From NRO's The Corner...
"There is a lot one could say of Senator Kennedy—positive from supporters, negative from critics. They say one should not speak ill of the dead. True. But I am of the view that one should not lie about the dead either. So I will not go on.
Whatever one thought of him, there is no one in the Senate of his force, sheer power, and impact. If you think there is his equal in this, tell me who it is.
He and I attended the same church, and whenever he saw me he would be pleasant. But in the political battles, he was a fierce and tough—and sometimes a ruthless—operator. When he spoke in the Senate, people paid attention, regardless of party. As CNN reports: "Kennedy was one of only six senators in U.S. history to serve more than 40 years. He was elected to eight full terms to become the second most-senior senator after West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd. He launched his political career in 1962, when he was elected to finish the unexpired Senate term of his brother, who became president in 1960. He won his first full term in 1964."
His biography is not complete without noting the tragedies of and in his family. Nor is it complete without saying he was an early and strong supporter of comprehensive health-care reform and also the campaign of Senator Barack Obama.
There are the personal failings and tragedies that will mark any obituary of his as well, including the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. Were it not for his self-imposed recklessness, he may very well have been president.
He assaulted our causes and nominees with vigor and rancor. Still, in his day he was a powerful orator—and historians will mark his speech to the 1980 Democratic convention as a high water mark and example. To his supporters, I simply give them his words, and leave the rest to historians: “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.” To the American Left, he was their lion. To the American conservative movement, he was our bane. But today, we put the politics aside and wish him and his family God’s peace."
A fairly evenhanded treatment for a man whom many might feel doesn't deserve it.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
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13 comments:
Gee, Bennett took the wind right out of my sails. I've been waiting for this day a long time and I had some really nice material saved up. But now I can't use it, so I'll play along.
I'd like to second Mr. Bennett's sentiment and express my heartfelt condolences to all the kind and decent members of the Kennedy family...both of you.
A nice and perfectly appropriate tribute.
Let's give the man a few days and then move on forever from Camelot.
And let's also hope Barney Frank doesn't throw his hat in the ring for that Senate seat.
Good Grief! I didn't think of that. You have me reaching for the Scotch now. Barney Frank a US Senator? And they would probably elect him too.
We've lost a powerful, flawed man of and truly for the people of this great country; people he served for most of his too-short life.
Kennedy's passing is, as is any human being's, something to be mourned or at least acknowledged with decency and respect. I don't love every action or position taken by the man at all, and am appalled by some, but I think in the balance of his life, he's done a great deal more good than harm.
I also don't love Bennett's reaction, but it is at least a lukewarm nod to someone he apparently sees as a worthy opponent to his 'side'. Most of all, I am very grateful that it had the side effect of neutralizing G(H)D's planned casket-side clown routine, however much of a crowd-pleaser dancing on someone's grave might have been.
In all seriousness, while I may disagree with the sentiment, I very much respect the grace and practical-mindedness Sally exhibits.
Me a clown? Oh it on now baby! I've got to run out and do a job which is a pretty good indication I'm not a Kennedy kind of guy. But I will post what I put up on my Facebook page but deemed inappropriate for this forum. Pumkinhead you're invited to be my Facebook friend. I've always loved people like you...you know, morons.
Here we go:
I would like to extend my deepest sympathies to the family of Ted Kennedy and to the many communists, socialists and fascists who so loved the man. He was your go to guy for over four decades. Even when he killed a girl, your loyalty never wavered. He was an inspiration to dictators as well as bloated alcoholics throughout the world. Good bye Teddy, and I hope they have Chivas Regal where ever you are.
I will not argue with any of you over your opinion of the late Senator Kennedy. But I would be remiss if I did not take the opportunity to strees some of his good points and finer acheivements.
Sh-t, I can't think of a single one.
A Senator Barney Frank would make a great partner to Senator Al Franken. Would Barney frank Al or would Al be Franken Barney?
