Senator Kennedy defied reports that he would not speak at the DNC last night, almost upstaging Michelle Obama with his calls to action and achievement. Below are some excerpts from his speech.
I have come here tonight to stand with you to change America, to restore its future, to rise to our best ideals, and to elect Barack Obama president of the United States.Barack Obama will be a commander in chief who understands that young Americans in uniform must never be committed to a mistake, but always for a mission worthy of their bravery.
We are told that Barack Obama believes too much in an America of high principle and bold endeavor, but when John Kennedy called for going to the moon, he didn’t say, "It’s too far to get there. We shouldn’t even try."
…we are all Americans. This is what we do. We reach the moon. We scale the heights. I know it. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. And we can do it again.
Michelle Obama focused on her family members and their journey toward getting Barack nominated. She also discussed the dichotomy Barack expressed to her early on in their relationship between "the world as it is" and "the world as it should be," stressing the need to work together for the common good. In her speech, Michelle also brought up the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech (45 years ago this Thursday). Many of the words from that great speech have clearly inspired the Obama campaign's rhetoric of hope:
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope.
After the jump, excerpts from a King speech that even more directly addresses many of the problems we still face today.
Its anniversary doesn't coincide with the DNC, but King gave the speech "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" exactly one year before he was assassinated. In it, he even called out a Kennedy. Some key points:
...the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies... A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth... A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” ...a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.
We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action.
King's prescience in pointing out the dominance of things even before the mass adoption of the internet and accompanying electronic devices is impressive, and his call for a "revolution of values" seems related to the Obama campaign's valuation of hope and humanity. We're interested to see what Barack comes up with on Thursday, though skeptical it can reach the heights of King's oratory.
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