Editorial: An advocate for the silent

Washington Post, Aug. 12: “In ancient Rome, the gladiators went into the arena with these words on their lips. ‘Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.’ … Let us begin the Olympics.”

On a sunny July day in 1968, Eunice Kennedy Shriver spoke these words at Chicago’s Soldier Field to an assembled group of 1,000 intellectually disabled athletes and 100 fans from 26 states and Canada. They are now the official oath of the Special Olympics.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver was a gladiator for a new age. Born into the closest thing America had to a royal family, this middle Kennedy child had a love of sports and an ability to see potential where others saw disability. Moved by the experience of her developmentally disabled sister, Rosemary Kennedy, and by the struggles of other people with disabilities at the facilities where she visited and worked, Ms. Shriver became an advocate for a population that had long lacked a voice. …

Much was given to Ms. Shriver, a Kennedy whose life was destined to play out on the national stage. But she used her influence not to build her own capital or advance her own interests but to help others, to open a world of new possibilities to a population that had been confined to silence and darkness.

Dallas Morning News, Aug. 13: The health care debate has gone crazy. Earlier this week in New Hampshire, a child stood outside the president’s town hall meeting holding a sign that read, “Obama Lies, Grandma Dies.” On the road outside the meeting, a man held up a sign that appeared to support the bloodshed of “tyrants,” while sporting a pistol (legally) strapped to his thigh.

What have we come to when an American citizen is bold enough to do something like that? And where are we going?

Health care reform is an enormously complex, vitally important issue, but it has become all but impossible to hold a civil discussion about it. These town halls have degenerated into ugly, obnoxious town hells. …

People have a right to know. A raucous minority of loudmouths is taking it away from them – and with it, the opportunity to change an unsustainable system.

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that what’s really broken is not only our health care system but our approach to democracy.