Mindless Menace of Violence

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. day, I'm taking a break from my own "memoir" writing and posting this video.  This speech was given by Robert Kennedy at the City Club in Cleveland shortly after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.   Hearing it again, I was flooded with emotion.    Our headlines have once again shattered our sense of peace with the violence in Tuscon.   The world needs strong leaders now more than ever.  It needs good people to rise up and take a stand.

I was still a child when we lost Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy but I felt a great sense of loss.  I wondered what kind of world I would  live in as an adult.   A world in which leaders lives were so easily taken?   As a child, I was fascinated by the speeches of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King.  I listened when ever they spoke on television.  They spoke powerfully and with deep conviction.   I knew that I was listening to great men.  They helped me dream of a better world.

I choose Bobby's Speech after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. and not one of King's own speeches because it seemed more somber.  It eulogized King's death by paying honor to the values  for which King lived and died.  Bobby gave Martin a voice although his life had been taken.  We need to give both these men a voice today.

Many years stand between today and the time when they were alive.  Their speeches are no less powerful.   When I listen to them now, they have the power to move me, to help me once again dream of a better world.

In recent years, we've learned how many of our leaders, past and present,  have "feet of clay".    We know of their infidelities, their transgressions.  In accepting their humanity, we have allowed ourselves to forget the greater values, the higher moral ground of which they spoke.  In accepting their imperfections, we have grown closed and cynical.  No political leader is perfect.  We can not expect them to be.  Those who rose above the limits of their own selves and spoke of social justice, peace, and a higher awareness need our attention today.  Now more than ever.

 I avoid political discussions.  I step away from all debate and conflict.  My silence has failed me.  In fearing debate, I have stood for nothing.  I have lost my way.

We all have lost our way.  We have allowed fighting among and within political parties to distract us.  We have lost sight of the greater good, the good to which we all must strive if this is to be a great nation again.  Listen to the voices of the past, with open minds and hearts.  Truth is timeless.  We all need to work together for a better future, for our sake, for our children's sake and our children's children.  Let us work together for a better world.  A world that sees the end to war and violence.  A world that sees the beginning of a global cooperation that opens the door to a new age.  What amazing things we could accomplish, united at last in peace working together for the benefit of all humankind.  I, too, have a dream.  It is one many before me have dreamt.  Let us keep the dream alive.


Transcript of speech.

City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio


April 5, 1968



This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the 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 and on in this country of ours.



Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.



No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.



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 the 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 the 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 whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.



Too often we honor swagger and bluster and 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 non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.



Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.



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 the 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.



We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.



Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not 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 humane 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 others. 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.



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 vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.



But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in 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 own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.