Robert F. Kennedy

I don't know a lot about the Kennedy's but periodically I have come across speeches and quotes from Robert F. Kennedy and I am surprised by the quality of them.

Are the days of politicians like this over? Are the days of speeches written and given on the back of flatbed trucks over? A politician who takes the courage to speak to the people in a human way. I want to see politicians like this today.

What happened to the Kennedy's besides the obvious. I always assumed them to be evil as all politicians seem to be. I guess I am questioning how evil they were? Or was it a slight lack of evil that caused two of them to be shot in the head?

GDP Speech



Martin Luther King Speech

1) Modern political speeches are designed by committees of market analysts and communications/public relation specialists. They never sound like humans speaking.  When speech becomes disconnected from truth or passion it dies and nothing can mask this.  Also people in the past were educated, watch RFK's dropping a quote from his favorite Greek writer (the writer is my favorite too) is something no modern politician could do.

2) They Kennedy's weren't saints but JFK was probably the last 'independent' President of the USA. After them no one came to power without being completely owned by the Wall Street/National Security elite. Look up JFK's fight versus 'US Steel' to see an actual president using his real power to reign in corporate criminality.

The tricky part in judging JFK is that he only had 3 years in power and he seemed have just gone through a 'conversion' from Cold Warrior to Peace-nik when he was killed. The near nuclear holocaust of the Cuban Crisis seemed to have scared him into trying to end the Cold War. This lead to his great speech at American University a few months before he was killed.


This is the heart of the speech - an appeal for peace based on human reason and mutual understanding. This is appeal straight out of the Enlightenment: rational humans can solve problems to make the world better.

JFK wrote:What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children--not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women--not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary rational end of rational men. I realize that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war--and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

This is a longer version and has more great parts: a speech against the madness of nuclear war, a sympathetic telling of Russian history (at 11 minutes), and just more straight-forward peace advocating. This is what was once great in America Liberalism.

The greatest part through is the crowd's reaction when he talks about nuclear disarmament (21:45), it's the first real reaction of the crowd and it is sustained applause -  JFK was not leading Americans to peace, he was slowly coming to advocate the peace the most Americans already desired.  

Everyone should know JFK's 'American University' (1963) speech and MLK's 'Riverside'  (1967) speech where King finally confronts the Vietnam war. These were brave speeches and both men would be within a year of giving those speeches.



I have both speeches in MP3 version and listen to them once or twice a year. It keeps me from hating America but mourning what was lost.

It is easy to get lost talking about whether JFK had an affair with Marilyn Monroe, or he was the only Catholic US president, or the infinite detail of the "conspiracy theories" (1) - but to ignore the Kennedys is to ignore the last true populist liberal political movement. When RFK was killed, he was more or less leading the 'peace movement'-wing of the Democrats, not because he formed them but because that movement latched on to him! Today look at Trump and Saunders - both are outsider candidates with populist movements, Americans are sick to death of the establishment's hand-picked candidates who preach endless war and shipping job overseas.

The latest antiwar.com editorial is great on this subject:
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/02/09/new-hampshire-the-triumph-of-populism/

Unfortunately the assassination of JFK, MLK, RFK put America on the path from Social Liberalism to Corporate Feudalism.

JFK gave us Star Trek (Original Series & Next Gen) where humanity unifies, gets off the planet and tries to peaceful co-exist and explore new worlds. Lately America dreams of humanity reduced back to slavery - in the fantasy Medievalism, in sci-fi/western post-Apocalypses, Orwellian endless wars, and beset by irrational Gothic monsters.

[1] - It is worth noting that two offical US Government inquiries into the JFK assassination found that he had been killed by more than one person! The Select Committee on Assassinations (1976) found it was a "probable conspiracy", the Assassination Records Review Board (1992) found that the CIA was not only withhold records but running disinformation campaigns against them. Similarly the only trial into MLK's assassination (held in 1999) found: “There is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. And the civil court’s unanimous verdict has validated our belief." So when I see "skeptic" websites talk about the JFK murder in the same breath as Bigfoot or Ghosts I know there 'skepticism' is just self-satisfied wanking. I have not looked in RFK's murder but I know there is a wide-body of evidence suggesting it wasn't just a crazy Palestinian...