Turbulance

We are in a time of unprecedented turbulence, of danger and questioning. It is at its root a question of the national soul. The president calls it "restlessness;" while cabinet officers and commentators tell us that America is deep in a malaise of the spirit -- discouraging initiative, paralyizing will and action, dividing Americans from one another by their age, their views, and the color of their skins.

There are many causes. Some are in the failed promise of America itself: in the children I have seen, starving in Mississippi; idling their lives away in the ghetto; committing suicide in the despair of Indian reservations; or watching their proud fathers sit without work in the ravaged lands of Eastern Kentucky. Another cause is in our inaction in the face of danger. We seem equally unable to control the violent disorder within our cities -- or the pollution and destruction of the country, of the water and land that we use and our children must inherit. And a third great cause of discontent is the course we are following in Vietnam: in a war which has divided Americans as they have not been divided since your state was called "bloody Kansas."

--Robert F. Kennedy, March 18, 1968, Kansas State University Speech