Great RFK quote on materialism -- who talks like this today?

[1932]

"For too long we seem to have surrendered personal excellence and community value in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product now is over 800 billion dollars a year, but that gross national product, if we judge the United States of America by that, that gross national product counts air pollution, and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic squall. It counts Napalm, and it counts nuclear warheads, and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our city. It counts Whitman's rifles and Speck's Knifes and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet, the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play; it does not include the beauty of our poetry of the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate for the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country it measures everything in short except that which makes life worth while. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans."

RFK said this while running for president in 1968. Can you imagine that?

[wake.up.america]

1. Wish I could write that well.

[NJCher]

2. That makes me want to cry

Truth in a world of lies.


Cher

[acmejack]

3. Heck, I can remember it!

It was the most profound of setbacks when Sirhan carried out the work of the RW, one from which we as nation & a party may never recover.

[sasha031]

4. that is brilliant

:kick: I wonder if some American people today would understand what he's talking about. they have become so accustomed to spin, soundbites and plain old propaganda that they have lost their ability to stop and listen.

[atommom]

5. Can't imagine anyone in politics saying that today...

and that really is a shame. But if someone did dare to speak like that, can you imagine how quickly the RW would mobilize against that person?

[Sick_of_Rethuggery]

6. JK for one.

The difference is that they are not the ones making the news these days. Schmucks and their vacuous sel-serving ones are all that the corporate media want to put on the air...

Some time when you have the time, read JK's speeches. While not at the same level of poetry or even abstraction, Gore gives some very thoughtful speeches too...

[Sydnie]

7. Kerry speaks like that - which is why they said he was an "elite",

not the "guy you want to have a beer with", a windsurfing, treehugging snob. That is the sad fact. Most people can no longer understand what is not delivered as a "in your face" speech. If people still appreciated a command of the english language rather than statements such as "I solve problems. I'm a problem solver", how much better this world would be.

Perhaps that is the basis for our current situation in the world stage. They want to communicate, but they didn't get their blivet** to english dictionary.

[1932]

8. I don't mean grammar and vocabluary. I mean content. Who talks about these

issues in this way?

Who crticizes consumption and says there are more important values?

Increasing GNP is the thing that Wall Street and Republicans and Democrats like Robert Rubin and Larry Summers care about. Who, today, says that there are more important things than GNP?

Economists like Galbraith and Stiglitz and Amartya Sen talk about these issues, but when was the last time you heard a politician CAMPAIGN on these issues? OK, Clinton did, but I think we can do even better than Clinton.

[MH1]

40. Well, just off the top of my head, JK said:

There is no more important word, in my judgment, in the American language, other than "love", than "citizen."

John Kerry, speaking at Georgetown University on 10/26/05.

It doesn't directly speak to economics but prioritizes values: 1. Love. 2. Citizenship.

So consumption is clearly somewhere after those.

And the way he said it - I just melted. It sounded even better than it looks in print. If I can find a video or audio link I'll post it.

[unblock]

9. shrub talks like the sidekick on "my name is earl"

for all i know, that actor's a republican and he'll be the next president of the united states....

[shance]

33. I don't think so Sydnie. RFK spoke about things we take for granted now.

He was ahead of his time. So that is probably why right wingers had him killed.

[Sydnie]

47. I don't think he was ahead of his time

I think he was living "his time". He created an awareness, legitimized if you will, what was happening in the country at the time. He gavre it a voice that we had not heard before. It was gently radical and it was ideas that were begging to be spoken out loud by an entire generation.

I don't think we take for granted many of the things he talked about. Just the opposite actually. I think we are still fighting for a great deal of the things he talked about. Katrina showed us just how far we haven't come and just how much of what is claimed to have been accomplished in the past is just so much lip service.

He had the ear of a generation and that is why they killed him. That much power coupled with that much young support could have accomplished so much, and they knew it.

RFK's lost Presidency is one of those things that will make me wonder "What if" as long as I live.

[sandnsea]

41. Yeah, it's pretty sad it gets missed

"My faith, and the faith I have seen in the lives of so many Americans, also teaches me that, 'Whatever you do to the least of these, you do unto me.' That means we have a moral obligation to one another, to the forgotten, and to those who live in the shadows. This is a moral obligation at the heart of all our great religious traditions."

