American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family

by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

As early as 1691, Irish law prohibited Catholics from voting, serving on juries, attending university, practicing law, working for government, or marrying a Protestant.

“I’m not Irish, I’m American. Ireland never did anything for the Kennedys!”

“My ambition in life is not to accumulate wealth but to train my children to love and to serve America for the welfare of all people.”

“You only get one chance to make an impression,” she warned us, “and you should make a good one.”

“Never waste anything” was among her favorite mottoes,

Whether our station was humble or noble, rich or poor, our race black or white, our condition genius or cognitively disabled, we were equally treasured by our Creator.

“Grandpa was nice, kind, and generous, and never forgot his humble origins. Even after accumulating great wealth, he often cautioned the family, ‘We could all be thrown out on the street tomorrow.’”

the first Earth Day in 1970.

Sierra Club v. Morton, arguing that trees should have standing to sue lumber companies, is required reading for every student of environmental law.

Most ironically for an intelligence officer, Dulles seemed coldly uncurious about perspectives that differed from his own and that might be held in the rest of the world.

“It was remarkable to me that in this family, the girls’ opinions counted as much as the boys’,” she recalls. Unlike other Catholic fathers of his time, Grandpa Joe insisted that all his daughters attend college and find jobs, rather than wait for a husband.

‘These are people who face a lot of hardship and struggle, and if the government can help, then

bounds, the fun

Deadly Deceits.

“Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we are free at last.”

remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. . . . Our attitude is as essential as theirs.”

he asked white Americans to imagine what it feels like to be black.

Focusing, then, on our common concerns, rather than our differences, he argued that both the United States and the Soviet Union “have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race.”

“If we

Bridge of Spies.)

After we left the reservation my dad was quiet for a while, then he talked about how ashamed all of us should be—every American—that the Navajo lived in such desperation.

My father had a conservative nineteenth-century sensibility that children should be toughened by constant exposure to the elements and physical challenge. Wilderness and adventure, he believed, would imbue us with character as well as beef-jerky toughness; it would awaken our souls and instill in us the range of virtues that European Romantics associated with the American woods—self-reliance, Spartan courage, and humility.

my dad didn’t want his children to become indolent or diminished by privilege. He expected us to endure the exhausting climbs and occasional long days on a...

we were being schooled in gallantry and courage, prepared to take risks and make sacrifices to accomplish something for humanity.

Cardinal Wyszyński told us, “The best thing that happened to the Catholic Church in Poland was that it has been deprived of its wealth. This has brought the priests and bishops much closer to the people.

The world wanted our leadership, not our bullying—and Europeans knew the difference.

Aeschylus: “[A] good man yields when he knows his course is wrong and he repairs the evil. The only sin is pride.’”

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments but what is woven into the lives of others.”

Obama replied, “Tom Mboya is the reason I’m in this country.” Barack’s father, he explained, had been one of the first Kenyan students to come to America via Mboya’s “Airlift” program.

My children have diagnosed me with ADHD, and I certainly had a hard time sitting still and concentrating on work during those agonizingly endless school days.

Ironically, service to others, it turns out, gives us the power to emancipate ourselves from our destructive compulsions.

my recovery seemed to me as much a miracle as if I could suddenly walk on water. The experience of effortlessly overcoming an irresistible impulse—against which I had earnestly and energetically struggled for over a decade—fortified my spiritual awakening with ironclad faith.

I also learned that in order to stay sober I needed to find daily ways to be of service to others and constantly endeavor to lead a moral, rigorously honest, and upright life.

I was learning to listen. Hopelessness and desperation had made me teachable, and I became determined to clear up the wreckage of battered relationships that lay in the wake of my addiction.

I knew that in the event of a serious calamity my mother would always be there for me. There was nobody kinder when you were in a jam—particularly if you were injured. My mother was more concerned about our wounds and broken bones than we were. When someone tumbled from a roof, horse, cliff, or tree, or smashed up a car, she would never ask, “Who was at fault?” but, “Are you okay?”