Ghost - I liked your comment. Just about all of it. There is one easily overlooked word pairing in there though, that I wonder if you intended the way I perceived it. It is a rather insidious practice, in my observation, that I hear most often from people with left-leaning ideologies but I often wonder if those who say it actually give any thought to what they are saying. It is your use of the words "the people". Think about it for a second. I am hardly a shining example of the species but excepting a few mornings after particulary festive weekend outings with my college buddies, I have always considered myself to be human or, a member of the group: "people." But I am one of those who did not see Senator Kennedy as someone who was "of and for" me. Not even close. I found him to be "of" a society of which I wanted no part, one in which success was achieved through one's ability to escape accountability for one's actions and choices. And one, within which, the confidence that no such accountability would EVER befall him, only enabled him to choose such behavior again and again. I did not see him as "for" me either. Not even close. I found his policies, the effects from which he was also well-insulated by Camelot's inpenetrable walls, to be disrespectful of and even injurious to the very principles upon which our nation was founded. I'm not saying that there weren't positive aspects of this man's life. I'm not saying that he never contributed to some legislation with which I agreed or even applauded. I am saying that I tend to infer from the way you used "the people", that my views of this man and his policies make me, well, not one of the people. Maybe I'm a little sensitive because of the frequency with which Madame Speaker and her ilk use it rebukingly and dismissively to those who express counterviews to the way she and they wish to govern. But it sounds to me as if the left feels that they alone get to decide who "the people" are. Maybe that is why so many of us people wannabes (or people thoughtweweres) are so concerned about how we'll fare in whatever health care system survives this rush to reformation. Thin skinned? Maybe. Thin on respect for this man? Afraid so.
Bonus question: No Child Left Behind. If I am to believe the left over the past several years, it was a collosal Bush Administration failure. But if I am to believe the left over the past several months, and especially over the past several hours, it was an example of brilliant legislation that this Lion of the Senate wrote and husbanded across the aisle to gain bi-partisan support. Since I've heard not one word to this effect from anyone on the right, I have to ask my favorite lefty, "Which is it?" Second bonus question. I agree with your comment about dancing on graves. I don't like it. I'm not happy he died. I see no goodness in his death other than the reminder that we are all just people and that no matter who we are, or think we are, death will someday greet us all. But, how much dancing on graves do you think there would have been if President Bush had died last night instead? My bet is on the square marked "plenty".
Ditto Mudge. We're going to have to find a way to end up in the same duck blind this year. Yeah, I guess we can squire along CW too...and maybe his pal, brother Kurt. The conversation would be way too fun to miss. Combine our crowd with my crusty old salt father and this thread could go on for hours.
Ages ago, when Til Hazel was still counting his first Tyson's coin and the mall was young, my mother was in one of the Corner department stores. She was bent over looking at skivvies for Dad, and needing a broader view, backed up and bumped butts with another bent over patron. Seems Teddy was looking at socks on the opposite rack. Now, by this point Mom had lived the Navy wardroom wife's lot for over twenty years and was accustomed to a certain level of civility between men and women. As she retold the tale later (with great disdain and derision), Mr. Kennedy stood up straight, glowered at my mother, Harruumphed, and stalked away without a word. Mom despised the whole clan, but Teddy's omission of a courteous "Excuse me, ma'am" forever lumped him with Bella Abzug, Hanoi Jane Fonda, Roger Mudd, and snakes as far as she was concerned. She must've retold that story a hundred times over the years...never forgave him.
Good points made here. I'd like to make one or two more.
Is Kennedy worthy of all this praise? No one can deny his personal life was a mess up until the point he was too old to pursue his vices. And the reality of his hell-raising was a lot worse than his reputation, as bad as it was. It's a sordid tale if you care to look. Point being, I think we can all agree he was a pathetic figure in his personal life. So that brings us to his public life.
What did he accomplish? As Dick Morris said, Kennedy was the bellwether of the left. He never strayed from liberal orthodoxy. Why? He was much more liberal than his brothers and father. Joe Kennedy once said, none of my boys will be a God-damned liberals (sorry Joe, you missed that one). I think his intransigence was his survival mechanism. He had so much baggage and so many character flaws he felt if he stayed staunchly and reliably left, he would be safe in the bosom of the liberal establishment. He believed they would defend him come what may, and he was absolutely right. So his accomplishments aren't particularly noteworthy. They are one and the same with the accomplishments of the left since LBJ's Great Society, no more no less.
