MELISSA BLOCK, host:
We've been hearing much about the life of Senator Kennedy today, his decades of public service, lawmaking finesse, his famous family, also his well-known personal flaws and controversies as a younger man. The shadow of Chappaquiddick, for example, dogged him throughout his career.
But his many friends and his critics agree on one thing: one of his greatest and most memorable gifts was his oratory. He spoke powerfully and passionately. People in his audiences were moved -propelled, really, toward political action. Here's the conclusion of his address to the Democratic National Convention in 2004, which nominated his friend and colleague Senator John Kerry for president. The convention was in Kennedy's hometown of Boston, and he spoke of the heroes of the American Revolution who are buried there.
Senator EDWARD KENNEDY (Democrat, Massachusetts): These are the patriots who won our freedom. These are the first Americans who enlisted in a fight for something larger than themselves, for a shared faith in the future, for a nation that was alive in their hearts, but not yet part of their world.
They and their fellow patriots won their battle. But the larger battle for freedom and justice and equality and opportunity is our battle, too, and it's never fully won. Each new generation has to take up the cause, sometimes with weapons in hand, sometimes armed only with faith and hope, like the marchers in Birmingham and Selma four decades ago.
(Soundbite of applause)
Sen. KENNEDY: Sometimes the fight is waged in Congress or the courts, sometimes on foreign shores, like the battle that called one of my brothers to war in the Pacific and another to die in Europe. Now it is our turn to take up the cause. Our struggle is not with some monarch named George who inherited the crown -although it often seems that way.
(Soundbite of applause)
Sen. KENNEDY: Our struggle is with the politics of fear and favoritism in our own time, in our own country. Our struggle, like so many others before, is with those who put their own narrow interest ahead of the public interest.
We hear echoes of past battles in the quiet whisper of the sweetheart deal, in the hushed promise of a better break for the better connected. We hear them in the cries of the false patriots who bully dissenters into silence and submission.
(Soundbite of applause)
Sen. KENNEDY: These are familiar fights. We've fought, and we've won them before. And with John Kerry and John Edwards leading us, we will win them again and again and again, and make America stronger at home and respected once more in the world.
(Soundbite of applause)
Sen. KENNEDY: For centuries, kings ruled by what they claimed was divine right. They could not be questioned. They could not be challenged. The people's fate was not their own. But today, because of the surpassing wisdom of our founders, the constant courage of the patriots of the past, and the shared sacrifice of generations of Americans who kept the faith, the power of America still rests securely in citizens' hands - in our hands.
True to our highest and noblest ideals, we intend to use that power. We will use it wisely and well. We will use it, in the poet's words my brothers loved: to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. We will use it to heal, to build, to hope and to dream again. And in doing so, we will truly make our country once more America the beautiful. Thank you very much.
(Soundbite of applause)
BLOCK: The late Senator Edward Kennedy, who died last night, speaking to the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.
(Soundbite of song, "America the Beautiful")
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