A Tribute to Robert F.
Kennedy (1925-1968)
[This is the eulogy that Ted Kennedy gave at his
brother's funeral at St. Patrick's Cathedral, NYC, on June 8, 1968 ]
On behalf of Mrs. Robert
Kennedy, her children and the parents and sisters of Robert Kennedy, I want to
express what we feel to those who mourn with us today in this Cathedral and
around the world. We loved him as a brother and father and son. From his
parents, and from his older brothers and sisters--Joe, Kathleen and Jack--he
received inspiration which he passed on to all of us. He gave us strength in
time of trouble, wisdom in time of uncertainty, and sharing in time of
happiness. He was always by our side.
Love is not an easy feeling to
put into words. Nor is loyalty, or trust or joy. But he was all of these. He
loved life completely and lived it intensely.
A few years back, Robert Kennedy
wrote some words about his own father and they expressed the way we in his
family feel about him. He said of what his father meant to him: "What it
really all adds up to is love--not love as it is described with such facility in
popular magazines, but the kind of love that is affection and respect, order,
encouragement, and support. Our awareness of this was an incalculable source of
strength, and because real love is something unselfish and involves sacrifice
and giving, we could not help but profit from it.
"Beneath it all, he has
tried to engender a social conscience. There were wrongs which needed attention.
There were people who were poor and who needed help. And we have a
responsibility to them and to this country. Through no virtues and
accomplishments of our own, we have been fortunate enough to be born in the
United States under the most comfortable conditions. We, therefore, have a
responsibility to others who are less well off."
This is what Robert Kennedy was
given. What he leaves us is what he said, what he did and what he stood for. A
speech he made to the young people of South Africa on their Day of Affirmation
in I 966 sums it up the best, and I would read it now:
"There is a discrimination
in this world and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments repress
their people; and millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich;
and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere.
"These are differing evils,
but they are common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human
justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, our lack of sensibility toward the
sufferings of our fellows.
"But we can perhaps
remember--even if only for a tirne--that those who live with us are our
brothers; that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they
seek--as we do--nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and
happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
"Surely this bond of common
faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can
learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men. And surely we can
begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in
our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.
"Our answer is to rely on
youth--not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality
of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for
adventure over the love of ease. The cruelties and obstacles of this swiftly
changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. They
cannot be moved by those who cling to a present that is already dying, who
prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger that come with even
the most peaceful progress. It is a revolutionary world we live in; and this
generation at home and around the world, has had thrust upon it a greater burden
of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived.
"Some believe there is
nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's
ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have
flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant
reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of
the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young
Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the thirty-two-year-old
Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal.
"These men moved the world,
and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each
of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all
those acts will be written the history of this generation. 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 that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
"Few are willing to brave
the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of
their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or
great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who
seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. And I believe that
in this generation those with the courage to enter the moral conflict will find
themselves with companions in every corner of the globe.
"For the fortunate among
us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal
ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the
privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us.
Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are also
more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. All of
us will ultimately be judged and as the years pass we will surely judge
ourselves, on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and
the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that effort.
"The future does not belong
to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their
fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects.
Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a
personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society.
"Our future may lie beyond
our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping
impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of
history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that
will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is
also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live."
This is the way he lived. My
brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life,
to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to
right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
Those of us who loved him and
who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished
for others will some day come to pass for all the world.
As he said many times, in many
parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:
"Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not."
Robert Kennedy's South African
speech:
Address of Senator Robert F.
Kennedy: Day of Affirmation
University of Capetown, South Africa
June 6, 1966
Mr. Chancellor, Mr. Vice Chancellor, Professor Robertson, Mr.
Diamond, Mr. Daniel, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I come here this evening because of my deep interest and
affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then
taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native
inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to
this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has
tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern
technology; a land which was once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle
to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the
United States of America.
But I am glad to come here, and my wife and I and all of our
party are glad to come here to South Africa, and we are glad to come here to
Capetown. I am already greatly enjoying my visit here. I am making an effort to
meet and exchange views with people of all walks of life, and all segments of
South African opinion -- including those who represent the views of the
government. Today I am glad to meet with the National Union of South African
Students. For a decade, NUSAS has stood and worked for the principles of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights -- principles which embody the collective
hopes of men of good will around the globe.
