Reading History on the Fourth of July

Growing up, my views of the American Revolution were influenced by the musical 1776 and the School House Rock specials on Saturday morning.   I grew to deeply respect our Founding Fathers and to see in them a heroism that is lacking in today’s leaders.  As a grown up I’ve started reading a lot of history books that remind that though these Founding Fathers were great leaders, they were also human, and that the Revolution was as much the story of the ordinary merchants, farmers, slaves, native Americans, and women as it was of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.  Our historians remind us that the American Revolution was a complicated event, with mixed results many of the people who participated in the fight.   I’ve especially learned from 3 of my favorite historians, Howard Zinn, Gordon Woods, and Joseph Ellis, to see the founding of our nation in new ways.

Howard Zinn’s book, A People’s History of the United States, devotes two chapters to the American Revolution.  He focuses on the divide between the rich upper classmen of New England businessmen and Southern gentry that made up the American leadership, and the merchants, sailors, farmers, slaves, indentured servants, and the rest of the American population that had to be mobilized to win the revolution.  In the beginning, John Adams estimated that a third of the population was opposed to the revolution, a third supported the cause, and a third were neutral.  Zinn noted that while mechanics and sailers were incensed at the British, much of the public was lukewarm.  The men who first joined the revolutionary army were respectable men with property and respectability in their communities, but the need for greater numbers led to the recruitment of poorer white men.  The military was a place where the poor could rise in rank and change their social status and many joined for that reason.   Some states used conscription to fill the ranks of their armies.   Excluded initially from the militia were friendly Indians, free African Americans, and white servants.  So the majority of support for the revolution came from the town mechanics, laborers, seamen, and small farmers who made up “the people” and bonded through the camraderie of military service and benefitted from the distribution of land.

During the War for Independence, Zinn noted that occassional riots would occur that were motivated by the resentments of the poor against the rich elite.  Divisive civil conflicts occurred during the course of the war in Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia, and to a lesser degree, Virginia.  The threat of slave revolts were a constant worry to Southern plantation owners.   Amid the chaos of the war, thousands of slaves fled for freedom, leaving on British ships to settle in England, Nova Scotia, the West Indies, or Africa, or staying in America as free blacks, evading their masters.   The war gave African Americans and other oppressed groups a venue to make demands for equal treatment from their white countryment.  In Boston, African Americans asked for city money to educate their children.  In Norfolk, they asked to be allowed to testify in court.  Peter Matthews, a butcher in Charleston, led free black artisans and tradesmen in petitioning the legislature to repeal discriminatory laws against blacks.  In 1780, seven African Americans in Dartmouth, Massachussetts, petitioned for the right to vote.  The agitation of African Americans and the poor white classes showed the gap between the high idealism of the Declaration of Independence and the realities of discrimination and poverty of a large segment of the American population.  This gap has led more radical historians like Zinn to see the American Revolution as being the trading of a British elite with an American elite.

Joseph Ellis is a historian who sees much more of the accomplishments of the Revolution than Zinn.  He’s famous for his books on the Revolutionary era and his latest book, American Creation, explores the evolution of the United States as it goes from fighting a revolution to setting up a working government.  This exploration weighs the accomplishments of the Founding Fathers and their two great failures.   Ellis felt that the American Revolution succeeded, while the French, Russian, and Chinese revolutions failed, because the American leadership was made up of many different players with many different beliefs.  The diversity of the American leaders helped the United States from devolving into a one-man despotism, like Napoleon in France, Lenin in Russia, and Mao in China. 

Ellis felt that the revolutionary generation succeeded in many areas.  The Americans won the first colonial war for independence in the modern era, defeating the most powerful military in the world.  They established the first nation sized republic and the first secular state.  They created political parties as institutional channels for ongoing debate, permitting dissent as a legitimate voice.  And for Ellis, the most important thing was that the United States was able to reconcile two competing and contradictory political impulses.  The first impulse, as represented by the Declaration of Independence, was a radical document that locates sovereignty in the individual and depicts rebellion against government as a natural act.  The second impulse was represented by the U.S. Constitution, and it located sovereignty in the collective state, making government an essential protector of the people and not its enemy, and valuing social balance over personal liberation. 

