Bobby Kennedy, "We can do better in this country". Some history ...

[DreamGypsy]

From Remarks of Robert F. Kennedy at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968


Robert F. Kennedy
University of Kansas March 18, 1968

(emphasis mine)

<snip>

All around us, all around us, - not just on the question of Vietnam, not just on the question of the cities, not just the question of poverty, not just on the problems of race relations - but all around us, and why you are so concerned and why you are so disturbed - the fact is, that men have lost confidence in themselves, in each other, it is confidence which has sustained us so much in the past - rather than answer the cries of deprivation and despair - cries which the President's Commission on Civil Disorders tells us could split our nation finally asunder - rather than answer these desperate cries, hundreds of communities and millions of citizens are looking for their answers, looking to force and repression and private gun stocks - so that we confront our fellow citizen across impossible barriers of hostility and mistrust and again, I don't believe that we have to accept that. I don't believe that it's necessary in the United States of America. I think that we can work together - I don't think that we have to shoot at each other, to beat each other, to curse each other and criticize each other, I think that we can do better in this country.

<snip>

He then speaks starving children in the United States, of Native Americans relegated to backwaters with no jobs, no hopes, no future, of laborers whose jobs have gone, and of African-Americans for whom the promises of equal rights and equal education have not been fulfilled.

And then, he challenges his audience and his country:

And this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us, as individuals and citizens this year. But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction, of purpose and of dignity - that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

Some things have changed: our GNP is now $14.265 trillion, not $800 billion; the budget for napalm is probably negligible compared to the cost of drones and other weapons of modern warfare; Charlie Whitman's rifles and Richard Speck's knives have been displaced from our memories by the graphic portrayals of other acts of national and international carnage; intelligence is mostly missing from the daily spectacle of public debate; the integrity of public officials is too often a commodity bought, bartered, or signed away.

Less than three months after this speech, Bobby was killed and 5 others wounded.

Can't we do better in this country?