Let’s remember Teddy Kennedy, the Lion of the Senate, by this video, and its cause: universal health care reform.

Being rich and priveleged can make you stuck up and selfish and judgemental…or, in Teddy’s case, his voice cracking, it can give you a sense of compassion, mission, noblesse oblige.

This is the cause of my life. It is a key reason that I defied my illness last summer to speak at the Democratic convention in Denver—to support Barack Obama, but also to make sure, as I said, “that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American…will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not just a privilege.” For four decades I have carried this cause—from the floor of the United States Senate to every part of this country. It has never been merely a question of policy; it goes to the heart of my belief in a just society. Now the issue has more meaning for me—and more urgency—than ever before. But it’s always been deeply personal, because the importance of health care has been a recurrent lesson throughout most of my 77 years.

— Ted Kennedy

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