With these achievements, Ellis notes two great failures of the founding of our nation.  The first was the failure of the nation to end slavery, or at least adopt a plan to gradually emancipate the slaves.   Most of the Founding Fathers were against slavery, and some of the leaders, notably Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, tried to get legislation to end slavery and the slave trade.  They were unsuccessful in their attempts to end slavery, though, and they realized that the existence and expansion of slavery would eventually lead the nation into civil war.   The other failure of the Founding Fathers was to find a way to implement a just settlement with the Native Americans.  Like with slavery, most of the leaders acknowledged that the Native Americans had a legitimate claim to their land.  They never successfully were able to come up with a just plan for the indigenous people of this country.

Gordon Woods is another historian who has gained a reputation for his insights on the Revolutionary period.  His book, Revolutionary Characters:  What Made the Founders Different, explores 8 of our revolutionary leaders and asks what it was about them that made them different from leaders of succeeding generations.  The leaders that he explores, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Thomas Paine, and Aaron Burr, were of different temperements and political beliefs, but most of them (with the exception of Aaron Burr) were united by their aspirations to be disinterested gentlemen, a sort of moral ideal of a leader with the 18th century virtues of politeness, grace, good taste, learning, and character.    Most of the leaders were the first in their families to attend college or attain social status, and they deeply believed in a leadership that was gained through talent and not heredity.   Aaron Burr was the one leader who didn’t aspire to the 18th century idea of the gentleman politician.  He seemed to always act upon political expediency instead of worrying about the public good, and this eventually lead to his famous duel with Alexander Hamilton.

Each of the founders were very different men with different beliefs and personalities.  Washington did his best to live up to the gentlemanly virtue of civility, and this led him to many of the decisions that garnered respect among his colleagues:  his decision to surrender his position as commander in chief to the Congress in 1783 rather than pursue greater power;  his decision not to run for a third term as President;  his decision to free his slaves after he dies.  Franklin’s sense of public service led him to be ambassador to England and France, where he helped the colonies victory by securing French support.  Jefferson’s belief in the ability of the people to make the right decisions lead him to fight for greater public education, for the separation of church and state, and the abolishment of slavery, all in an attempt to educate enlightened citizens in Jefferson’s idea of a perfect republic.  John Adams, Jefferson’s close friend and frequent political foe, believed in a natural aristocracy of merit, and believed in a balanced government between the aristocracy and the common people.  Alexander Hamilton believed that government should exploit the self interest of the influential class at the top of the society to harness their talents for the benefit of the rest of society.  James Madison believed in a government of clashing interests that neutralized each other, allowing liberally educated rational men to decide questions of the public good.  Woods considers Thomas Paine the first public intellectual who wrote Common Sense and his other radical tracts specifically for the average person in the taverns and guilds of the city.  

In his book, The American Revolution, Gordon Woods wrote:

“The history of the American Revolution, like the history of the nation as a whole, ought not to be viewed as a story of right and wrong or good and evil from which moral lessons are to be drawn.  No doubt the story of the Revolution is a dramatic one:  Thirteen insignificant British colonies huddled along a narrow strip of the Atlantic coast three thousand miles from the centers of Western civilization, becoming in fewer than three decades a huge, sprawling republic of nearly 4 million expansive-minded, evangelical, and money-hungry citizens is a spectacular tale, to say the least.  But the Revolution, like the whole of American history, is not a simple morality play;   it is a complicated and often ironic story that needs to be explained and understood, not celebrated or condemned.  How the Revolution came about, what its character was, and what its consequences were- not whether it was good or bad- are the questions this brief history seeks to answer.”

