Ted Kennedy's Speech August 26 2008
Aug
28
Written by:
8/28/2008 7:47 PM
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I didn’t think I’d make it -- thank you.
I bring a report card for the American people, for us Democrats, and for Congress. It may come as a surprise, but that cannot be helped.
The United States is being destroyed. This is the work of a force as old as history that is both human and not-human, a force expressed by humans but without human conscience. It grieves me to report that against this force the land of the free has proven to be defenseless. Let me explain.
The declaration of independence from England was written by businessmen, and the ensuing war was sustained by the emotional strength of one man. Following the war the South brought slaves to conquer swamps that whites would not enter, while the North nearly enslaved children in factories and tenants on land holdings. Slavery gave the south an unfair economic advantage which irritated the North so that when the West opened war became inevitable. Reconstruction of the South sought markets for the North but brought lasting enmity. The war, it developed, had only extended Northern de-facto slavery to the South. Westward expansion then ushered in the age of the robber barons and labor strife of cataclysmic proportions. With labor pacified the force reached overseas to the Philippines and to Central America, to Haiti and to South America. In all reaches, US consulates aided and abetted US corporations in their foraging. In none of this did the people of the United States have a voice. Indeed, at home voices crying out for fairness were silenced. Progressive movements like the Workingmen’s party disappeared into electoral dustbins.
World War One was started by rulers, and Woodrow Wilson was not to be left out. Returning survivors were double-crossed and had to march on the Capitol. During the Holocaust a major US corporation profited by maintaining computers for the death camps. The War in the Pacific resulted from US competition with Japan for hegemony in resource-rich Indochina.. The Hiroshima bomb was aimed at Russia. The false-flag invasion of Viet-Nam was an encore to the War in the Pacific. But it was not until an oil-addicted US felt resistance to its increasing need for a daily fix that the gloves on the force have come off. With the naked grip on Iraq ( an unfriendly supplier), and on Afghanistan ( a pipeline route) the force of capitalism has finally revealed itself to even the most obtuse. And also revealed have been morbid changes in our very air, oceans, and freshwater caused by years of covert control by this same capitalism.
The United States is being destroyed: War at home, war abroad, and de-facto war on the environment, all instigated by capitalism, accepted by Congress, and sold to the public. Why has the public bought it?
You are here this week to plan how best to recover government from the Republicans. But this is a mistaken use of the time for the single reason that neither we nor the Republicans run the government. While true that we Democrats can increase the minimum wage and true that we Democrats can convene committees to investigate wrongdoing, it is not true that electoral change can stop the killing abroad nor stop the imprisonment of innocent people at home, nor take substantial action against climate change. A single example illustrates: We were given control of Congress by the last mid-term election with the understanding that we would stop the war. We did not stop the war. Would you like to know why? We did not stop the war because our lobbyists told us we would lose important funding if we did. This regrettable situation will not change if and when we regain the White House, for the Congress will not change. The Congress of Lobbyists will oppose any administration effort to curtail the hegemony of capitalism.
Here then is what you must do with this precious time.
First, draft a platform that will attack the dysfunction of Congress by a direct attack on its root cause, loss of communal life in America. This would restore communal voice as the primary barrier to oppression. The basis is to supplant automobile commuting with light rail and to dispense with all media. Reconstructed communities then would no longer buy the product on sale. Second, take the money saved by pulling those ads and use it to send an army to the doors of America to deliver copies of the platform. This “army” would proudly wear the Democratic emblem.
Thank you for your forbearance. I will say goodbye now. May our several Gods have mercy on us all.