Your work, at home and in international student affairs, has
brought great credit to yourselves and your country. I know the National Student
Association in the United States feels a particularly close relationship with
this organization. And I wish to thank especially Mr. Ian Robertson, who first
extended this invitation on behalf of NUSAS, I wish to thank him for his
kindness to me in inviting me. I am very sorry that he can not be with us here
this evening. I was happy to have had the opportunity to meet and speak with him
earlier this evening, and I presented him with a copy of Profiles in Courage,
which was a book written by President John Kennedy and was signed to him by
President Kennedy's widow, Mrs. John Kennedy.
This is a Day of Affirmation -- a celebration of liberty. We
stand here in the name of freedom.
At the heart of that western freedom and democracy is the
belief that the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value,
and all society, all groups, and states, exist for that person's benefit.
Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the
supreme goal and the abiding practice of any western society.
The first element of this individual liberty is the freedom of
speech; the right to express and communicate ideas, to set oneself apart from
the dumb beasts of field and forest; the right to recall governments to their
duties and obligations; above all, the right to affirm one's membership and
allegiance to the body politic -- to society -- to the men with whom we share
our land, our heritage and our children's future.
Hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard
-- to share in the decisions of government which shape men's lives. Everything
that makes man's lives worthwhile -- family, work, education, a place to rear
one's children and a place to rest one's head -- all this depends on the
decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which does not
heed the demands of its people, and I mean all of its people. Therefore, the
essential humanity of man can be protected and preserved only where the
government must answer -- not just to the wealthy; not just to those of a
particular religion, not just to those of a particular race; but to all of the
people.
And even government by the consent of the governed, as in our
own Constitution, must be limited in its power to act against its people: so
that there may be no interference with the right to worship, but also no
interference with the security of the home; no arbitrary imposition of pains or
penalties on an ordinary citizen by officials high or low; no restriction on the
freedom of men to seek education or to seek work or opportunity of any kind, so
that each man may become all that he is capable of becoming.
These are the sacred rights of western society. These were the
essential differences between us and Nazi Germany as they were between Athens
and Persia.
They are the essences of our differences with communism today.
I am unalterably opposed to communism because it exalts the state over the
individual and over the family, and because its system contains a lack of
freedom of speech, of protest, of religion, and of the press, which is
characteristic of a totalitarian regime. The way of opposition to communism,
however, is not to imitate its dictatorship, but to enlarge individual human
freedom. There are those in every land who would label as "communist"
every threat to their privilege. But may I say to you, as I have seen on my
travels in all sections of the world, reform is not communism. And the denial of
freedom, in whatever name, only strengthens the very communism it claims to
oppose.
Many nations have set forth their own definitions and
declarations of these principles. And there have often been wide and tragic gaps
between promise and performance, ideal and reality. Yet the great ideals have
constantly recalled us to our own duties. And -- with painful slowness -- we in
the United States have extended and enlarged the meaning and the practice of
freedom to all of our people.
For two centuries, my own country has struggled to overcome
the self-imposed handicap of prejudice and discrimination based on nationality,
on social class or race -- discrimination profoundly repugnant to the theory and
to the command of our Constitution. Even as my father grew up in Boston,
Massachusetts, signs told him that "No Irish Need Apply". Two
generations later, President Kennedy became the first Irish Catholic, and the
first Catholic, to head the nation; but how many men of ability had, before
1961, been denied the opportunity to contribute to the nation's progress because
they were Catholic, or because they were of Irish extraction? How many sons of
Italian or Jewish or Polish parents slumbered in the slums -- untaught,
unlearned, their potential lost forever to our nation and to the human race?
Even today, what price will we pay before we have assured full opportunity to
millions of Negro Americans?
In the last five years we have done more to assure equality to
our Negro citizens and to help the deprived, both white and black, than in the
hundred years before that time. But much, much more remains to be done.
For there are millions of Negroes untrained for the simplest
of jobs, and thousands every day denied their full and equal rights under the
law; and the violence of the disinherited, the insulted and the injured, looms
over the streets of Harlem and of Watts and Southside Chicago.
But a Negro American trains as an astronaut, one of mankind's
first explorers into outer space; another is the chief barrister of the United
States government, and dozens sit on the benches of our court; and another, Dr.
Martin Luther King, is the second man of African descent to win the Nobel Peace
Prize for his non-violent efforts for social justice between all of the races.
We have passed laws prohibiting discrimination in education,
in employment, in housing; but these laws alone cannot overcome the heritage of
centuries -- of broken families and stunted children, and poverty and
degradation and pain.
