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.
– Robert F. Kennedy
