I am more moved by Ted's death than I expected. I grew up among Protestant, Republican skeptics of the Kennedy myth -- a cynicism that lingered even after we all became Democrats.
It was Bobby's murder that I felt as a personal loss, since 1968 was my year of conversion. I think we lost our ignorance when Jack was killed and our blind optimism when Bobby died. I trust that Ted's realistic idealism has a true heir in President Obama.
I also had a feeling that the death of Eunice and her last brother is the real end of the truly liberal wind that Vatican II blew -- in a truly, "catholic" way -- all over the world. Eunice devoted herself to the feminine personal world, Ted to the masculine, political one. And they did not hesitate to insist on making a difference here, on this Earth, in this life-time.
For those of us who think the torch must be passed on, we may do it without their religion, but only because their ethics have become so ingrained in our secular lives.
We should find a way to make our generation as committed to ideals that transcend their roots in Irish, Catholic, Democratic dogma. Something as powerful a liberal counterforce to fundamentalist demogogues as these two were.
Cynicism will not do it.
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