not about Mr McCain
It is about someone that is a liberal icon that it will stun many that I admire. A man that I often think would have either made the world better, or would have caused WW III....and most likely would not have fallen in between ! It was one or the other had he become President.
That man is Robert Kennedy
Why bring him up now?
Because 40 years ago this week the world watched as Martin Luther King was killed and people in the US burned down cities in anger.
One city was basically peaceful
Indianapolis, Idiana was not violent because RFK gave a speech that I think rivals any speech his brother gave, any speech that Dr King gave, and there is no great quote from it...but it came from the heart, wriiten then and there as he spoke it.
Few remember it, but it may show that months later we lost a big shot at a better world.....
My one lil laugh is that he is giving a speech to the common man and quoting a poet that I bet no one in that crowd had even heard of.
But that crowd went home in peace, there were no fires in that town that night because of this speech.
My mother often chuckles that given the right wing conservative that I became, she swears that at 5 years old i was glued to the TV watching RFK's train on TV. She wonders how that fits? I think that maybe it proves that great men come from both sides of the isle.....or maybe it was the only thing on...
Here is the speech:
— On April 4, 1968, those close to the stage at 17th Street and Broadway in Indianapolis had come the earliest and didn’t know Martin Luther King had been killed. Witnesses on the edge of the crowd said some people who came later brought weapons and were prepared to fight. Kennedy abandoned his prepared remarks and gave the following speech:
Ladies and gentlemen,
I’m only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening, because I have some, some very sad news for all of you. Could you lower those signs, please? I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world; and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tenn.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.
We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization -- black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to fill with -- be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.
But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times.
My favorite poem, my -- my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.
So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King -- yeah, it’s true -- but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past, but we -- and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it’s not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.
And let’s dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.
Thank you very much.
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