E.M. Kennedy
John Hagan writes:
There’s a lot of things that could be said about Ted Kennedy, but his contacts wtih the Soviet leadership asking them to work with him against President Reagan’s policies, which got almost no press at the time, or now, speaks of what a degenerate this man is. He had the gall to approach the USSR about destabilizing an American election with Soviet help, and yet I sit here this week listening to the press extol this man as if he is a combination of George Washington and Jesus Christ. These are strange times … and our nation is adrift, else a man such as this would never receive the accolades he is now being showered with.
I don’t think it’s proper to relish in his physical suffering, and I think people who engage in such ruminations in public do a disservice to political discourse, but the elevation of such an individual as Kennedy to near sainthood shows how distorted our public life has become.
LA replies:
I did not know about Kennedy’s attempts to collude with the Soviets against Reagan, which is shocking and shows him in his worst light.
Here’s all I have to say about Kennedy. I closely followed the Robert Bork hearings in 1987, listening on the radio. I was greatly impressed by Bork, as a man with a large grasp of the Constitution. Then I heard Kennedy bully and insult him in a way I couldn’t believe. I was shocked. I happened to be in the company of some leftists at the time. I told one of them that Kennedy was a “thug.” Up to that moment I still had some vestigial affection for him over the Kennedy thing. That affection vanished as a result of his treatment of Bork, and basically I have never thought about him since then, except to note from time to time what a leftist thug he is. Now we’ll be showered with a media blitz about him. I intend not to read a single article about his illness and not a single encomium to him. When I see a headline concerning him, my eyes will glide past it. He, and the hype around him, are of no interest to me.
By the way, Powerline has a similar take on Kennedy. After saying nice things about him, they focus on his behavior in the Bork nomination as uniquely egregious and as the true beginning of the unrestrained politics of personal destruction that has characterized our time.
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Paul Nachman writes:
I don’t wish Kennedy well, but I wouldn’t want anything to happen or have anything said publicly that would help make him a cheap martyr and give impetus to passing horrible bills in his honor. Since he’ll probably never be subject to an honest accounting that will hold sway in public, the best that could happen would be if he were quietly to evanesce from the national scene.
In one or the other part of this aggregate one-hour interview with Roy Beck, I learned of Kennedy’s (and Spencer Abraham’s and some third guy—probably Bill Clinton) monstrous knavery on the 1996 attempts at immigration sanity. He says something about how these three men irreversibly degraded the American future, visible after just ten years.
Kennedy is lower than scum.
David B. writes:
I grew up in a family that revered the Kennedys, and used to have a residual affection for them, as you write. Ted Kennedy has become a liberal sacred cow even before the worshipful coverage this week. He used to be heavily criticized for his actions, or lack of, at Chappaquiddick. In 1989, there was a lot of media discussion of the episode during the 20th anniversary. Most of the commentary was very unflattering to Kennedy. Since then, there seems to be a feeling among the MSM not to criticize EMK, but to lionize him for his liberalism.
Paul K. writes:
I join your other correspondents in dreading the prospect of weeks of hearing Teddy Kennedy praised from every political quarter.
I would grant that Kennedy’s a tireless worker. That’s the best the country preacher could come up with, when challenged to say something nice about the devil.
Karl D. writes:
As a Christian and a human I am having a real hard time trying to find any sympathy for the man. My heart goes out more to his family members. In my mind the man is just evil. His actions in the “Immigration and Nationality act of 1965” alone earn him my ire. During the Senate consideration of the bill in 1965 he said:
“First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same … Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset … Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated and deprived nations of Africa and Asia … In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think … The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.”
This statement and his recent attempt to expand immigration even further proves that he either is incredibly dim and is not capable of learning from his mistakes or that he is something else. Something else being that he is intentionally trying to undermine the country and is thus by extension, evil. To any fair minded person he will go down in the pantheon of American traitors along with Benedict Arnold.
Adela G. writes:
I have one word for and about Edward M. Kennedy: Chappaquiddick.
Not everyone has the conveniently short memories that the left prefers we have when regarding one of its favorite sons. His carelessness cost a young woman her life, his cowardice most probably contributed to her death.
That he returned to Congress after such a shameful tragedy to serve with what passes for distinction in our debased and debauched age reflects as badly on our culture as it does on him.
I will leave it to others to plead on his behalf for God’s mercy. I can’t bring myself to do more than say “God’s will be done.”
Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 22, 2008 01:38 AM | Send