Books Not Bombs: Robert Kennedy in Indiana

"Together we can make ourselves a nation that spends more on books than on bombs, more on hospitals than the terrible tools of war, more on decent houses than military aircraft."

Robert Kennedy said that on March 24, 1968 on Olvera Street in Los Angeles.

He was running for president, and my book The Gospel According to RFK: Why It Matters Now, includes this quote and many of his campaign speeches, from his announcement on March 16 to his victory speech June 4.

I chose the quote about books and bombs as a epigraph for the first edition in 2004.

When my publisher, Basic Books, came to design a front cover for the revised paperback edition commemorating the 40th anniversary of the campaign, we decided to add the quote to the already existing picture of RFK reaching out to a crowd from the 2004 edition.

The new edition is just out, and I am so happy that those words are on the cover. I want as many people as possible to see them, and think about them, and act on them.

I would like to plaster them all over the country.

"Together we can make ourselves a nation that spends more on books than on bombs, more on hospitals than the terrible tools of war, more on decent houses than military aircraft."

Forty years ago, Robert Kennedy was campaigning in Indiana, as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are doing this week.

RFK's base was the poor and working class, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, blacks, and working-class whites. Campaigning in Indiana, he was "wildly cheered by angry blacks, then cheered with equal enthusiasm by blue-collar whites who professed to hate blacks," wrote Evan Thomas wrote in Robert Kennedy: His Life.

As we watch Clinton and Obama campaign in Indiana, I would like us to think of that coalition that Robert Kennedy forged between the poor and the working class, including all the races. Is such a thing possible today?

When people read the words of Robert Kennedy from his campaign, I hope they will think about how we can turn the country away from the violence of a permanent state of war that Robert Kennedy warned against. I hope they will remember what he said, again in Indiana, the night of Martin Luther King's assassination forty years ago: "Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."

And what he said in California, too: "Together we can make ourselves a nation that spends more on books than on bombs, more on hospitals than the terrible tools of war, more on decent houses than military aircraft."

Perhaps some may think that these ideas are impossible to have today. We have witnessed forty years of perpetual war. The military-industrial complex has us in a stranglehold. Our government is still "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today," to quote Martin Luther King.

But these ideas pre-date Kennedy, going back to Gandhi and back further to the ancient Greeks. They are ideas, in other words, without the borders of time. They always come back to haunt us and help us.

With the state of perpetual war, the good things in life are impossible: simple necessities for billions of the world's inhabitants, the right of a good education and free expression.

Since 1968, the gap between rich and poor has become a chasm. Then, the ratio between the average salaries of the heads of companies and the average workers in them was 20 to 1; now it is 400 to 1. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King preached the social gospel.

The assassinations of Kennedy and King kept them from saying more. What they had to say in 1968 before they were silenced becomes thus all the more necessary to examine, contemplate, and act on.

After Kennedy was shot, his last words were, "Is everybody else all right?" He lost consciousness and died 26 hours later. His last words echo thus in our minds.

By the way, Bobby won the Indiana primary on May 7, with 41 percent of the vote, to 27 for Eugene McCarthy and 31 for the Hubert Humphrey stand-in, Governor Roger Branigan.

This is my first blog post. More later.

Comments

[rfkmustlive]

I must respectfully disagree with the poster who argues that Obama's base shows "remarkable parallels" to RFK's. Whereas Bobby's constituency included working-class whites, young people, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and Native-Americans, Obama has clearly struggled to make durable inroads with blue-collar whites. Although I admire Obama deeply, the recent primaries show a signficant racial divide within the Democratic Party, particularly when economic class is included as a variable. To be clear, the erosion of support among whites for Obama is, in the main, not of his doing; the Clintons early on began to play the race card, and the Jeremiah Wright controversy simply deepened the suspicions in the minds of some voters that were originally planted by the Clinton campaign. It is my fervent hope that working-class white voters can be brought into Obama's camp once Clinton recognizes the hopelessness of her situation and drops out.

