MB Civic

By James Carroll | Monday, August 31, 2009 | The Boston Globe

“…At the Democratic convention in 1980, Senator Edward Kennedy ended his speech with the line, ‘The dream will never die.’ In 2008, his convention speech echoed those words with a small but implication-laden difference. He concluded, ‘The dream lives on.’ Each of these lines was often replayed in the last few days, as the nation mourned the loss of this great man. Significant as he was, both as a politician and as a living link to a lost era, the outpouring of feeling was extraordinary, recalling the responses to his brothers’ more untimely deaths. That the traumas of their assassinations prompted such national expressions of grief is understandable, but Ted Kennedy’s death was expected, the endpoint of a long and well-fulfilled life. Why does his passing rank with theirs as a momentous break in time?….”…BS

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/08/31/the_dream_truly_does_live_on?mode=PF