"Faith without works is dead. And I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by your faith, but without transferring it in any official way to other people. That's why I fight against poverty. That's why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this earth. That's why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith. But I know this: that President Kennedy in his inaugural address told of us that here on earth God's work must truly be our own. And that's what we have to - I think that's the test of public service."

"'Let America be America again...Let it be the dream it used to be…for those whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain must bring back our mighty dream again.'

"I believe we can do better. I think the greatest possibilities of our country - our dreams and our hopes - are out there just waiting for us to grab onto them."

[druidity33]

48. "I believe we can do better"...

That sounds like JK to me. You should attribute your quotes.

[depakid]

57. It's RFK

Though I agree, attributing a source is always helpful:

At the opening of his ill-fated campaign of 1968, Robert F. Kennedy eloquently expressed the limitation of the Gross Domestic Product (then called “the Gross National Product) as a measure of the value of a society. March 18, 1968

http://www.crisispapers.org/essays-p/prices-values.htm

[PurpleChez]

10. Being too young to have experienced the Kennedy mystique firsthand

I can be very cynical about such statements: RFK was born into a family with an obscene amount of material privelege and an almost inborn belief that they were above the rules (if not actually above The Law). And yet, among all of the gossip mongering about the Kennedys I've never seen an indication that they were less than sincere in their political convictions. Despite his many failings, Edward Kennedy is perhaps the greatest proponent of liberal causes which we have had in thirty years or more.

[1932]

11. LBJ was ten times wealthier than JFK in 1964. Nobody did more for the poor

than LBJ's Great Society program, which was an extension of what JFK was trying to do domestically.

RFK was not an ideal politician before 1964 -- he was often mean-spirited, puritanical, and not so concerned with race and poverty.

According to everything I've read about him, he changed dramatically after the death of his brother. He became extremely motivated by the desire to alleviate people's misery and saw race and poverty as the most crucial issues. Like his brother, he was suspicious of the military Keynesians and was a true Keynesian. So, by 1968, he was a completely integrated progressive politician who understood exactly what was going wrong with the country. This quote is an excellent example of that fact.

[H2O Man]

14. Good points .....

except that JFK was dead in '64, thus negating any comparison of wealth between him and LBJ.

Robert's change actually started during the Cuban missile crisis. His influence helped keep the world from experiencing a nuclear war. Though one can only speculate, it seems likely that any of the four presidents surrounding JFK (two before, two after) would most likely have taken a more high-risk path than did JFK .... and his choices were largely a result of a maturity Robert had not shown before.

But liberal democrats are fascinated with the RFK that emerged after Dallas. From 1966 on, in particular, Robert was as much an example of an evolving man as was Malcolm X after he left his life of crime behind. The single best book on Robert, for those interested, is by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

[EFerrari]

18. What's the title, H20 Man? Funny, I've never read about his life -

and it's been nearly forty years since we lost him. Seems unreal even now.

[MN ChimpH8R]

23. IIRC, the Schlesinger book is titled

Robert F. Kennedy And His Times. Incredible read - stunningly in-depth, and it explores RFK's transformation better than any other bio.

[EFerrari]

25. Thank you. n/t

[EVDebs]

21. H2OMan, that was the last time a Prez said 'no' to the Military/Industrial

Congressional/CIA Complex too. Subsequent presidents saw what happened to JFK and became intimidated by the surveillance state and decided 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'. Now with the BFEE the whole bunch has been there from the get go.

Also, I'd like your take on the leadership of the CIA being mostly Knights of Malta (Donovan, Dulles, Casey, McCone, Angleton, Colby, etc. etc.), and the current CIA/FBI hiring practices of recruiting conservatives : Time Magazine Aug 4 1907 'Kingdom Come' by D. Van Biema, "the FBI and CIA ... have instituted Mormon recruitment plans..."). With the FBI's recent Hanssen case, an Opus Dei member, and the potential for these 'religious' conservatives to overtake the CIA from within, and the access to surveillance those insiders have, namely an NSA apparatus par excellance.

The power to do evil is there, just waiting for a Rovian exploitation, if not already underway.

[H2O Man]

39. Good point/interesting questions.

Prouty makes clear in his book "JFK" that he knew that neither LBJ or Nixon was part of the Dallas plot; however, both were intelligent enough to know not only what happened, but more importantly, why it happened. Hence, both did what they knew was expected of them. By no coincidence, they both had very diagnostic mental breaks while in office.

