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Teddy, as his many "friends" have come to know him best . . ." . . . my good friend, Ted Kennedy." (Barack Obama) Bill and Hillary Clinton refused to kow-town to "Teddy," so the Obama endorsement was payback. John McCain also called Ted Kennedy a "friend." Clearly, the people in DC need a much better class of friends.
The idol-worship about Ted Kennedy that's going on today on cable TV is sickening. Yes, he's capable of being "amiable," but this is man whose entire life is replete with malicious actions -- from leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to drown, to driving his first wife literally to drink and mental illness, to conspiring with the KGB (scroll down) to steal the 1984 election from Ronald Reagan.
No, I don't want any human being to experience stroke or seizure disorder -- and he probably has suffered both -- but enough is enough. He may be a good something (a good liberal?), but he is in no way a good man.
He's a great advocate for "the poor," but his own inherited fortune -- he's one of the richest individuals in Congress -- seems to stay in his own bank account. He's a national disgrace.
John McCain, among many others, has said respectful things about Teddy. But would John really want such a man as a next-door-neighbor? My advice to John is not be on such friendly terms with a person who has done so much harm to other people.
After Teddy left Mary Jo to drown, his first calls were not to the fire or police departments but rather to a lawyer and a public relations man. Then, Teddy gave a national speech. He quoted liberally from his brother's Pulitizer-Prize winning book (written by a third-party, Ted Sorensen), Profiles in Courage. Somehow, he seemed to mistake his craven behavior for courage. A sickening display of egomania, but hey, that's our Teddy.
If you scroll down to read Professor Paul Kengor's interview about Ted Kennedy's flirtation with the Soviet KGB, you learn a great deal about the Massachusetts Senator. He was very willing to endanger Ronald Reagan's effort to win the Cold War. He saw no problem dealing in a friendly with Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB, and the man in charge of torturing and murdering Russian dissidents. Hey, Teddy thought, "it's okay, because after all the Republican Reagan is the major threat to the world. And maybe the Russians and I can keep Reagan from being re-elected."
That's the Teddy being lionized by a bunch of media sycophants on national TV. This is the Teddy, whose brother John said, "Let every nation know, whether friend or foe, that we shall bear any burden, pay any price, to ensure the survival of liberty."
Can you imagine such words coming out of Teddy's mouth? I can't.
As we're hearing ad nauseam, Ted Kennedy is the apotheosis of liberalism. He believes in collective responsibility -- that is, we're all responsible for "others" in our society. Exactly how we have collective responsibility -- looking out everyone else -- if we don't look out for ourselves is never made clear.
Redistribution of income -- although not of HIS great wealth, which is not income -- pays political dividends. It has gotten Ted Kennedy elected seven times in Massachusetts. It's the politics of envy and of class warfare. It doesn't ever mention people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. If Ted Kennedy, worth $100 million-plus, ever earned a dollar in his life -- aside from feeding at the public trough -- it's never been recorded.
As one thoughtful observer put it, "Poor people have been voting for Democrats for 50 years -- and they're still poor." When poverty is a source of so many Democratic votes, we can all be sure that poverty will endure as long as the Democratic Party.
That is Ted Kennedy's legacy: a pompous, self-absorbed man who has done almost nothing to advance the security and economic growth of his society. If he loved his country a little more -- and himself a little less -- America would be a better nation.
I don't wish him serious illness, but the U.S. Senate will be a much better place without him. He lacks not just physical courage but the kind of moral courage he needs to be honest about our country and its people.
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