Swagger, bluster, and the wielders of force - The Mindless Menace of Violence, Bobby Kennedy, April 5, 1968

Bobby Kennedy has a beautiful quotation in his impromptu eulogy announcing the assassination of Martin Luther King, anticipating the impulse to violence in the country and appealing for white Americans and black Americans, to do what the Greeks had written so many years ago, to tame the savageness of man, and make gentle the life of this world.

The day after King's assassination, Bobby gave this beautiful speech to a world shaken and likely jaded by the inexplicability of such a terrible tragedy.



"To often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force. Too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of other human beings. But this much is clear. Violence breeds violence. Repression breeds retaliation. And only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our souls. But when you teach a man to hate and to fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color, or his beliefs, or the policies that he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your home 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 to be mastered. We learn at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens. Alien men with whom we share a city, but not a community. Men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in a 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.

Our lives on this planet are too short, the work to be done is too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in this land of ours. Of course we cannot banish 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 that they can. Surely this bond of common faith, surely this bond of common goals can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at the least, to look around at those of us of our fellow men. And surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again."

The older I get, the more I become aware of the darker and sharper edges of civilization and middle class America and the world as much as the clearly darker underworlds in the West and throughout the world and in a violence-obsessed and harsh, sometimes barbaric traditional developing world and the romanticism of violence and harshness and revenge and mean-spiritedness that is still all too present in all parts of the world, liberal and illiberal. I become more aware of how all of us – liberal and illiberal peoples, alike – rationalize our basest, harshest, most vengeful and ugly impulses in the name of our most decent and strongest virtues. And, tragically, how we persistently debase our most decent impulses – especially virtues like forgiveness, love, compassion, decency, and humanity - in our efforts to make our ugliness look more pretty than it really is.

I do not want to root out those basest impulses. Such an effort is fruitless and counterproductive. It is the essence of repression, which only buries our feelings. It does not resolve them. It leaves the ugliness in our hearts and has us pretending that it is more resolved in our hearts than it really is. I want to soften those sharper impulses, not eliminate them. I want to love them, to accept and forgive them and us for them. I want to tame the savageness of man, and make gentle the life of this world.

Bobby Kennedy, following the assassination of Martin Luther King, articulated the most decent, gentle, loving message of people and their common destiny of any American politician I have ever encountered. I have plenty of policy disagreements with Bobby, as I do with all politicians and people who are politically-minded. But Bobby Kennedy was one of the most decent people who ever aspired for the Presidency, virtues and vices.

And this speech, with music from the 2006 movie by Emilio Estevez about Senator Kennedy, is one of the most beautiful that he ever spoke and is one of the most beautiful speeches I have ever heard a politician speak, save perhaps his impromptu eulogy for Martin Luther King.

To tame the savageness of man, and make gentle the life of this world. It is the most decent instinct that could ever animate a liberal democratic world and a world of common humanity.

Love,
Ben