Regarding the intelligence agencies: and I am going to speak in general for a moment .... any group that is led by a strong personality will, upon that "leader's" exit (by death, retirement, etc) go into what we could call a "systems phase." Someone, usually an assistant to the leader who has bureaucratic skills, takes over. This happens in good and bad groups and agencies. When King died, Ralph took over. When old J. Edgar passed on, Nixon appointed a "systems man."

In intelligence agencies, from state to federal, there had been many positive changes in the late '70s through the late '90s. I am not advocating that people trust these agencies, but rather that they take a rational look at them. Not everyone in the CIA was part of that old system that toppled democracies and raped and killed nuns in Central America. There were, and are, progressive people in parts of the agencies. (I've spoken before about a nephew being the victim of a savage attack by a racist hate gang; the FBI agent who dealt with my family was a good and decent man, with a family history that allowed him to relate to what happened -- but the system hand-cuffed his ability to respond.)

People like Rove are not that good at what they do -- he is merely ruthless, and without a conscience. He dares to do what others merely think about. He is the definition of a systems man being allowed the power to be ruthless. Today, we see the larger systems that are not looking for individual leaders with conscience, or for individual agents to do what they know from their life experience is right, when the system requires compliance to bureaucratic-think. And so it is ripe for having people from the other "secret" systems that you mention being placed in positions of power. And it's a shame -- a real shame -- because the nation and indeed the world benefits from having people like Plame or Wilson working towards stability .... just as surely as it hurts when weasals and snakes like Rove assume power.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

44. Another pivotal experience in RFK's life was going with a Senate

committee to the Mississippi Delta and meeting people who literally had no food in the house.

[EFerrari]

17. RFK was more progressive in 1967 than we will be for

the next fifty years.

[1932]

20. Between RFK running for president on progressive issues, and MLK

engaging in one of the most sophisticated public debates on justice and values we have probably ever seen on this planet, that really was quite an era.

We have really gone off the rails as a nation.

I think it's about time that we get back on track.

[tom_paine]

52. You are correct, but how? Just the "voting machine issue" sinks America

not to mention all the other manual and electronic disenfranchisements the Busheviks have performed shamelessly out in the open, without so much as a whiff of investigation, let alone consequences, for going on 6 years.

A One-Party Totalitarian Nation is what we are heading for currently. The only questions are "how fast" and "how bad will things get before it ends"?

The answers could be starting in 1 years... or if we are lucky...50 years.

But that just seems so unlikely.

Darker nights have revealed dawn, let us never forget.

[PurpleChez]

29. I did not know until relatively recently that LBJ

was one of the wealthiest men ever to serve as president. I seem to recall that, when adjustments are made for inflations, another was Andrew Jackson. I also seem to recall reading that, while JFK certainly lived a more posh life than most of us will ever know, most of the family's money stayed with the old man until he died and went to hell.

[MN ChimpH8R]

30. LBJ made his fortune

by controlling radio and later TV stations in Texas. He was as guilty of gaming the system for his own benefit as Duke Cunningham. His domestic policies were still unquestionably progressive though. One should never forget that LBJ's primary sponsor in his early days was Brown & Root, now Kellogg, Brown & Root and a part of the exemplary corporate citizen, Halliburton. It's all laid out in Robert Caro's bio of LBJ.

[1932]

31. In the beginning of the 20th century, oil $ went to Democrats because

Republicans were protecting the hegemony of Wall Street.

When Wall St decided to join oil, rather than fight it (think GHWB and GB) and when oil became part of the hegemony, oil cos switched allegiance to the Republicans.

That's the story of so many industries.

The Republican party first came to power representing the outsider intersts of the railroad companies against the hegemonic entrenched economic powers. When railroads became the hegemony, their politics swithced to conservative (and I believe Abraham Lincon's son is the best example of that: he became a fabulously wealthy RR lawyer whose politics were very conservative, while in an earlier era his father was a railroad lawyer with very progressive politics).

Same could probably be said of Silicon Valley. Clinton got a lot of support from CA's computer industry because they felt that the Bush administration was holding them back so that power wouldn't shift away from Wall St and from oil and defense industries. But, once the Clinton administration nurtured them to economic power, they became more conservative and even fought many of the progressive SEC rules that Arthur Levitt sought and which might have protected workers' 401(k)s.

Kevin Phillips writes about this in Wealth and Democracy.

[blm]

50. Also profitted from Texas Instruments. Big bucks in them there calculators

.

