On April 5, 1968, RFK only had one speaking engagement. He made no other public appearances on the day after the MLK assassination. He spoke to the Cleveland City Club on that dark day about The Mindless Menace of Violence. His words are as relevant on this dark day as they were then.
He opened by framing the issue as follows:
This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity to speak briefly to you about this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.
It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on.
Sadly, this menace has gone on and on and on for another 45 years. There is every indication that it will keep going on for the forseeable future. Tucson, Aurora, Newtown, Boston--it never ends. It is almost predictable that there will be another mass killing/maiming in this country in the next few months.
RFK went on to note:
Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.
"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, “there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."
Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire.
Too 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 others. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.
Our tolerance for a rising level of violence, if anything, is higher now than it was then. We don't merely have movies and TV shows glorifying killing--we have video games galore that do it, too. We have a TV subgenre of cable news that covers wars as though they're sporting events, and "if it bleeds, it leads" is the motto of local TV news.
As to easy access to guns, while the number of gun owners is apparently declining, the number of guns owned now approaches 300 million. Even in the wake of the horrific shooting of 20 little kids shortly before Christmas w/in easy driving distance of network anchors, weak gun legislation is on life support in the Senate right now. The odds of anything meaningful ever getting out of the House are virtually nil.
Swagger and bluster are a staple of contemporary presidential politics. In the 80's, we had, as Don Henley once put it, the tired old man we elected king, who spent WW II in Hollywood, treat the presidency as the opportunity to play a global Marlboro Man. He was followed by a decorated WW II vet who never could play the Reagan role correctly, but who did start 2 wars on 2 continents. Eight years later, his draft-dodging son and the son's draft-avoiding VP started 2 wars that were much greater in scale, scope, and cost. Along the way, the draft-dodging son did his best Dirty Harry imitation, and the VP pushed for a 3d war in the country between the 2 that were already occupied.
RFK went on to note the true nature and breadth of violence:
For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.
This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job 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 mastered.
Again, what he described then applies just as much now. Our political system at least gave lip service to the poor then--it doesn't even bother w/ the lip service now. While
de jure segregation, thankfully, is long dead, we are probably as racially stratified of a country now as were were then. We're clearly more economically stratified, and the gated community has become a fixture on our national landscape.
Near the end of this masterwork, RFK stated:
Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is now what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.
We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.
Those noble (and essential) goals, if anything, seem more out of reach today than they did in 1968. The vanity of false distinctions among men (and women) is a major driving force in economic activity. Our financial system is largely built upon a tiny few profiting greatly from the misfortunes of others. Hatred and revenge became central features of our post-9/11 foreign policy, and we have really yet to find a new philosophical basis for it.
He closed by stating:
Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.
But we can perhaps remember - even if only for a time - that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek - as we do - nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.
Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as 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.
There is nothing I could really add to that eloquence. I merely note that it has been far too difficult to find common purpose and common goals in this country for far too long. There were countless selfless and heroic acts in Boston yesterday, and there will undoubtedly be many more in the weeks to come. There were previously many such acts in Tuscon, Aurora, and Newtown. It is hard to see, however, how a perverted purpose that developed from the Reagan through the W/Cheney years will materially change.
A great man gave us a set of principles that we desperately need to follow today. I'd really like to see at least some of those principles put into practice.