A Tribute to Ted Kennedy

posted at 10:49 pm on August 26, 2009 by Doctor Zero
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First things first: my condolences to the family and friends of the late Senator Ted Kennedy on their loss. The hours after a loved one passes from this world are a quiet cave of ice, where all of us must journey from time to time, and the memory of that place is the fellowship shared by all mortal men and women. I am here to speak ill of the dead today, and will make no pretense otherwise, but I also wish to respect the feelings of the living. I have been to that cave of ice. I wish Senator Kennedy’s survivors as swift a return as their hearts will allow.

It’s unfortunate that the personal sorrow of a man’s death must become a topic of political discussion, but it’s only fitting, because Ted Kennedy helped write the field manual to the politics of personal destruction. Politicians have been spreading scurrilous lies about their opponents since the early days of the republic, but Kennedy used scurrilous lies to destroy a man who wasn’t a politician: Judge Robert Bork. Kennedy kicked Bork’s Supreme Court seat out from under him, by questioning his very humanity. Let me repeat a Kennedy quote you have probably heard a few times today:

Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would sit in segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of million of citizens.

Thus began the modern era of below-the-belt, win-at-any-cost politics, played for the highest of stakes. Kennedy’s Democrats have never been shy about throwing elbows while the media referees are taking one of their frequent naps. Kennedy was the chief programmer for the endless loop of Great Society liberal arrogance, in which the Left used various social problems as the pretext for power grabs, which invariably made the problems worse… justifying further power grabs. This is the virus Democrats wish to introduce into the health-care system. The initial injection of a government-funded “public option” would lead to the total collapse of the health insurance industry, which would require even more sweeping government control of medicine, leading to a grim future in which titanic amounts of taxpayer loot would be shoveled into a system that produced sub-standard care and wealthy politicians.

Kennedy was a prince in the Aristocracy of Intent, absolved of every crime by the soaring nobility of his intentions. His constituents were delighted to watch him emerge from a warm bath of incredible wealth, to rail against men who were crass and selfish enough to accumulate their fortunes by creating jobs and meeting consumer needs. A straight line can be drawn from his limousine liberalism to Al Gore’s Learjet environmentalism. To be a Kennedy supporter is to endorse the notion that only the wise elite of the ruling class are morally entitled to the trappings of wealth. In the workers’ paradise, the masses will be uniformly poor, controlled, and maintained… while the commissars live in mansions, the Castros are billionaires, and the Kennedys hold court at Martha’s Vineyard. The desperate slobbering of people like Chris Matthews is an embarrassing illustration of the liberal’s enduring need to believe his leaders are giants in the earth, the elite of the elite. Of course the Left is feverishly working to deify Kennedy. Liberals see themselves as moral and intellectual heroes, and heroes kneel only before gods.

Kennedy is praised for his “passion” by the same people who recoil in horror from the passion of town-hall protesters and pro-life advocates. Awarding political power, and respect, on the basis of “passion” is another road to totalitarianism. The passion of the State’s acolytes will always eclipse that of hard-working taxpayers, who scurry home with one hand on their wallets, hoping to avoid the notice of a hungry government. There will never be a shortage of passionate advocates for billion-dollar spending programs.

Lust and sanctimony are a dangerous combination. We’ve had enough of politicians who believe their duty to their party, and its vision of the future, transcends their loyalty to the real America that lives beyond their ideology. Ted Kennedy unquestionably believed this, when he offered to help the Soviet Union defeat Ronald Reagan… or when he found it expedient to portray George Bush and the American military as the new management of Saddam Hussein’s torture chambers, even as American troops were locked in mortal combat with al-Qaeda terrorists. We’ve had enough of Senators-for-life, and royal families who use safe districts as dynastic thrones. We don’t need any more “visionaries” who think the purpose of the private sector is helping government to realize its true potential.

There’s no doubt that Kennedy was a towering figure with a legendary career full of important legislative achievements. The most important legislative achievement of a reborn America will be strangling all the other legendary careers in their cribs with term limits. Congressmen and Presidents were meant to bow before their constituents, not tower over them. I’m all in favor of naming the term limits bill after Edward Kennedy. It would be a fitting tribute.

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