In this Fourth of July, I’m grateful for the work of these historians for giving me different views of the founding of our nation.  From Howard Zinn, I learned that the revolution was not just the story of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson.  It is also the story of the merchants, the small farmers, the slaves, the freed blacks, and the Native Americans.  Zinn reminds us of the gap between the high idealism of the Declaration of Independence and the realities of the people in the margins of our society and that true social change only occurs when those marginalized people feel empowered to agitate for change.  From Joseph Ellis, I’ve learned to appreciate the accomplishments of the leaders in building a government that allowed debate to take place and didn’t degenerate into a one person dictatorship.  Ellis also reminds us though of the failures of the founders, of their inability to resolve the issues of slavery and the just treatment of Native Americans.  From Gordon Wood, I learned to appreciate the founders as individuals, with their own beliefs and personalities and gifts.  Each were united in trying to live to the 18th century idea of the virtous gentleman leader and this seperated them from future generations who lived up to different models of leadership.  Each historian gives us a different and more whole view of the American experience, one that shows the ideas and the people who helped shape who we are today. 

Experiments with DTV

I got my box from a friend to blog about my experience with DTV.    I had trouble the first day with trying to get good reception, because my apartment didn’t have an antennae connection.  I used a homemade antennae that was provided to me.  It took me a while to find a place for the anntennae that would get the best reception.  If the anntannae wasn’t just right, the t.v. would occassionally freeze, and you could see the picture pixels. 

I changed the channels and noticed that each channel would have different subchannels.  For instance, there would be 4 different channel 9s.   Some channels were clearer than others.  The spanish channels were very clear, as were the regular channels below channel 9.   KQED, the PBS station, didn’t have DTV until after 5 p.m. when I tried it at 4:30 p.m.  Yesterday I watched Judge Judy for the first time in many years and she turned out to be pretty good and fair at judging a case.  Last night I watched two programs clearly:  a program on global warming and its effects on Africa and Asia; and a program about a wealthy family who found out, to their chagrin, that their family wealth was based on an ancestor who profited from the slave trade. 

A few more observations.  In most of the channels, I notice that many of the t.v. programs didn’t fill the whole t.v. screen.  The shows would either be more of a square with black borders around it, or it would be like a featured movie and be more elongated, with black borders at the top and the bottom of the picture.  The quality, as far as I could see, seems to be clear.  I have an older t.v., so I can’t say how others quality would be if they used DTV.  My big gripe with this DTV experiment would be that some channels didn’t come out clearly, but I’m wondering if the primitive anntennae that I used was part of the problem.  Other channels were fine however. 

Supporting Obama

These past few months following the primaries have been a lot of fun for me, as I’ve found the Democrats running for President this year to be the most interesting in quite a long time.  The candidates ran the gamut from middle of the road candidates like Hillary Clinton to traditional liberals like Joe Biden and Bill Richardson to more progressive candidates like Dennis Kucinich, and it was healthy for us to hear the spectrum of ideas within the Democratic Party.  Early on I supported Joe Biden because of his experience and his plan of partitioning Iraq.  When he dropped out, I briefly supported Bill Richardson but he soon dropped out.  When the California primary came along, I settled on supporting Hillary, as I was impressed with her toughness.  Now that the primaries are over and Obama is now the Democratic candidate, I wholeheartedly support Barack.  I think this was an especially strong Democratic field of candidates, and they all would be better as President than George W. Bush and the Republican field this year.  Though I didn’t vote for Barack during the primaries, I’ve always thought of him as being an intelligent and charismatic leader who brings unique gifts to the Presidency.

Coming into the primary season, I was looking for certain qualities that I wanted in the Democratic nominee.  In terms of policy, I thought all of the Democratic nominees had political positions that were more progressive than Kerry had in 2004, as I see the political center of this nation having moved farther to the left after 8 years of Bush policies.  Kucinich and Edwards, especially, have influenced the field to take more progressive positions on health care and the working poor.  With even the more moderate Democrats offering more progressive agenda in health care, immigration, and economic policy, I looked for qualities that a candidate needed to tough out a fight to get those changes enacted.  I wanted someone who was tough enough to withstand a Republican onslaught to stall Democratic reforms, the political savy to bring together various groups and cobble the votes to get things through Congress, and the communication skills to educate the public and gain their support.  Good ideas don’t mean a thing if a President doesn’t have the political skills to translate those ideas into legislation.  We don’t another repeat of the Carter presidency of the 1970s, of a well meaning and intelligent man who struggled to get things done in Washington.

