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In reply to the discussion: This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. [View all]NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)76. Adding Audio Clip and Transcript: In his own words, "On the Mindless Menace of Violence in America.
Last edited Sun Sep 29, 2013, 10:24 AM - Edit history (1)
Robert F. Kennedy is better known for his spontaneous speech delivered in Indianapolis on the day Martin Luther King was assassinated. Lesser known is this speech, given the day after, at the City Club of Cleveland, April 5, 1968. The text follows the video, below.
This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.
It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.
Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.
No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.
Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.
"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."
Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.
Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.
Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.
For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.
This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.
I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.
We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.
Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.
We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.
Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.
But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in 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.
http://www.vsotd.com/Article.php?art_num=4651
This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.
It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.
Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.
No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.
Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.
"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."
Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.
Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.
Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.
For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.
This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.
I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.
We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.
Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.
We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.
Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.
But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in 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.
http://www.vsotd.com/Article.php?art_num=4651
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I miss Bobby Kennedy more than Martin or John. He was the hope my generation held so closely.
NYC_SKP
Sep 2013
#15
I was only twelve years old, but I did get to see him on his tour through California.
NYC_SKP
Sep 2013
#93
Agreed, calimary. What is it about our culture that makes people want to be so violent.
NYC_SKP
Sep 2013
#18
No argument here. We owe it to our children to consider every possible cause of violent behavior.
NYC_SKP
Sep 2013
#8
Correlation does not imply causation. More violence is perpetrated by men, who are raised
jtuck004
Sep 2013
#9
This is a very interesting topic. I agree that more research on it needs to be done.
totodeinhere
Sep 2013
#83
The study cited in your article is interesting, makes me wonder about a solution...
NYC_SKP
Sep 2013
#115
Bobby Kennedy was particularly skillful in building consensus and staying on point.
NYC_SKP
Sep 2013
#12
And using a picture of the kids in Newtown, to make an anti-gun control point, apparently.
Warren DeMontague
Sep 2013
#37
Are you going to answer Robb's point? About, say, the shotun thread 2 days after Newtown?
Warren DeMontague
Sep 2013
#40
You copied the OP except for the references to gun control, which you removed as "unnecessary"
Warren DeMontague
Sep 2013
#57
Your selective editing is political, in addition to being disgusting and dishonest. nt
Electric Monk
Sep 2013
#21
" Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something."
NYC_SKP
Sep 2013
#46
Sadly, that does not seem to be the issue tonight. I've got better things to do. (Warning: Kitteh!)
freshwest
Sep 2013
#79
Anyone can read the original, even if not logged in. Only gun nuts are blocked from replying there.
Electric Monk
Sep 2013
#34
I followed the link and find the situation very puzzling and disturbing. Totally unexpected.
IrishAyes
Sep 2013
#32
Take full note that my compliment has been withdrawn as the hypocrisy of your behavior
IrishAyes
Sep 2013
#112
Edit the OP, with credit and show his OP in a different font than your additions. No problem then.
freshwest
Sep 2013
#51
Allow me to add this additional section which certainly applies to our current society:
NYC_SKP
Sep 2013
#70
I'm seeing one link that does not show that; it appears to be valid; is there a full transcript.
freshwest
Sep 2013
#80
Adding Audio Clip and Transcript: In his own words, "On the Mindless Menace of Violence in America.
NYC_SKP
Sep 2013
#76
Yes, thanks. The general well being of our nation is at stake here. K&R
Tuesday Afternoon
Sep 2013
#77
Possibly, you're thinking of the Indianapolis speech he gave on the day of the assassination.
NYC_SKP
Sep 2013
#84
RFK was a visionary, he was transcendent, the best of that generation. Standing on a flat-bed truck
NYC_SKP
Sep 2013
#103
Violence Has Killed Society In America - The Road To Redemption Will Be Difficult At Best
cantbeserious
Sep 2013
#85
New measures that would include more restrictions on the ownership of deadly weapons...
YoungDemCA
Sep 2013
#90
What you've done is get your licks in and then tell others to shut up and swallow it.
IrishAyes
Sep 2013
#111
President Clinton: Speech at the 25th Anniversary Memorial Mass for Robert F. Kennedy (June 6, 1993)
NYC_SKP
Sep 2013
#98
REMARKABLE: "Landmark for Peace Memorial", Indianapolis, on site of RFK's speech"
NYC_SKP
Sep 2013
#113