The Wit and Wisdom of Ted Kennedy - Bill Adler [21]
—Speech, January 13, 1975
The policy failure in Iran was massive, ranging from our intelligence to our commerce, diplomacy, and strategy. As a result, we lost major opportunities for modernization, moderation, and stability in the region. In vain, despite the lessons of Vietnam, we poured virtually unlimited supplies of arms into Iran, in the hope that bombs and tanks and planes could somehow ensure the flow of oil to American homes and factories.
—Speech, April 2, 1979
There will be discussion in Washington and around the world about whether the ethnic violence in Darfur is, in fact, genocide, but we cannot allow the debate over definitions to obstruct our ability to act as soon as possible. It is a matter of the highest moral responsibility for each of us individually, for Congress, for the United States, and for the global community to do all we can to stop the violence against innocents in Darfur. We must act, because thousands of people’s lives will be lost if we don’t.
—Call for U.S. action to help stop the
ethnic violence in Darfur, Sudan,
April 29, 2004
I don’t think America can just drill itself out of its current energy situation. We don’t need to destroy the environment to meet our energy needs. We need smart, comprehensive, common-sense approaches that balance the need to increase domestic energy supplies with the need to maximize energy efficiency.
—Statement on New Long-Term Energy Solutions,
March 22, 2001
We should stop the non-scientific, pseudo-scientific, and anti-scientific nonsense emanating from the right wing, and start demanding immediate action to reduce global warming and prevent catastrophic climate change that may be on our horizon now. We must not let the [Bush] Administration distort science and rewrite and manipulate scientific reports in other areas. We must not let it turn the Environmental Protection Agency into the Environmental Pollution Agency.
—Address to the National Press Club,
Washington, DC, January 12, 2005
In strengthening security at our borders, we must also safeguard the unobstructed entry of the more than 31 million persons who enter the U.S. legally each year as visitors, students, and temporary workers. Many of them cross our borders from Canada and Mexico to conduct daily business or visit close family members.
We also must live up to our history and heritage as a nation of immigrants. Continued immigration is part of our national well-being, our identity as a nation, and our strength in today’s world. In defending America, we are also defending the fundamental constitutional principles that have made America strong in the past and will make us even stronger in the future.
Our action must strike a careful balance between protecting civil liberties and providing the means for law enforcement to identify, apprehend and detain potential terrorists. It makes no sense to enact reforms that severely limit immigration into the United States. “Fortress America,” even if it could be achieved, is an inadequate and ineffective response to the terrorist threat.
—Statement on the Introduction of the
Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry
Reform Act of 2001, November 30, 2001
DEMOCRACY AND
HUMAN RIGHTS
TED KENNEDY WAS BOTH A BIG “D” DEMOCRAT AND A small “d” democrat. That is to say, he was both a ferocious defender of his party and a deep believer in the virtues of a system in which the people choose their leaders. He was also an astute observer of the way democracies function and how they are sometimes ill-served by overly partisan politics or by majority rule at the expense of minority rights. He critiqued the workings of democracy, both at home and abroad, and was even more vocal when it came to his appraisal of countries like China, which lack democracy, or post-Soviet Russia, where democratic practices have too often