I do not think Obama will become another Carter for a variety of reasons.  When Carter became President, he relied on a coterie of Georgia advisers who knew little about Congress and the culture of Washington D.C.  and struggled despite having Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress.  Obama, on the other hand, is drawing among his advisers a wide variety of Democratic veterans.  As a Senator, Obama has worked to get to know his Senate colleagues and has worked across the aisles to collaborate with moderate Republicans to get bills passed.   Carter’s presidency was deeply hurt by sticking too long to Bert Lance, while Obama was able to cut his relations to Reverend Wright after Wright’s comments threatened to overshadow Obama’s message.  Obama used the controversy to try to open up a dialogue on race in America.  I think Obama has the political skills to overcome his lack of experience, in much the same way that Abraham Lincoln overcame his meager experience with his patience and great political skills in handling a disparate group of people.

Hillary supporters have good reason to vote for Obama in the Fall.  If you compare Obama’s position on major issues (http://www.barackobama.com/issues/) with Hillary’s (http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/), they share similar views on how to help America on the economy, on the environment, on weaning ourselves off of our oil dependency, on departing from Iraq.  Obama is a strong proponent of getting universal health care for every American, for getting a cap and trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, for a program to give illegal immigrants a chance to gain citizenship, for a middle class tax cut and government stimulus for the economy, for a measured policy in Iraq.   When compared to John McCains’ stand on various issues (http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/), Obama is more progressive.  And Obama has amog his advisers people who had worked in the Clinton administration:  Jeffrey Liebman, a Harvard economist who advises Obama on budget issues, was a top aide to President Clinton’s top economics adviser;  Michael Froman, a Citigroup executive who advises Obama on Wall Street issues, was a top aid to former Clinton Treasure secretary Robert Rubin.  I voted for Hillary during the California primary, but I’m too young to have lived through the battles that feminists had to go through in the 1960s and 1970s to gain respect for women’s skills and abilities.   I understand the disappointment these older feminists feel from not seeing a woman become our chief executive.  But we have another candidate breaking ground, as the first African American candidate who could seriously become President.   The ground he breaks will benefit all Americans.

For those Progressive Democrats who might be tempted to vote for Ralph Nader, I only have to say that there are good reasons to stay in the fold and vote for Obama.  It is true that Obama is not as progressive as Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards.  I think though that radicals have to look at Obama’s openness to moving farther left when prodded by new opportunities.  I think Obama’s relationship with the more radical progressives will be similar to Lincoln’s relationship with Frederick Douglass and the abolitionists.  Though Lincoln was not an abolitionist himself, he was sympathetic to their cause and was himself deeply opposed to slavery.  Under the influence of Frederick Douglass and the sacrifice of countless African American soldiers who fought for the Union cause, Lincoln gradually moved towards the abolition of slavery and the protection of African American rights.  Howard Zinn, in the article Abolitionists, Freedom Riders and the Tactics of Agitation in The Zinn Reader, wrote:

“In all ages, it has been first the radical, and only later the moderate, who has held out a hand to men knocked to the ground by social order. 

The moderate, whose sensitive ears are offended by the wild language of the radical, needs to consider the necessary division of labor in a world full of evil, a division in which agitators for reform play an indispensable role…  In Abraham Lincoln we have the prototype of the political man in power, with views so moderate as to require the pressure of radicals to stimulate action.  The politician, by the very nature of the electoral process, is a compromiser and a trimmer, who sets his sails by the prevailing breezes, and without the hard blowing of the radical reformer would either drift actionless or sail along with existing injustices…

In the fascinating dialogue- somtimes articulated, sometimes unspoken- between Abraham Lincoln and the abolitionists, we have the classic situation of the politician vis-a-vis the radical reformer.  It would be wrong to say that Lincoln was completely a politician- his fundamental humanitarianism did not allow that- and wrong to say that some of the abolitionists did not occasionally play politics- but on both sides the aberrations were slight, and they played their respective roles to perfection.”