[Selatius]

43. But his "War on Poverty" died in Vietnam

If LBJ is remembered for anything, it wasn't for the war against poverty; it was Vietnam. I believe had Johnson had held fast to JFK's policy of removing all ground troops by 1965 instead of reversing it after JFK was murdered, the War on Poverty would've lasted a lot longer and, perhaps, would've been codified even further into American society and law instead of being halted by the 1970s and eventually destroyed by the 1980s under Reagan/Bush.

[MN ChimpH8R]

16. Correct

The Kennedys were imbued with a spirit of public service - sort of "much is expected from those who have received much." One sees the same spirit at work in today's generation of Kennedys, like RFK junior.

While the Kennedys have plenty of money, acquisitiveness for its own sake has never been evident in the family. The Bush Crime Family is the exact opposite - power and money are to be acquired and hoarded by any means possible, fair or foul, for their own sake. Never give back, never admit to being wrong, and help only those from whom you can gain something.

The Kennedys are and always have been the antithesis of the Bush Crime Family.

[PurpleChez]

27. I agree with your overall message, however...

to say that "acquisitiveness for its own sake has never been evident in the family" seems to leave out Joe Senior, who was as conniving and nasty as they come. Most of the major players in the Kennedy family saga are no more than two or three generations removed from him, so it is amazing that so many of them have been on the side of Good, at least when it comes to political and social causes. In their personal lives they have often been the epitome of hyper-obnoxious rich kids with a bloated sense of entitlement and self-importance, but they are also rabid defenders of progressive causes. The one does not excuse the other, of course -- I wouldn't trust them as babysitters but I salute them for their social convictions.

[Usrename]

46. If it weren't for his many failings, he'd be dead too.

I really believe he is alive today only because they can marginalize him. If they couldn't do that...

[serryjw]

51. Correct.....They were REAL

and truly gave back for all their privilege they were afforded

[PurpleChez]

54. Very true. But there's the gist of my ambivalence toward the Kennedys.

Part of the gist, anyway. While I am grateful for much of what they have done in the political/public arena I wonder sometimes if we don't give them too much credit for doing the right thing just because they're Kennedys. If they were homely and of moderate means, and if they were not connected (however remotely for some) to the real-life fairy tale/soap opera/greek tragedy that is the Kennedy family...we would certainly still honor their opinions and welcome their initiatives but I doubt that we would assign as much importance to them. I think it is difficult, if not impossible, to not be influenced (one way or the other) by The Mystique when discussing the Kennedys -- and that's OK. We're human. But I think it's good to air differing views on the whole thing, as we're doing here.

[serryjw]

55. Just to be labor a point

Bushit and Ted game from the same influence/power and privledge...Now compare what they did with their lives and how their efforts impacted millions of people.......One for the good and one for the%&*&)(

[PurpleChez]

56. 100% True

[mntleo2]

12. Wow

I was the first generation to vote at the age of 18, and Bobby Kennedy was my inspiration as he had the courage no other white politician had ~ to follow in the footsteps of the likes of Martin Luther King when he was alive and there was a great deal of skepticism about King's credibility. The very same people who supposedly revere King, were the ones vilifying him, but not Bobby. Bobby made a special effort to understand the poor, and for this I will always be on awe, since he grew up in privilege and could have turned a blind eye like most of America to what the truth is about poverty. Instead, he visited the lettuce fields and he spoke for people of color. Believe me, those times were not easy for a white man to speak up for people of color, much less the poor, but Bobby did speak up.

I just heard this morning an Air America rerun of John Edwards and he is trying to raise our conscience about poverty again. He is correct when he says there are two Americas, there always has been two Americas and class ism is alive and well 40 years later since the so-called "war on poverty" that lifted a few out of the mire. Class ism is an excuse for racism ~ the only difference is that it demonetizes all poor instead of just people of color, but do not think for a moment racism is at its roots.

Most Americans are blind to the fact that the only 'welfare queens' that exist are in the boardrooms of freeloading entities like Halliburton, Bechtel, KB&R, Enron, and Blackwater. They actually take millions more than the paltry social safety net, or what is left of it ~ and did in Bobby's time as well as today and all the years in between. At the time Welfare DEform was enacted, in peacetime, the military was extracting almost half of our taxes (47 percent to be accurate), while welfare was 4 percent. yet it was popular to demonetize the poor rather than look into those boardrooms and see the filth and waste, since the soldier was not receiving those riches.

