"'We have hate abroad in the world, hate internationally, hate domestically where a President was assassinated and then they take the law into their own hands and kill the assassin,' he said.  'That is not our system.  We have to do something about that.  We have to do something about this hate, and you have to get to the root of hate.  The roots are poverty and disease and illiteracy.'

He had been sitting erect behind his desk, smiling, friendly, dignified at the beginning of his talk; he wasn't erect now but hunched forward over his desk, arms leaning on the pages that he had long since stopped reading from, and as he talked he leaned further and further toward the men sitting in front of him, his hands sometimes open in entreaty and sometimes clenched into fists. 

He had noticed something in the State Department briefing cards, he said. [....] 'We don't really recognize how lucky and fortunate we are until something tragic like this happens to us.  Here is our President shot in the head and his wife holds his skull in her lap as they drive down the street.  Here is our Governor who looked around and said, "Oh, no, no, no," and because he turned a bullet just missed his heart.  It went down through his lung into his leg and tore his left hand off.  And, then, yesterday they take the law into their own hands.  We have to do something to stop that hate, and the way we have to do it is to meet the problem of injustice that exists in this land, meet the problem of inequality that exists in this land, meet the problem of poverty that exists in this land, and the unemployment that exists in this land.'"
- posted by cjb @ 9:42 AM