"Democratic, progressive and patriotic" Senator Kennedy

Ted Kennedy is a name I've heard for as long as I've been alive, since well before I understood anything about American politics.

Although he was the second most senior member of the Senate and 77 years old, his remains the face that represents the progressive movement in my mind. He came of age in an America that was segregated, where women left the secretarial pool when they got married and where the GLBT community's existence wasn't even acknowledged. He was an upper-class white male from New England, more privileged than perhaps any other group in society, yet he fought relentlessly for the civil rights of every minority group in America throughout his career. What better role model - what better example of an American hero - do we have than one who advocates so fiercely for something for which he has no personal need and which can only serve to lower his own station in society?

Many people will write about Senator Kennedy in the days to come far more knowledgeably and eloquently than I can, but I came across the obituary written by LeMonde's Sylvain Cypel and was touched by the emotion with which it was written, so I wanted to share it with you. A translation of a portion of it follows:

It is not only a major figure in American politics during the last half-century who has disappeared with the death, Wednesday, August 26th, of Senator Edward Kennedy, the result of a brain tumor. He bore a mythical name and inherited a family history that made him - reluctantly, he often gave the impression - a living symbol. That of a confident, peaceful, globally-minded America, conscious of honoring its laws and civil liberties; an America inclined to give priority to a diplomatic solution over a show of strength, yet never balking at giving a demonstration of power should the need arise. A symbol, thus, of a certain political left: democratic, progressive and patriotic.

Kennedy: a name magnificent and heavy to bear. Magnificent because it is that of one of the most celebrated patrician families of New England. Heavy because his father, Joseph, the patriarch of the dynasty, suspected of having made his fortune thanks to contacts in organized crime, a democrat grown isolationist and anti-Roosevelt during World War II, had been sympathetic to Charles Lindbergh's group, America First, denounced at one time for its proximity to the Nazi regime.

A heavy symbol, above all, marked by fate. The two oldest brothers of he whom America called "Ted" were assassinated: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, JFK, in 1963, during a trip to Dallas, Texas, just three years after his accession to a White House to which he restored polish and strength. Then, in 1968, came the turn of Robert "Bobby" Kennedy, Attorney General, killed in the middle of his electoral campaign. Assassinations perpetrated under conditions and for reasons never fully resolved, but which would inflame global opinion, contributing to the creation of this "Kennedy curse," which Ted inherited...

...An acerbic critic of the tax cuts granted to the [nation's] wealthiest by the Bush administration and of its negligence after Hurricane Katrina's devastation of Louisiana in 2005, he was also an opponent of the American war in Iraq - he is one of the few to have voted against it from the beginning - to the point that former President George H.W. Bush asked him privately to curb the tone of his remarks. George W. Bush, however, always took care to be on the best of terms with Sen. Kennedy.

For this champion of the moderate Democratic agenda, whose every public appearance drew a crowd, was a great orator and peacemaker. He made respecting the structure of the American Constitution - its checks and balances - the cornerstone of his political philosophy. His first major speech as a senator, in 1964, concerned the Civil Rights Act that would lead to the abolition of all racial segregation in the United States. Defender of the weakest - the poor, women, the disabled, minorities, immigrants... - and an unapologetic reformist, over time Sen. Kennedy positioned himself as a man of principles and unrepentant pragmatism.

Beloved in the United States and around the world, Senator Kennedy's legacy is a refusal to accept any injustice, a demand for universal equality and a fighting spirit. Let's honor his memory by ensuring that his dreams for America come to fruition.