From: The New Yorker, March 2nd, 2009

When Emanuel said this, I noticed that over his left shoulder, on the credenza behind him, was an official-looking name plate, which he said was a birthday present from his two brothers. It read, “Undersecretary for Go Fuck Yourself.”

From Shakespeare’s Richard III

First murderer: What, art thou afraid?

Second murderer: Not to kill him, having a warrant; but to be damned for killing him, from the which no warrant can defend me.

From The Human Stain by Philip Roth

“He really thinks that what everybody thinks, what everybody says about him at Athena College, is so life-shattering. It’s a lot of assholes not liking him–it’s not a big deal. And for him this is the most horrible thing that ever happened? Well it’s not a big deal” (234).

“He wasn’t going to be twenty-seven forever. It wasn’t going to be 1953 forever. People age. Nations age. Problems age. Sometimes they age right out of existence” (326).

“There it was, if not the whole story, the whole picture. Only rarely, at the end of our century, does life offer up a vision as pure and peaceful as this one: a solitary man on a bucket, fishing through eighteen inches of ice in a lake that’s constantly turning over its water atop an arcadian mountain in America” (361).

From Robert Kennedy: His Life by Evan Thomas

“But he was also animated by the lesson he had drawn from existentialism: that the way to deal with despair and the heaviness of fate was by acts of individual courage.” (321)

“He was feeling restless and a little reckless. He had been up until 3:30 a.m. working on a Vietnam speech. At breakfast, sensing his mood, Ethel greeted him, “Hail Caesar.” He drove to the senate at eighty miles an hour in his convertible with the top down, even though the temperature was 30 degrees.” (334)

“The children are covered with sores and their tummies stick out because the have no food. Do you know how lucky you are? Do you know how lucky you are? Do something for your country.” (339)

“The most routine tasks had to become self-improvement projects. Senator Kennedy would never take the subway from the New Senate Office Building to the Capitol; he had to walk.” (343)

“Deep in his being, he was still the boy who plunged into Nantucket Sound because he couldn’t swim and because no one in his family seemed to care.” (345)

“The guru and the senator talked past each other, in a gentle sort of way. Kennedy wanted to know about politics: did Ginsberg think the hippies would ally with the blacks? Ginsberg asked if Kennedy had ever tried ‘grass.’ RFK: ‘No, whatever that means.’ Ginsberg chanted his Hare Krishnasfor the ‘preservation of the planet.’ Kennedy said, ‘You ought to sing it to the guy up the street,’ gesturing toward the White House, ‘He needs it more than I do.’” (346)

“In a time of moral uncertainty, Kennedy did not lose sight of the right thing to do. The real question was whether he could summon the courage to do it.” (348)

“I never covered a guy who would say nothing to you. Most politicians can’t stop talking. If Kennedy didn’t want to answer your question, he’d just stare silently at you.” (377)

“Jack Kennedy was more the politician, saying things publicly that he privately scoffed at. Robert Kennedy was more himself. Jack gave the impression of decisive leadership, the man with all the answers. Robert seemed more hesitant, less sure he was right, more tentative, more questioning, and completely honest about it. Leadership he showed; but it had a different quality, an off-trail unorthodox quality, to some extent a quality of searching for answers to hard questions in company with his bewildered honesty, trying to work things out with their help.” (390)

“A small, plain white cross stands by a stone slab inscribed with his name and the years of his birth and death. In contrast to the grandeur of JFK’s grave, the effect is unadorned and a little lonely. One thinks of his struggle to overcome fear and wonders what, if he had lived, he might have done.” (394)

Ben Lundin: “Violence Cannot Take What Eve Gave” (Daily Tar Heel, March 6th, 2008)

I can’t make sense of this; the world made a wrong turn. This is nonsense. I’m dizzy, and worse, my dizziness seems empty.

They want 650 words in memory of Eve Carson? I don’t think I can make it that far.

I’ve lost structure. Speech is so fragile – so vulnerable to violence. Violence is so large. I owe Eve an apology on the front end: At this moment, I have so little to offer.

And Eve offered so much. I’ve never known someone so immune to the cold; so confident against the fleeting. Eve had an anchor – a hold on something sincere; something bigger than rhetoric.

Eve had found her passion in student government.

Even in her playful e-mails, you can identify a sincere introspection, a passion that drove her:

“Last thoughts – Ben, if you were a statesman: how much would you be willing to compromise? I have been wanting to talk with you about this so much!!! I saw an amazing speaker the other day … and then I’ve been reading a lot and meeting so many incredible alumni. … More and more, I am LOVING this year, and I am EXTREMELY enjoying the student government work and everything I’m learning.”

Can you hear it? Such enthusiasm seems misplaced at a time like this. Then again, it always did. She had so much energy.

Most of us aren’t capable of Eve’s sincerity in real life, much less in our informal writings.

Eve’s closing to that note was even more striking: “But I think that my ultimate goal is to be able to have all my friends in a room and to hear where our conversation takes us. … Yes: that’s truly all I really want. I just want to have sincere and interesting friends and to get to learn from everyone, all the time.”

It’s so innocent – so playful and so sincere. You always knew Eve meant it when you heard it; you knew that politics wasn’t everything to Eve, or anything really. Eve was interested in people.

When I graduated, Eve wrote to me, “I hope we will be able to keep learning about these ideas, and I can’t wait to discuss these themes with you when we are in our middle ages (as you can see, I am now going to count on us remaining great friends).”

The violence tried to make a liar of Eve. But it can’t do that.

Violence can’t move everything; it can’t displace the faith in others that allows for a sincere, loving relationship. I still have faith.

Today, Eve finally has all of us in a room together. It’s a big room; it’s all of Chapel Hill, Athens and for me, it’s England. I’d like Eve to have the first words in that conversation she was hoping to start. It’s something she wrote off-the-cuff – a feeling she had one day:

“World, inspire me! Share with me just hints of your glory and atrocity!” Eve believed that on balance, it was worth the struggle. There was always more glory than atrocity in the world. That’s how she inspired. We need that, and we have to restore it, but that is a task for another day.

For now, this atrocity is deafening. So I reserve the last of my 650 words for silence. This silence must have its moment.

Senator Edward Kennedy: Eulogy to Robert F. Kennedy; June 8th, 1968

“For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history 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.

“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.

“Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live.

“This is the way he lived. My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply 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.

Those of use who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.

As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:

“Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”

John F. Kennedy: Inaugural Address, Jan. 20th, 1961

All this will not be finished in the first 100 days. Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.	20
In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than in mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.	21
Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, “rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation”—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.	22
Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?	23
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.	24
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.	25
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.	26
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.