tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11305448.post114954810207999416..comments2023-12-01T04:00:17.385-08:00Comments on highwayscribery: Bobby Kennedy - On the 38th Anniversary of His Murderhighwayscriberyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13766362837248876320noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11305448.post-1160886648014647692006-10-14T21:30:00.000-07:002006-10-14T21:30:00.000-07:00Thanks for checking in. That's an old post. Since ...Thanks for checking in. That's an old post. Since people come and go without us knowing it, highwayscribery is unaware of what is read or when. Anyway, to your point, I think I said "the closest thing" to social democrats, but I get where you're going. I think over time progressives have come to buy the conservative line on them. I'm reading an odd book, "Spending to Save" by Harry Hopkins who was deacon of FDR's welfare urges. Alway he discusses the programs he adminstrated as a means-to-an-end, getting work. I think your take on RFK, in a pure policy sense, is 100 percent on the mark. I did not, however, write as some kind of expert so much as a saddened believer. <BR/><BR/>regardshighwayscriberyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13766362837248876320noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11305448.post-1160851773979288232006-10-14T11:49:00.000-07:002006-10-14T11:49:00.000-07:00I firmly believe that the moment Bobby took a few ...I firmly believe that the moment Bobby took a few steps towards his right after finishing his speech, stopped, and at the urging on an aide wheeled and left the stage in the direction of the pantry, the history of this country took a dark turn towards cynicism and selfishness from which we've never recovered. However, I do believe that your conception of RFK as a "social democrat" is a bit off mark. In fact, one of the things that made Bobby so attractive to such a broad cross-section of Americans was the fact that he believed that government was not the be-all and end-all when it came to solving problems such as proverty and lack of opportunity in the inner cities and rural areas. Yes, he supported vigorous support by the federal government for anti-poverty programs; but so did LBJ. What made Bobby different was that he wanted to give communities, and more specifically the individuals within communities, the power to use federal money as they saw fit. In other words, rather than having bureaucrats in Washington micro-managing the Great Society programs, RFK argued that that the people in the target communities were best qualified to determine how the money should be spent to deal with the problems in their own communities. As Bobby said many times during the 1968 campaign, he wanted to give people the dignity of work, rather than the indignity of the dole.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com