Sometimes in the night after spending the day listening to the suffering of people in poverty I ask, "Where is Bobby?" because I believe we need a leader like him who speaks up for the poor. For years all I heard was an empty echo. I have hope with Edwards, but it is really up to the rest of us to heed the call. Where is Bobby? His voice is still there in the thousands that give their lives trying to eradicate poverty, racism and classim while living in poverty themselves, but those beautiful voices are being muffled by greed, class ism, racism, fascism, and sexism.

My 2 cents

Cat In Seattle

[TheFarseer]

19. I think

Edwards comes closest to what we should stand for as a party.

[mntleo2]

34. Agreed!

And until Americans care enough about their fellow citizens to see where their money should go ~ not into the pockets of millionaires and billionaires, but into the local economies, health care and education for the masses, the good senator will remain in the background. Even local governments drink the koolaide that corporations bring employment, when in reality all they do is suck the coffers dry. They pollute and then expect the tax payer to clean it all up, they lay off workers en-mass, they give their greedy CEOs huge golden parachutes, and then they leave.

This is what Boeing has done here in Washington and they are just one company, it is happening all over the country. We gave them 100 years of massive tax breaks, and they leave us and send work overseas. Less than a week after 9/11, Boeing laid off over 40,000 people while using this as an excuse when in reality, they had planned it all along after moving their corporate offices from Washington where they had been for almost a century ~ with their factories to follow them perhaps to China. All the while getting tax break after tax break. They take, take, take, while threatening to leave the state every time they think they will not get enough to reward their useless CEOs, yet their workers are left bereft. Oh and btw, after leaving these workers to the System (supported by We The People), they complained their unemployment insurance premiums were too high!

Now look at GM, Halliburton, the garment industry, shoes, and hundreds of other corporate whores who have not only gone offshore to avoid paying taxes while expecting we should give them all our tax breaks, they enslave and exploit people (mostly women) overseas, and take livable wages off our table. I do not think they deserve another penny of our money and would much prefer to see a black business woman recieve a leg up so she can feed her family, thank you very much. She is far more worth our support than some greedy, slave owning corporate whore who does not give a flying crap about America! Meanwhile they have spent a great deal of time and money to demonetize the low income mother and convince the public that she is at fault for all of the despair in the world. If I sound angry I am, and I make no bones about it. I have spent over 35 years working for people like the above (but not Boeing) and these people are all the same. Sometimes the rich make me sick ~ but the gullible people who vote against their own interests are disgusting as well!


Cat In Seattle

[TheFarseer]

36. Tax breaks for corporations is a bottomless hole

that we continue to throw money down. No matter what tax breaks you give them it will not be enough. They will always have something to point to as to why they have to send our jobs to India and China. If it's not health care it will be high US wages or environmental protections. Someone in the government has got to try to stop this. We can't all sell insurance to each other and deliver pizzas. We can't all be stock holders while people overseas do all the work. They won't stand for that very long. We in this country just have to shut up and take it, but they can always nationalize our factories. Then what do we do? Bomb them with the bombs that they are manufacturing for us??? That won't go well!!!

It wouldn't be AS bad if we were still the leaders in tech and inventing but we're slipping badly there because of our crap educations system. Personally, I don't know why anyone would go to 4 year college anymore. Your job is just going to get outsourced anyway. You're much better off going to tech school to learn air conditioning repair or plumbing. A trained chimp could do my job and I went to 4-year college. The only reason they don't outsource me is because I don't make anything anyway and I don't have any benefits. I'm pretty pissed myself. I thought I would be doing much better than this by this time in life, but I guess this is only the beginning of that great ownership society I've been hearing about. I can't wait to see phase two.

[Jose Diablo]

59. The bottomless money hole that constitutes corporatism in America

Is The problem we face today, as well as what we have faced our entire history as a country.

As the above posts have pointed out, the amount of tax money supporting and subsidizing business ventures far outstrips tax moneys spent on social efforts. It always has because of the nature of influence spending allowed by our system of representation. I think Dwight got it right when spoke of this as the Military Congressional Complex (later dubbed the Military Industrial Complex).

As an additional note, I add to these ideas that the establishment of what can be called a "Standing Army" in what should have been peacetime further aggravated the situation of subsidizing the power centers by our government's tax revenue. There is no doubt in my mind, that after WWII, our intelligence operations closely associated with the military, 'created' new enemies for us to continue our war with 'evil'. We can thank people like Dulles, Harriman and the Bushes for keeping America in a state of war. We never stood down after WWII and the MIC power centers continued to suck us dry of tax money.

