Teddy Kennedy

So, the big news for the day is that last night, Teddy Kennedy died. He's being called the most consequential of the brothers (possibly true) and a lion of a man (definitely true). I've read articles and heard radio shows talk about his oratory skill. There is a very poignant speech he gave many years ago, at his brother Bobby's funeral. Now, the eulogy is largely a summarized version of one of Bobby's speeches. However, I think it fit the moment perfectly as a call to 'snatch the fallen banner.' Of course, I've disagreed with Teddy Kennedy on almost all his political views. However, the speech is an excellent, generalized call to action, especially for those of us who are young:

It is a revolutionary world we live in, and this generation at home and around the world has had thrust upon it a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived. Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation; a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth; a young woman reclaimed the territory of France; and it was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and the 32 year-old Thomas Jefferson who [pro]claimed that "all men are created equal."