So the road toward equality of freedom is not easy, and great
cost and danger march alongside all of us. We are committed to peaceful and
non-violent change and that is important for all to understand -- though change
is unsettling. Still, even in the turbulence of protest and struggle is greater
hope for the future, as men learn to claim and achieve for themselves the rights
formerly petitioned from others.
And most important of all, all the panoply of government power
has been committed to the goal of equality before the law - as we are now
committing ourselves to achievement of equal opportunity in fact.
We must recognize the full human equality of all of our people
-- before God, before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do
this, not because it is economically advantageous -- although it is; not because
the laws of God command it - although they do; not because people in other lands
wish it so. We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the
right thing to do.
We recognize that there are problems and obstacles before the
fulfillment of these ideals in the United States as we recognize that other
nations, in Latin America and in Asia and in Africa have their own political,
economic, and social problems, their unique barriers to the elimination of
injustices.
In some, there is concern that change will submerge the rights
of a minority, particularly where that minority is of a different race than that
of the majority. We in the United States believe in the protection of
minorities; we recognize the contributions that they can make and the leadership
they can provide; and we do not believe that any people -- whether majority or
minority, or individual human beings -- are "expendable" in the cause
of theory or policy. We recognize also that justice between men and nations is
imperfect, and that humanity sometimes progresses very slowly indeed.
All do not develop in the same manner and at the same pace.
Nations, like men, often march to the beat of different drummers, and the
precise solutions of the United States can neither be dictated nor transplanted
to others, and that is not our intention. What is important however is that all
nations must march toward increasing freedom; toward justice for all; toward a
society strong and flexible enough to meet the demands of all of its people,
whatever their race, and the demands of a world of immense and dizzying change
that face us all.
In a few hours, the plane that brought me to this country
crossed over oceans and countries which have been a crucible of human history.
In minutes we traced migrations of men over thousands of years; seconds, the
briefest glimpse, and we passed battlefields on which millions of men once
struggled and died. We could see no national boundaries, no vast gulfs or high
walls dividing people from people; only nature and the works of man -- homes and
factories and farms -- everywhere reflecting man's common effort to enrich his
life. Everywhere new technology and communications brings men and nations closer
together, the concerns of one inevitably become the concerns of all. And our new
closeness is stripping away the false masks, the illusion of differences which
is at the root of injustice and hate and war. Only earthbound man still clings
to the dark and poisoning superstition that his world is bounded by the nearest
hill, his universe ends at river's shore, his common humanity is enclosed in the
tight circle of those who share his town or his views and the color of his skin.
It is your job, the task of the young people in this world to
strip the last remnants of that ancient, cruel belief from the civilization of
man.
Each nation has different obstacles and different goals,
shaped by the vagaries of history and of experience. Yet as I talk to young
people around the world I am impressed not by the diversity but by the closeness
of their goals, their desires, and their concerns and their hope for the future.
There is discrimination in New York, the racial inequality of apartheid in South
Africa, and serfdom in the mountains of Peru. People starve to death in the
streets of India; a former Prime Minister is summarily executed in the Congo;
intellectuals go to jail in Russia; and thousands are slaughtered in Indonesia;
wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere in the world. These are different
evils; but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfections of
human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, the defectiveness of our
sensibility toward the sufferings of our fellows; they mark the limit of our
ability to use knowledge for the well-being of our fellow human beings
throughout the world. And therefore they call upon common qualities of
conscience and indignation, a shared determination to wipe away the unnecessary
sufferings of our fellow human beings at home and around the world.
It is these qualities which make of our youth today the only
true international community. More than this I think that we could agree on what
kind of a world we want to build. It would be a world of independent nations,
moving toward international community, each of which protected and respected the
basic human freedoms. It would be a world which demanded of each government that
it accept its responsibility to insure social justice. It would be a world of
constantly accelerating economic progress -- not material welfare as an end in
of itself, but as a means to liberate the capacity of every human being to
pursue his talents and to pursue his hopes. It would, in short, be a world that
we would all be proud to have built.
Just to the North of here are lands of challenge and of
opportunity -- rich in natural resources, land and minerals and people. Yet they
are also lands confronted by the greatest odds -- overwhelming ignorance,
internal tensions and strife, and great obstacles of climate and geography. Many
of these nations, as colonies, were oppressed and were exploited. Yet they have
not estranged themselves from the broad traditions of the West; they are hoping
and they are gambling their progress and their stability on the chance that we
will meet our responsibilities to them, to help them overcome their poverty.
