rest in peace, and in power, senator edward kennedy

by: los anjalis

Sat Aug 29, 2009 at 13:15:45 PM PDT

The world is a better place because of Senator Ted Kennedy. He surely had his share of accomplishments and his errors.  As President Obama said today, through his suffering, he came more alive to the plight of others.

Senator Ted Kennedy was an unapologetic liberal who never compromised on his principles.

After he passed, earlier this week, I came upon a few of his speeches. The one shared above is from May 2008, at a Montgomery County Democratic Committee reception. Kennedy earnestly shares how his family's struggles influenced his beliefs around health care for all Americans. What's more, the website TedKennedy.org has a number of his landmark speeches, including Kennedy's speech on national health insurance, at the 1978 Democratic National Convention in Memphis, Tennessee. It's powerful, and at the same time surprising that this speech -- so relevant today -- was given over thirty years ago. Here's an excerpt:

Our workshop here on health care will clarify this crucial point about priorities in spending federal dollars. One of the most shameful things about modern America is that in our unbelievably rich land, the quality of health care available to many of our people is unbelievably poor, and the cost is unbelievably high.

That is why national health insurance is the great unfinished business on the agenda of the Democratic Party. Our party gave Social Security to the nation in the 1930's. We gave Medicare to the nation in the 1960's. And we can bring national health insurance to the nation in the 1970's.

One of the saddest ironies in the worldwide movement for social justice in the twentieth century is that America now stands virtually alone in the international community on national health insurance. It seems that every nation is out of step but Uncle Sam. With the sole exception of South Africa, no other industrial naticn in the world leaves its citizens in fear ot financial ruin because of illness...

Together, we can lift that financial burden from all the families of America. Through national health insurance, we can provide a decent health care system for the benefit of the people of this land. We can make health care a basic right for all, not just an expensive privilege for the few.

But to achieve the reform, we need, we must have genuine leadership by the Democratic Party. We are heirs of a great tradition in American public life. Our party took up the cause of jobs for the unemployed in the Great Depression. Our party took up the cause of civil rights for black and brown Americans, and the cause of equal rights for women in America and the people of the District of Columbia.

In that same tradition of leadership, it is time for the Democratic Party now to take up the cause of health.

Post-Bourgie shares an excerpt from Michael Kelley's must-read 1990 piece about Ted Kennedy in GQ, sharing some of his numerous legislative accomplishments and his liberalism:

Even a partial listing of the major bills in whose passage Kennedy has played a part is impressive. Whether you admire them or not, these are the measures that transformed-mostly liberalized-America in our time: the first Immigration Reform Act; the Voting Rights Act and its extensions; the Freedom of Information Act; the Gun Control Act; the Campaign Financing Reform law; the Comprehensive Selective Service Reform Act; the Eighteen-Year-Old Vote law; the Occupational Safety and Health Act; the War on Cancer bills; the recodification of federal criminal laws; the Bilingual Education Act; the Fair Housing Acts; the Age Discrimination Act; the Airline and Trucking Deregulation bills; the Job Training Partnership Act; the South African sanctions; and the Grove City Civil Rights Restoration Act.

Far more than either of his brothers, who were lackluster senators, Kennedy, over the past three decades, has been responsible for changes in the complexion of this country and in the lives of its citizens. He has been an ally of blacks, American Indians, the poor, the sick, the aged, the mentally ill, starving refugees worldwide and immigrants. He has been an outspoken liberal, unafraid to take the controversial positions-on issues such as busing, abortion, gun control, the Vietnam War (late but forcefully), the nuclear freeze and capital punishment-that other senators clearly avoided...

Among the mainstream media's coverage of Senator Ted Kennedy, there's little mention of Kennedy's stance about the Iraq War.  Kennedy's famous quote (from his anti-Iraq war speech in NY):

"It is possible to love America while concluding that is not now wise to go to war."

Of note, this quote recalls the famous lines from Martin Luther King Junior's "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam" speech in 1967:

"Let me say finally that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism."

Today's memorial service featured the following speeches (video from msnbc).  

Ted Kennedy Junior's speech. (Ted Kennedy's son)
Representative Patrick Kennedy's speech (Ted Kennedy's son).
President Barack Obama's speech.

In the words of Senator Ted Kennedy:

"The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."