What America Might Be like Without the Kennedys:

Those not old enough to remember the day President Kennedy was shot, may not realize how significant Ted Kennedy's death was in symbolizing the end of an era for America.

In listening to the speeches the Kennedy brothers gave over the years, you can hear a common theme in all of them. It was a call for all Americans to be unselfish, and to constantly seek out ways to change and improve the quality of life for all races and religions; to promote peace among our neighbors, and to treat others as we would want to be treated. "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for you country."President John Kennedy said at his inaugural address.

For more than half a century, the Kennedy's brought the fight for the working class and the disabled into the lime light. With the principals of fairness and equality, which is the thread of their family's political and personal legacy, their contributions to American society gave a powerful voice to millions who would have otherwise remained in the shadows.

In the eulogy for his brother Robert, Ted Kennedy said,"Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not." Apart from their work on civil rights, there were two major pieces of legislation, that without Kennedy influence, might not be part of the America we have come to see as a better place. One was Medicare. The other was the Americans with Disabilities Act.

According to US government records, "Medicare is a social insurance program administered by the United States government, providing health insurance coverage to people who are aged 65 and over. It operates as a single-payer health care system. The Social Security Act of 1965 was passed by Congress in late-spring of 1965 and signed into law on July 30, 1965, by President Lyndon B. Johnson." Medicare was the brain child of President John F. Kennedy.

"The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 "is a wide-ranging civil rights law that prohibits, under certain circumstances, discrimination based on disability." It was also part of Ted Kennedy's body of work in the US Senate.

Today, there are some who would call Medicare a socialist policy, and the Americans with Disabilities Act a government intrusion. But others prefer to call them steps in the right direction for the benefit millions of Americans who would be lost now without them.

Both Medicare and the Americans with Disabilities Act represented a significant change in national policy.

"Having political or social views favoring reform and progress," and "a broad class of political philosophies that considers individual liberty and equality to be the most important political goals." are the dictionary definitions of liberal.

Yet, who would like to imagine how different this country would be without the Americans with Disabilities Act and Medicare?

If everyone agreed - America is perfect just they way it is, we would have no need for change. But America is not perfect.

Senator Kennedy said, "The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society. Our future may lie beyond our vision, but it is not completely beyond our control. It is the shaping impulse of America that neither fate nor nature nor the irresistible tides of history, but the work of our own hands, matched to reason and principle, that will determine our destiny. There is pride in that, even arrogance, but there is also experience and truth. In any event, it is the only way we can live."

In the midst of a life of privilege, the Kennedy brothers never lost sight of the fundamental ideals Joseph, their immigrant father instilled in them. They had never gone without food, but they remembered the hungry. They had never gone without shelter, but remembered the homeless. They had always been rich, but had never forgotten the needs of the poor.