Mood:
special
My thoughts are with Senator Ted Kennedy today. All his life, Ted Kennedy has tried to engender in us a social conscience. He sees wrongs which need attention. He sees people who are poor and who need help. And he has always felt a responsibility to them and to this country. Senator Kennedy told us that -- because he was fortunate enough to have been born in the United States under the most comfortable conditions -- he has a responsibility to others who are less well off. Seantor Kennedy recognized, more than most, that there is a discrimination in this world and slavery and slaughter and starvation. Governments repress their people; and millions are trapped in poverty while the nation grows rich; and wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere. There are differing evils, but they are common works of man. They reflect the imperfection of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, and our lack of sensibility toward the sufferings of our fellow man.
Senator Kennedy tried to point out that those who live with us, who share this same short moment of life, are our brothers; and 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.
Many believe there is nothing that one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet Senator Kennedy has sought to remind us that many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation; one general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a single woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was one Italian explorer who discovered the New World; and one man, Thomas Jefferson, who proclaimed that all men are created equal.
These men moved the world, and Senator Kennedy believed that so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Ted Kennedy taught us that each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Senator Kennedy recognized that for the most fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before them. But that is not the road that history that has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged, and as the years pass we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that effort.
Kennedy said, "The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society."
This is the way Ted Kennedy has lived his life: as a good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
blue
How do we count the lives she touched, the light she shed for years?
a-ok
The time has come for China to free Tibet. The brave protesters in Paris who extinguished the Olympic torch and the amazing young people who unfurled the "Free Tibet" banner from the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge were an inspiration to us all. But unless people begin to put their money where their mouths and hearts are, nothing is going to change. So with that in mind, I have made a decision. If Tibet is not freed, I am going to boycott the Olympics and their sponsors. I know what you're thinking: "yeah, like they care". But these companies claim to take corporate citizenship seriously, so it's time to see just how seriously they take it... or if it's just lip service.
chillin'
This summer, President George W. Bush will smile while jaunting up the stairs to Air Force One - his laughable presidency all but over - with not a care in the world.