Robert Kennedy recalled, in his own words

National Catholic Reporter, July 3, 1998

Millions of words have been written about Robert F. Kennedy, with tens of thousands more emerging now to mark the 30th anniversary of his assassination. Something about him remains compelling, even for those not yet born at the time of his death.

To express that "something" is no easy task, and legion is the number of essay and editorial writers who have tried and failed. Perhaps, therefore, it would be best to fall back on the words of Kennedy himself to remind us of a time when calls to honor and courage and our nation's most noble ideals didn't yet sound like the setup for Warren Beatty's cynical raps in the movie "Bulworth."

These excerpts are taken from RFK: Collected Speeches (Viking, 1993).

In his most famous address, Robert Kennedy spoke on June 6, 1966, at the University of Capetown in South Africa. His remarks ostensibly addressed the apartheid system in that nation, but he was clearly mindful of the continuing racial turmoil in the United States:

Only earthbound man still

clings to the dark and poisoning

superstition that his world is

bounded by the nearest hill, his

universe ended at the river shore,

his common humanity enclosed in

the tight circle of those who share

his town and views and the color

of his skin.

It is your job, the task of the

young people of this world, to

strip the last remnants of that

ancient, cruel belief from the civilization

of man.

This world demands the qualities

of youth, not a time of life but

a state of mind, a temper of the

will, a quality of the imagination,

a predominance of courage over

timidity, of the appetite for adventure

over the love of ease.

It is from numberless diverse

acts of courage and belief that

human history is shaped. Each

time a man stands up for an ideal,

or acts to improve the lot of others,

or strikes out against injustice,

he sends forth a tiny ripple of

hope, and crossing each other

from a million different centers of

energy and daring, those ripples

build a current which can sweep

down the mightiest walls of

oppression and resistance.

If there was one thing President

Kennedy stood for that

touched the most profound feelings

of young people around the

world, it was the belief that idealism,

high aspirations and deep

convictions are not incompatible

with the most practical and efficient

of programs. It is not realistic

or hardheaded to solve problems

and take action unguided by

ultimate moral aims and values,

although we all know some who

claim that it is so. In my judgment,

it is thoughtless folly. For it

ignores the realities of human

faith and of passion and belief -- forces

ultimately more powerful

than all of the calculations of our

economists or our generals.

While efficiency can lead to the

camps at Auschwitz, or the

streets of Budapest, only the ideals

of humanity and love can

climb the hills of the Acropolis.

Kennedy also touched on the themes of racial and class healing in his announcement of his candidacy for the presidency on March 16, 1968.

As a member of the cabinet

and a member of the Senate, I

have seen the inexcusable and

ugly deprivation which causes

children to starve in Mississippi,

black children to riot in Watts,

young Indians to commit suicide

on their reservations because

they've lacked all hope and feel

they have no future, and proud

and able-bodied families to wait

out their lives in an empty idleness

in eastern Kentucky. I have

traveled and I have listened to the

young people of our nation and

felt their anger about the war

that they are sent to fight and

about the world that they are

about to inherit.

Vietnam, and more generally the cause of peace, was the other transcendent issue with which Kennedy was associated. His first major address on the subject took place at Kansas State University two days after his announcement of his candidacy.

I was involved in many of the

early decisions of Vietnam, decisions

which helped set us on our

present path. It may be that effort

was doomed from the start; that it

was never really possible to bring

all the people of South Vietnam

under the rule of the successive

governments we supported -- governments,

one after another, riddled with

corruption, inefficiency, and

greed; governments which did not

and could not successfully

capture and energize the

national feeling of their people. If

that is the case, as it may well be,

then I am willing to bear my

share of the responsibility, before

history and my fellow citizens.

But past error is no excuse for its

perpetuation. Tragedy is a tool for

the living to gain wisdom, not a

guide by which to live.

I am concerned that at the end

of it all, there will be only more

Americans killed; more of our

treasure spilled out; and because

of the bitterness and hatred on

every side of the war, more hundreds

of thousands of Vietnamese

slaughtered; so that they may

say, as Tacitus said of Rome: They

made a desert and called it peace.

If we care so little about South

Vietnam that we are willing to see

the land destroyed and its people

dead, then why are we there in

the first place?

The cost of the war's present

course far outweighs anything we

can reasonably hope to gain by it,