Posted by
Dennis Pemberton on Tuesday, September 01, 2009 8:46:08 AM
Unable to completely whitewash Ted Kennedy's personal behavior, some attempt to place that swinish behavior on a scale, weighing his personal failures against his legislative "triumphs." However, both his public and private life are of a piece, and are both related to the late Senator's liberal soul. Whether he was thundering against the Iraq War (after supporting it) and undercutting the troops, or leaving a girl to drown in the back of his car while he slept off a bender; whether he was throwing a waitress on top of Chris Dodd at La Brasserie prefatory to creating a senatorial sandwich, or crafting immigration legislation in the 60's that dehumanized both us and the Mexicans flocking across the Rio Grande, he was always true to himself. He was selfish, and he thought little of people. Oh, he always claimed to work on behalf of the little guy, but it was always on Ted's terms. You will take his hand and let him lead you, or he will smack you with it for your impudence. For he cared little about your liberty, just as he cared little for the dignity or lives of scores of women over the years. And that is the essence of modern liberalism- They will deprive you of liberty, ostensibly to make your life better, but in reality to exercise power over you for the sake of exercising power over you. Just as rape is less about sex than power, so too is liberal policy less about helping you than creating and maintaining a stranglehold on your freedom.
As an aside, Melissa Lafsky of HuffPo posted an article wondering if Mary Jo Kopechne would think that her death was "worth it." In my response, I wrote:
"Would she think what was worth what? If you mean that his life was worth hers, she would not wonder about that, because her life was not given to save Kennedy's. He left her to die. However, you stumble upon something. Would Mary Jo Kopechne, if she could see the future as she died, would she see that her death prevented Kennedy from becoming President, and think her death was worth that?
Or maybe, as she breathed the last cubic inch of air in that car, she damned his black soul to hell."
Perhaps predictably, the ardent defenders of the 1st Amendment at HuffPo would not post my response.