The Eternal Flame

[babylonsister]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090826_the_eternal_flame/

The Eternal Flame

Posted on Aug 26, 2009

By Marie Cocco

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In 1963, his first year in the Senate, one of the first bills he sponsored was “Hospital Insurance Program Under Social Security for the Aged”—that is, Medicare. There was legislation establishing college aid programs and to fund metropolitan mass transit systems. Other bills would provide vocational training for the unemployed, and establish the National Arts Foundation.

That was just the first year.

In the decades that followed, Kennedy’s passion for helping average Americans—his liberal impulse guided by a deft, and often bipartisan, legislative hand—would shape what this nation became.

If you have taken a community college course, or had a child get a chance to attend college because these low-cost institutions have become a crucial stepping stone for millions, you have Ted Kennedy to thank. So it is for school lunches, child care for military families, civil rights and voting rights for African-Americans and other minorities, and Head Start.

If you have a pension from a private employer, it is protected under laws Kennedy wrote. If you have a physically or mentally disabled child, he or she is entitled to a public education because of Kennedy’s efforts. He was tough on drugs, consistently promoting new law enforcement methods to disrupt the narcotics trade while simultaneously pushing better treatment for the addicted.

He was instrumental in writing the law barring age discrimination, and he authored the Americans With Disabilities Act. The forerunner to the landmark law prohibiting discrimination against the disabled was a measure Kennedy promoted in 1972: “To prohibit discrimination against handicapped persons in federal programs.” The broader Americans With Disabilities Act would take almost two decades to be enacted—in 1990.

This is a part of the Kennedy legacy that often escapes notice. He was, in every respect, a man of his times. But he was very often ahead of his times.

He was an environmentalist, protecting oceans and other waterways, before the environmental movement emerged as a political force. He sought legislation “to include expenses of prescription drugs in the Medicare program” in 1965. The Medicare prescription drug benefit would not be enacted until 2003.

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To eulogize Kennedy as a “liberal lion” is only half a truth. He was a fierce protector of any American who did not have the opportunities the Kennedy family so notably enjoyed.

He is gone now, but his dream shall never die. It lives because Kennedy’s work brought it to life for millions of Americans, and for millions still to come.