I think JFK finally saw the truth of what was going on. He then began to dismantle the war machine. When the others saw what he was going to do, the radical elements within the extreme right wing were given the green light to snuff him, and subsequently those so called 'moderate' conservatives actively suppressed the knowledge, in the interests of maintaining stability, of what the extreme elements had been allowed to do. This is the Big Secret about John Kennedy's assassination that has been held back from the American people. It was own 'power centers' right here, that killed our president. And the reason he was killed was because he began to do his job, work for all the people, not just the power.

[IndyOp]

13. Gross National Happiness -

Global:Ideas:Bank
<http://www.globalideasbank.org/site/bank/idea.php?ideaId=3257>

Wikipedia Gross National Happiness
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness>

New Economics Foundation
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economics_Foundation>

[Onlooker]

15. Outstanding

Thanks for posting that. When will the next generation of dreamers show some political muscle?

[Kansas Wyatt]

22. Could there be a common agenda that has been missed?

With regards to the assassinations that occurred in the 60s, especially when the public removes race from the equation. Though a valid point in which gains were made, something bigger was on the horizon that needed to be crushed before it went too far.

JFK, LBJ (broken), RFK, and MLK were not going to get very far with progressive ideals, when standing on race alone. There had to be a broader inclusion of all races, and a stronger focus on POVERTY and EQUALITY. The 'Powers That Be' would allow huge, but meaningless gains to them, when it came to justice and equality in this country.

When all races are united for the purpose of eliminating poverty, it is a severe threat to the 'Powers That Be' who wish to remain in control of this country.

The question is, were the assassinations related to a way to stop any further gains in the 60s, that threatened a power structure by uniting all races for a main goal?

[YankeyMCC]

24. Now there's a leader

[Karmadillo]

26. Thank you for posting this.

nt

[1932]

28. This quote is in the heading for the final chapter of this book:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0374281688.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374281688/ref=sib_vae_dp/103-0913486-6351016?%5Fencoding=UTF8&no=283155&me=ATVPDKIKX0DER&st=books

Incidentally, this book has fully searchable text at the Amazon site. This new feature at the Amazon site should really help people support their arguments here at DU.

[jokerman93]

32. So THAT's why

So that's why they killed him.

He wanted America to be America; to be the nation we could have been. But somehow we've been consumed...by something. Greed? No that's too simple. I just wonder what happened. I wonder why it's so hard for leaders to choose the good and fight for it. And why it's so hard to choose good leaders and fight for them.

I have never been proud to be American. I wish I could be.

Sadness.

J.

[Golden Raisin]

35. TV "news" today couldn't fit

it into a 10-second soundbite, so he wouldn't get any airtime today. The language is also too noble, poetic & high-falutin' for today's dumbed-down audience. Maybe you'd get a panel of horses' asses pundits/"experts" ripping RFK to shreds That's if there was any time left after the "Missing Girl in Aruba", and the "Runaway Bride" top stories.

[Ladyhawk]

37. Great quote. k/r n/t

[earth mom]

38. Beautiful! Thanks for posting!

It is beyond sad what this country has become. The Kennedys were trying to bring out and embrace the best of our human qualities. The ugly rethugs hated the Kenendys and everything they stood for; so they offed them one by one...including JFK jr. :cry:

I worry now about RFK jr. because he's been going up against the rethugs by advocating for the environment while showing how the rethugs are destroying it. As well, he has gone on record that the presence of mercury in infant vaccinations is more than likely responsible for the huge spike in Autism. Which is no doubt a declaration of war to the Pharma Giants. :puke:

I've no doubt he's on their hit list... :scared: :cry:

[stickdog]

42. And when it was clear he was going to win ... (nt)

[bloom]

45. kick...

[sundancekid]

49. maybe we need a new GNP - like Gross National Progress (purity, pride ...)

which other ones would work for a new GNP???? What do you think????

[xkenx]

53. For those of us who remember, RFK inspired a generation,

and now Wes Clark inspires us like no one since Bobby. When Clark started running I was remembering Bobby and the same love of country and love of all her people. Those who would like to see the second coming of RFK should familiarize themselves with Wes Clark and work to make this national treasure our next president.

[kentuck]

58. Exactly !

Why do you think they shot him?