Chris Hedges: McGovern: He Never Sold His Soul

[marmar]

from truthdig:



McGovern: He Never Sold His Soul

Posted on Oct 21, 2012
By Chris Hedges


In the summer of 1972, when I was 15, I persuaded my parents to let me ride my bike down to the local George McGovern headquarters every morning to work on his campaign. McGovern, who died early Sunday morning in South Dakota at the age of 90, embodied the core values I had been taught to cherish. My father, a World War II veteran like McGovern, had taken my younger sister and me to protests in support of the civil rights movement and against the Vietnam War. He taught us to stand up for human decency and honesty, no matter the cost. He told us that the definitions of business and politics, the categories of winners and losers, of the powerful and the powerless, of the rich and the poor, are meaningless if the price for admission requires that you sell your soul. And he told us something that the whole country, many years later, now knows: that George McGovern was a good man.

McGovern, even before he ran for president, held heroic stature for us. In 1970 he attached to a military procurement bill the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment, which would have required, through a cutoff of funding, a withdrawal of all American forces from Indochina. The amendment did not pass, although the majority of Americans supported it. McGovern denounced on the Senate floor the politicians who, by refusing to support the amendment, prolonged the war. We instantly understood the words he spoke. They were the words of a preacher.

“Every senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave,” he said. “This chamber reeks of blood. Every senator here is partly responsible for that human wreckage at Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval (hospitals) and all across our land—young men without legs, or arms, or genitals, or faces or hopes. There are not very many of these blasted and broken boys who think this war is a glorious adventure. Do not talk to them about bugging out, or national honor or courage. It does not take any courage at all for a congressman, or a senator, or a president to wrap himself in the flag and say we are staying in Vietnam, because it is not our blood that is being shed. But we are responsible for those young men and their lives and their hopes. And if we do not end this damnable war those young men will some day curse us for our pitiful willingness to let the Executive carry the burden that the Constitution places on us.”

McGovern’s moral condemnation was greeted in the chamber with stunned silence. When one senator told McGovern he was personally offended by his remarks, McGovern answered: “That’s what I meant to do.” ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/mcgovern_he_never_sold_his_soul_20121021/

[Douglas Carpenter]

1. That's exactly it. In a political culture of phonies he was the real thing. Just about the only one

Even when he would rarely break from standard liberal positions on a couple of occasions taking positions I disagreed with- it was not a sell out - It was because he thought about it thoroughly and decided to do what he felt was best -There just are not many politicians like him- As Bobby Kennedy once said. "George is the most decent man in the Senate. In fact - probably the only one,"


"Above all, being a Democrat means having compassion for others. ... It means standing up for people. who have been kept down" - George McGovern

[xchrom]

2. Du rec. Nt

[Ninga]

3. Class act all the way. n/t

[Texin]

4. First candidate I ever voted for

I was nineteen that November - and it was the first time the legal voting age had been dropped to eighteen.

He was always a class act. But politics was different then. I swear I think even Nixon wasn't as dirty as the Teabaggers are today. And Romney is one of the oiliest slime suckers I've ever seen in politics. A real bottom trawler.