Excerpt from “On the Mindless Menace of Violence,” a speech delivered by Robert F. Kennedy at the City Club of Cleveland on April 5, 1968, the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
“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 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 life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded… 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 weapons and ammunition they desire…Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the 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 nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them. Some looks for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.”