Though Obama was criticized for this, I thought it was a good sign that Obama was willing to associate with a Reverend Wright or a former 1960s radical.  Though he may not be as Progressive as a Ralph Nader, Obama doesn’t shirk from identifying himself with progressive causes and will be more effective than Nader in enacting needed Democratic reforms.   I think if progressives do the hard work of agitating and changing people’s opinions and moving the politcal center farther to the left, Obama as President is willing to take advantage of the opportunities that open up for change.

Though I was not an original Obama supporter during the primaries, I happily support Obama now.  He is an intelligent and focused man who has shown the ability to inspire the young and disaffected in much the same way that JFK inspired the young in the 1960s.   During the primaries, I worried about Obama’s inexperience and toughness.  In the last few months fighting Hillary, Barack Obama has shown great resilience and toughness, and I see in his handling of the Reverend Wright controversy a hint of the political savy that he will need to be a successful President.   While I saw a Hillary Presidency as being like Harry S Truman, I see an Obama Presidency as being like Abraham Lincoln.  It will be a Presidency of great thought and sensitivity to finding common ground among the divisions in our country and around the world.

 

The Congressional Progressive Caucus

In the House of Representatives, there are a group of 72 Democrats that are fighting to push forward Progressive issues within the federal government. This group is called the Congressional Progressive Caucus and it was founded in the early 1990s. The co-chairwomen of the caucus are U.S. Representatives Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee and the group fight for “universal access to affordable, high quality healthcare,” fair trade agreements, living wage laws, the right of all workers to organize into labor unions and engage in strike actions and collective bargaining, the abolition of significant portions of the USA PATRIOT Act, the legalization of gay marriage, strict campaign finance reform laws, a complete pullout from the war in Iraq, a crackdown on free trade and corporate welfare, an increase in income tax on the wealthy, tax cuts for the poor, and an increase in social welfare spending by the federal government (I got this from Wikipedia).

The Congressional Progressive Caucus was founded in 1991 by independent congressman Bernie Sanders of Vermont to push for progressive issues. Eleven of the twenty standing committees in the House are currently chaired by members of the Caucus. Among the members of the Caucus are Dennis Kucinich, Charles Rangel, Bennie Thompson, Barnie Frank, and Maxine Waters. I admire them because they are trying to work within the government for progressive change, and that means often going through the frustrations of real life politics. If you compare the positions of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (http://cpc.lee.house.gov/) with the Green Party (http://www.gp.org/index.php) or even the Nader campaign (http://www.votenader.org/issues/) they share many of the same values. I think there is value in groups working both outside the government and inside the government influencing and pushing each other for change.

Some people say that the Democrats are just like the Republicans, but the Democrats have within them groups like the Progressive Caucus to influence and cajole them towards the left. In these elections, a potential Nader voter may not agree with everything that either Obama or Clinton will hold. But both Obama and Clinton are center left candidates who can be swayed by a Party that has many strong progressive voices like Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich, and Barnie Frank. .

Gay Marriage in California

Today I read in the paper about the first gay marriages to take place today after the California Supreme Court ruling making it legal in the state.   The San Francisco Chronicle has had a series of articles on the history of the gay marriage debate, on the work of attorneys willing to fight for the right and on priests willing to perform the marriage services, and on the change in attitudes of the institution of marriage among the gay and lesbian community.  I think the San Francisco Chronicle has done a great job of educating the public on the history of the gay marriage debate, showing both sides of the issue and giving a good reason as to why it is so important for the gay and lesbian community.

Wyatt Buchanan wrote an article showing the developing attitudes among gays and lesbians on the institution of marriage.  For much of the 4 decade history of the gay rights movement,  marriage was viewed by many activists as an outdated institution to be dismantled and not to be pursued.  They shared the social and economic critiques of marriage of the 1970s feminist thinking:  they saw marriage as an institution that subjugated women and children under men.  This attitude changed during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.  As gays died of AIDS, their partners often found themselves barred from their partner’s funerals and with no rights to their belongings.  The LGBT community began to appreciate the traditions of marriage and wanted to have equal access to participate. 