[NoDrama]

RFK's base showed remarkable parallels to the people Obama reaches, including particularly Native Americans. As an original Co-sponsor of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, Obama clearly articulated a moral obligation to address disparities in health care among even this often overlooked group. http://obamesque.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/obama-for-first-americans/

[jbd]

We will destroy our own country with the preoccupation on military spending that we now have as our main employer. Now the government is awarding contracts to foreign industries- POTUS helicopter and new Air Force tanker. If all the troops come home what are they going to do for work?A Manhatten Project to make the whole country more sufficient with photo-voltaics on factories and private homes as well as wind farms would be far more effective than trying to rebuild countrys that we invade and don't want us. What generation is going to get stuck with the debt from all this war mongering?

[dadw5boys]

WE HAVE ANOTHERR HOUSING CRISIS COMMING IF THEY DON'T ROLL BACK THE BANKRUPTIZE LAWS A LOT MORE PEOPLE WILL SOON BE LOSING THEIR HOMES!!!!!!!!!!

[Tackora]

Last night, about the third or fourth time, I raided my daughter's college saving for yet another $100 to Obama after the low-blows of the last few days. It was the last time I contributed.
Obama is not Robert Kennedy. He does not seem to have the courage to forme a coalition with the middle class, i.e. the soon-to-be poor.
The next step: I will re-register as Independent.

[grendl]

The question is whether or not Al Qaeda, Iran, North Korea and any other potential threats to this county's national security is spending as much on books as on bombs.

That's why Dennis Miller became a conservative. There is no doubt peace is better than war, but you're only addressing half of the equation in a fight when you advocate a peaceful approach to the world. If someone hates us, for being the imperialistic steamrolling tank that we've been since the second World War, and are hell bent on our destruction, it does little good to show them we've renewed our national library card.

We've spread our capitalistic seed around the world, and now want to run off and become a poet. Its not going to work. The world is too dangerous now, and we have to protect ourselves. JFK knew that when he stared down the Russians in Cuba. Putting our guns down isn't the answer. The answer lies in choosing leaders who know when to draw them, and when to actually pull the trigger. Something this administration does only to fill its pockets.

[elderly]

I was a volunteer in Robert Kennedy's last campaign. I had just turned 21. I have been listening and reading since 9/11 how frightened we must be of Al Quaeda, etc; this fear has been pounded into us day after day by the government and the media likes waves constantly crashing in on the shore.

However, repetition does not create truth or validate a lie. Al Quaeda, Iran and North Korea are not the Soviet Union and Cuba of the 1960's nor are they the Germany of the 1930s'. None of them separately or together possess the capabilities to threaten our existence or the existence of the whole human race like the threat posed by the Soviet Union and the Nazis. Nor are they likely to be able to possess such capabilities in the forseeable future.

The real threat to our existence emanates from within. We have had all of our basic freedoms stolen from us by our government. Ninety-five percent of our population is facing economic ruin because of the government facilitated policies of the remaining 5%.

Our government tries to spread fear among us to hide what is really going on.

If we fall, it will be like the fall of the Roman Empire and not by being conquered by outside forces.

RFK understood this and that is why he died. Will the rest of us ever learn.................

[grendl]

So the best thing to do in your estimation is ignore the rise of Islamo fascism, and 911, and contemplate our national navel.

911 wasn't a lie. I saw it happen. And I don' t blame this country for it, I blame religious zealots.

I blame the Bush administration for using it as an excuse to invade a sovereigh nation, and I blame those in Congress for letting fear get the best of them, but I also blame Al Qaeda. There are parties out there that would do us harm.

You can blame yourself, or the literacy of this country, but the literacy of those 19 men aboard those planes wasn't really an issue. If someone wants to walk up and punch you in the face in some bar, all the study and enlightenment in the world on your part isn't going to stop him if he's hell bent on hurting you.

World peace must be unanimous, and there are those who just don't believe in it right now.

Oh, and if someone raised a gun and shot Sirhan Sirhan, RFK would be alive today, so lets not dismiss their positive use.