by Roger Cohen
CAPE TOWN — A half-century from Bobby Kennedy’s assassination, let’s begin with his words in this South African city of mystical mountains:
“But the help and the leadership of South Africa and the United States cannot be accepted if we — within our own countries or in our relations with others — deny individual integrity, human dignity, and the common humanity of man. If we would lead outside our borders, if we would help those who need our assistance, if we would meet our responsibilities to mankind, we must first, all of us, demolish the borders which history has erected between men without our own nations — barriers of race and religion, social class and ignorance.”
That was 1966, in apartheid South Africa. How we in the United States have fallen, electing a president who incarnates ignorance, would erect walls on borders, knows not what dignity is, nor integrity, nor common humanity, nor the meaning of America’s alliances; nor even that a president’s Memorial Day message should honor the fallen, not trumpet low unemployment numbers.
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