Matthai Kuruvila wrote of the roles of Bay Area priests in blessing same sex marriages over the past 3 decades.  These were often clandestine ceremonies, to shield both the priests and the marriage couple from the disapproval of both the church hierarchy and the congregation.  Craig Wiesner and Derrick Kikuchi were married in 1990 at the First Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto, California, and it changed the minds of many of the congregation to be more supportive of gay rights.  While Catholic, Evangelical, and the more conservative Christian churches in the San Francisco area have led efforts to ban gay marriages, some liberal Christian churches have taken steps to incorporate same sex marriages.  The United Church of Christ ordains gay clergy and marries homosexual couples with the same rite used for heterosexual couples.  The Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Churches both have gay clergy and bless same sex unions, although they use differents rites than they use for heterosexual couples.

Bob Egelko focuses his Chronicle article on Therese Stewart and Shannon Minter, the two leading attorneys in the lawsuits that toppled the California ban on same sex marriages.  Stewart is a San Francisco chief deputy city attorney who has worked on many social issues on behalf of the city.  Minter is a lawyer from Texas who has devoted his career to defending the rights of gays and lesbians, and to transgender people in particular.  Minter is a transgender himself, while Steward hopes to marry her partner during the Fall in a government sanctioned wedding.  Both have earned the respect of their opposition lawyer, Robert Tyler, who praised them for their legal skills and their ability to stay civil.

The judge who made the deciding vote for uplifting the ban is California Chief Justice Ronald George, a moderate Republican appointed by Pete Wilson in 1991.  He has likened this ruling to the 1948 state ruling striking down a California law banning interracial marriage.  George felt that anti-gay bias laws are akin to race or sex discrimination and that will have wide repurcussions to court cases in other states.  George wrote the marriage opinion because he felt that the chief justice’s job is to take the heat for controversial rulings.  He expects to be a target the next time he stands for election to the court in 2010.

I personally am gratified to see this court ruling.  Two friends of mine, Connie and D.J. took part in the San Francisco weddings in 2004 that Mayor Newsom opened up briefly.  And one of my closest friends, Eric, has been involved with gay and lesbian issues as a member of GLAAD.  When he came out of the closet, he’s done his best to educate his friends on the issues that the LGBT community has faced. 

My wife subscribed to the San Francisco Chronicle early this year when she was walking through an art and wine festival.  It’s a wonderful paper.  I’ve heard that newspapers are struggling with circulation as more people are turning to the internet for news.  I think we’d lose a lot if our newspapers and magazines disappeared and a great tradition of journalism were no longer around to prod our politicians and business leaders.   The Chronicle will be covering the same sex weddings this week on sfgate.com/samesexmarriage.

Appreciating Bobby Kennedy

When Bobby Kennedy died forty years ago, I was barely one years old.  So I can’t say that I have the same feelings of pain and anguish of the many people who had lived through that horrible time.   Bobby became a hero of mine, though, early in my life, along with his brother John and Martin Luther King Jr.   They all embodied to my young mind the best of American leaders, fighting the good fight against racism, poverty, and war.  As I grew older, I found out they had feet of clay, and I was disappointed especially with JFK’s dalliances and his ambigious positions on Vietnam.  The more that I read about Bobby, though, the more I grew to admire him.  Though he too, had feet of clay,  RFK was a lot more passionate about fighting poverty and racism than his brother, more willing to take political risks to stand up for marginalized people and eventually to stop the war in Vietnam.  Bobby and Martin remain two of my greatest heroes.  Our country lost something special 40 years ago when they died too soon.

One of the things that I most admire about Kennedy was his ability to grow.  He was a man of many contradictions.  Jules Feiffer did a famous cartoon that showcased the Good Bobby and Bad Bobby:  the Good Bobby who was a courageous reformer and civil liberterian;  the Bad Bobby who wiretapped and made deals.  He went from being a rabid anticommunist who one worked for Joseph McCarthy to a leading antiwar politician of his generation.  The young Bobby who did not think much of the problems of African Americans became a strong advocate of African American rights.  The rich man of privilege learned to understand the sufferings of the marginalized and would sit with Cesar Chavez in support of migrant workers, would visit Native American tribes and champion their cause. 