In the world we would like to build, South Africa could play
an outstanding role, and a role of leadership in that effort. This country is
without question a preeminent repository of the wealth and the knowledge and the
skill of the continent. Here are the greater part of Africa's research
scientists and steel production, most of it reservoirs of coal and of electric
power. Many South Africans have made major contributions to African technical
development and world science; the names of some are known wherever men seek to
eliminate the ravages of tropical disease and of pestilence. In your faculties
and councils, here in this very audience, are hundreds and thousands of men and
women who could transform the lives of millions for all time to come.
But the help and leadership of South Africa or of the United
States cannot be accepted if we -- within our own countries or in our
relationships with others -- deny individual integrity, human dignity, and the
common humanity of man. If we would lead outside our own borders; if we would
help those who need our assistance; if we would meet our responsibilities to
mankind; we must first, all of us, demolish the borders which history has
erected between men within our own nations -- barriers of race and religion,
social class and ignorance.
Our answer is the world's hope; it is to rely on youth. The
cruelties and the obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to
obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a
present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the
excitement and danger which comes with even the most peaceful progress. 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 imagination, a predominance of courage over
timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease -- a man like the
Chancellor of this University. It is a revolutionary world that we all live in;
and thus, as I have said in Latin America and Asia and in Europe and in my own
country, the United States, it is the young people who must take the lead. Thus
you, and your young compatriots everywhere have had thrust upon you a greater
burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived.
"There is," said an Italian philosopher,
"nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more
uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new
order of things." Yet this is the measure of the task of your generation
and the road is strewn with many dangers.
First is the danger of futility; the belief there is nothing
one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills --
against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the
world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a
single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general
extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman
reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who
discovered the New /world, and 32 year old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that
all men are created equal. "Give me a place to stand," said
Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world,
and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us
can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these
acts will be written the history of this generation. Thousands of Peace Corps
volunteers are making a difference in the isolated villages and the city slums
of dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted
the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate
strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of
courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus 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 Athens shall appear great to you," said Pericles,
"consider then that her glories were purchased by valiant men, and by men
who learned their duty." That is the source of all greatness in all
societies, and it is the key to progress in our own time.
The second danger is that of expediency; of those who say that
hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. Of course if we must
act effectively we must deal with the world as it is. We must get things done.
But if there was one thing that President Kennedy stood for that touched the
most profound feeling of young people across the world, it was the belief that
idealism, high aspiration and deep convictions are not incompatible with the
most practical and efficient of programs -- that there is no basic inconsistency
between ideals and realistic possibilities -- no separation between the deepest
desires of heart and of mind and the rational application of human effort to
human problems. It is not realistic or hard-headed 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 judgement, it is thoughtless folly. For it ignores
the realities of human faith and of passion and of belief; forces ultimately
more powerful than all the calculations of our economists or of our generals. Of
course to adhere to standards, to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate
dangers takes great courage and takes self-confidence. But we also know that
only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.
It is this new idealism which is also, I believe, the common
heritage of a generation which has learned that 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.
A third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the
disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of
their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or
great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who
seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change. Aristotle tells
us "At the Olympic games it is not the finest or the strongest men who are
crowned, but those who enter the lists. . .so too in the life of the honorable
and the good it is they who act rightly who win the prize." I believe that
in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find
themselves with companions in every corner of the world.
For the fortunate amongst us, the fourth danger is comfort;
the temptation to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and
financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of an
education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. There is a
Chinese curse which says "May he live in interesting times." Like it
or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty;
but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And
everyone here will ultimately be judged -- will ultimately judge himself -- on
the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to
which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.
So we part, I to my country and you to remain. We are -- if a
man of forty can claim the privilege -- fellow members of the world's largest
younger generation. Each of us have our own work to do. I know at times you must
feel very alone with your problems and with your difficulties. But I want to say
how impressed I am with what you stand for and for the effort you are making;
and I say this not just for myself, but men and women all over the world. And I
hope you will often take heart from the knowledge that you are joined with your
fellow young people in every land, they struggling with their problems and you
with yours, but all joined in a common purpose; that, like the young people of
my own country and of every country that I have visited, you are all in many
ways more closely united to the brothers of your time than to the older
generation in any of these nations; you are determined to build a better future.
President Kennedy was speaking to the young people of America, but beyond them
to young people everywhere, when he said "The energy, the faith, the
devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who
serve it -- and the glow from that fire can truly light the world."
And, he added, "With a good conscience our only sure
reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth and lead the
land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth
God's work must truly be our own." I thank you.
