President Kennedy said in his inaugural almost 50 years ago that the battle for a just and better world may not end in the first 100 or 1000 days, in the life of his administration, or perhaps even in the lifetime of this generation. Indeed, that goal has not yet been accomplished.
However, the testimony that is the life of Senator Edward Moore Kennedy shines as an example that there is hope for a better tomorrow, a chance of a brighter day. The world has lost today a great fighter in that twilight struggle for the ideals that many of us share: democracy, justice, freedom, and equality. His story tells us not only that it is possible to change the world for better, but also that we can start doing that at any point in our lives, including responding to the call of the trumpet with a burden of many personal demons that we may have.
Senator Kennedy is known for issues like healthcare as a fundamental right, rights of immigrants, workers welfare, or protection of civil liberties. Unfortunately, little is known to the general public about the other accomplishments of Senator Kennedy. His involvement in helping to resolve a myriad of international crises around the world, for example, in helping his beloved Ireland find peace, or fighting with the Bengali people for independence of their own country. Or perhaps his pioneering impact on virtually every environmental bill coming out from the Senate that was created in the last 40 years assuring the health of our redwoods, and the purity of our air.
Those of us privileged and beckoned by the moral call to action to continue fighting for his ideals actively in our lives have lost a great symbol of tenacity and courage. I personally can feel in my own heart tremendous sorrow from his passing as he was the only person I ever really wanted to meet that was still alive. Even though I specialize in his brother’s career (Robert’s), I cannot think of a single issue on which I disagreed with him. The same cannot be said about Robert. Those of us lucky to be considering a political or activist career in the future can devote ourselves to what he once said after suffering a defeat in assuring the nomination of the Democratic Party in the 1980 election:
“For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”
We should took today at what he said then and keep in mind his words that even at times of defeat, here on this planet, we are responsible for answering the call to action, be it from our own moral convictions, or from the word of God.
Senator Kennedy was not a saint. His critics like to recall the Chappaquiddick incident in which, while drunk driving, he was responsible for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. No one says it was not his fault. However, Senator Kennedy did everything he could to apologize, including a possibility of resignation if his voters deemed that necessary and to be the correct course of action after the events. He said his actions were, and I quote, “indefensible”, particularly his not reporting of the accident immediately to the police.
His right-wing critics, rather than honorably opposing his liberal policies on principle, pinpoint to this incident as something that inadvertently disabled his redemption and return to public life. What else would they have him do? It seems that, in their eyes, only suicide was the viable option for him, or a secluded life in permanent shame. In his statement he said he was overwhelmed by “a jumble of emotions—grief, fear, doubt, exhaustion, panic, confusion and shock.”
Those of us, like myself, who witnessed ourselves issues like death or suicide from the front row, this Molotov cocktail of emotions seems to capture the state of confusion in the situation of shock. It remains his fault and I am sure he never forgave himself, and that sorrow, at least in part, allowed him to fight for his ideals in the years after 1969.
The disgusting and deleterious rhetoric of his “Chappaquiddick critics” reveals more about its authors, potentially their envy for his subsequent successes at home and around the world, than about Senator Kennedy himself.
I will allow myself to finish with an already spoken line from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.
“When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars; and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun.”
Edward Moore Kennedy, 1932 – 2009.