Kennedy had a reputation for being ruthless.  It came in part from doing the dirty work for his older brother’s political campaigns.  Bobby also was single minded in his pursuit of Jimmy Hoffa, the corrupt union leader.  This toughness complemented the compassion that Kennedy displayed in his later years and helped him to reach out to working class whites and well as African Americans and Hispanics.  Margaret Carlson wrote in a Time magazine article in May 9, 1988:

“But without the bad and the ugly, the picture is imcomplete.  If he had not been a hardball player, he would never have entered the presidential primary after Eugene McCarthy had cleared the way.  Without his ruthless, hard-nosed side, Bobby might not have been able to put together the coalition he did.  Conservative working-class whites may have been willing to help the needy, but fearful of being taken advantage of, they wanted a tough guy in charge.  The impetuous young Bobby helped make the grownup Bobby more compassionate.”

Some of Kennedy’s strongest critics were ironicly from the political Left.  His pursuit of corruption in unions and his early association with Joseph McCarthy made many liberals and New Left activists wary of Kennedy’s sincerity.   Yet Kennedy consistently confronted his audiences with truths that they otherwise would not have wanted to face.  He told whites in Kentucky to get off their porches and clean up abandoned cars in their neighborhood.  He criticized wealthy students who received college deferments while poor whites and blacks bore the brunt of the fighting in Vietnam.  When asked by a group of medical students who was going to pay for the programs that Kennedy felt must be enacted to help the nations poor, Kennedy gave a simple answer:  “You are.”  Kennedy reasoned that these medical students, of all people, should know the effects of poverty in crushing people’s health and spirits.

I like Kennedy because of his ackwardness.  He was not smooth like his older brother John.  From video clips that I’ve seen of him, he always seemed in a perpetual slouch.  Bobby seemed like a shy man, with eyes that looked furtively at a person.   When he spoke, he always seemed to be talking too fast.  As a person who has struggled with shyness most of my life, I relate to him.  Kennedy seemed to speak at his best when he was speaking about something that he was deeply passionate about:  poverty, the war, reconciling the gap between the races.  In some ways he’s like Eleanor Roosevelt, another shy person who was able to fight past insecurites to make courageous stands in the public realm.

Since I didn’t live through the turbulance of the 1960s, I gained my greatest appreciation of RFK through his speeches.  In the 1990s, the library had a copy of RFK: The Collected Speeches, and I read it voraciously.  Sadly, the library no longer has a copy of the book.  I had photocopied some of my favorite speeches though and have read them and reread them.   They’ve been like an anchor to me, reminding me of the best of liberalism and America.  What most strikes me about these speeches is the challenge Bobby puts on his listeners.  He asked Americans to get involved in the problems of society, that these problems of class and race and war are our responsibility to solve.    Kennedy said in a speech to Berkeley students on October 22, 1966:

“This is one of the many crossroads at which American life now stands.  In the world and at home, you have the opportunity and the responsibility to help make the choices which will determine the greatness of this nation.  You are a generation which is coming of age at one of the rarest moments in history- a time when all around us the old order of things is crumbling and a new world society is painfully struggling to take shape.  If you shrink from this struggle, and these many difficulties, you will betray the trust which your own position forces upon you.

You live in the most privileged nation on earth.  You are the msot privileged citizens of that priviliged nation;  for you have been given the opportunity to study and learn, to take your place among the tiny minority of the world’s educated men.  By coming to this school you have been lifted onto a tiny, sunlit island while all around you lies an ocean of human misery, injustice, violence, and fear.  You can use your enormous privilege and opportunity to seek purely private pleasures and gain.  But history will judge you, and, as the years pass, you will ultimately judge yourself, on the extant to which you have used your gifts to lighten and enrich the lives of your fellow man.  In your hands, not with presidents or leaders, is the future of your world and the fulfillment to the best qualities of your own spirit.”