What I'm more interested in is his psyche. As we all know he was born into privilege and given everything. He never had to worry about paying a mortgage, educating his children, building a business or meeting a payroll. He had no everyday economic experience what so ever. The question is how do people like this think? Given their life experiences, or lack thereof, how will they react to real world situations where they have no basis for judgement? In my opinion I think most have feelings of guilt and inadequacy; how could they not? In turn this makes them susceptible to the liberal lie that the left is for the disadvantaged and downtrodden. But was Ted? He never rejected privilege, quite the contrary. No, for Ted he would assuage the demons with politics, or “public service” as the Kennedys like to say. He would make you give your money away. He would make you charitable toward people and institutions he and his ilk thought were deserving, never mind what you thought. His hypocrisy knew no bounds. Not only was his personal charitable giving minimal (http://tsfiles.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/charity-donations-and-liberal-hypocricy/) hell he wouldn't even pay his fair share. The Kennedy family trust is incorporated in Fiji so as to avoid the American taxes he so loved to raise.
I think Teddy was a typical rich liberal. Not really sure what to do with himself, unable to handle the disdain and ridicule his wealth invited. He wanted to live up to the family name but he didn't have the courage or conviction to once go off the liberal reservation. His last wife, although 25 years younger, was more of a mother than anything else. When I think of Teddy I think of the smiling little boy in short pants sitting on his Daddy's knee, coddled, protected and consequently flawed and unbalanced. Unfortunately we were all made to paid for his pathos.
Hello Mudge, I always read your comments eagerly, and almost missed this above in my crowded RSS reader!
I'd love to respond more fully, but I know what I'd say would stick in a lot of craws and there'd be a wave of brilliant anti-Kennedy debate, which would run counter to my objective: to be people first, political animals last. Also, I've got a toddler on my back (quite literally, as well as metaphorically) and Saturday morning is big around these parts. So I'll be brief as possible and try to answer your key issues with my comment.
[of the people] By "people", I mean all, inclusively as a group(not a specific cadre of constituents used in the case of most Senators such as MA voters, Irish Americans, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans, or Conservatives, etc.). I don't think I'm deciding who belongs in this group at all by defining it so broadly. But it sounds like you may be defining the word a bit differently if you don't think Kennedy should be considered among that group of "people" along with you and me. What makes him not of the people?
[for the people & 1st bonus ?] His legislative accomplishments included substantial collaborative initiatives focused on broad issues touching all of us: advancing civil rights, disability rights, health care, education, R&D, better armor for our men and women fighting in Iraq, etc. by finding consensus, working across the aisle to ensure that these bills benefited Americans in general, and passed. NCLB,which you brought up, is a great example of this. I'm not a fan of NCLB in practice (has its good parts, has lots of bad parts, has little funding), so I could say his work on it doesn't represent me, as an individual, but I do believe the solution (though not one I'd have liked to see) is an answer to the needs of the American people in general (just not me, in particular).
[2nd bonus ?] Let's say we were in some perpendicular universe in which CW & Friends (a Liberal-minded community) were gleefully mocking and celebrating the passing of [fill in the blank with powerful, favorite Right-leaning Senator in office for longer than you've been alive, Strom Thurmond, maybe? Helms?, Stevens?], or as you suggest, Bush, given that Kennedy's impact is probably more on par with the Executive Office. I'd feel just as compelled to ask our little community to consider the event with respect and decency as people first (in the broadest sense), and conservatives, liberals, whatever the case may be, last. I can't speak for the Left (and neither can you), just for myself. As Sally said, give it a couple days and move on to address the issues, rather than dance on the grave of the man.
I do hope that one of these days we have the opportunity to banter in view of CW's lovely Farm rather than in his virtual living room. What would bring that about, CW? A Blog table at a ... wedding reception, perhaps?
Ghost - Never meant TK wasn't a person. That would be a rather ludicrous stance. Especially with someone such as you who I have come to believe is an adept and thoughtful forensic pugilist.
I was addressing the commonly-used phrase used by wealthy liberals (or is it "progressives"?) who talk about "the people" as this helpless group who need their help to survive in this brutally unfair country of ours. That's why I went to intentional lengths to make clear that it was my inference, not your implication, that I was questioning. And if my inference was correct, I wanted to express that if TK was "of" that group and "for" that group as defined by the likes of Speaker Pelosi and like-minded people, that I understood, then, the distinction but felt that using the words, "the people" ought not be hijacked to mean a far smaller subset of what Mr. Webster might have defined it to be (yes, I realize he would have broken it into its two smaller components).
I also tried to make clear that I also applauded some of the late Senator's work. But that the body of his work was to dilute, through what I believe he would describe as governmental "remedy" and I would describe as governmental "intrusion" or "burden", the principles of our founders that each member of the group "people" is responsible for his/her own life and the outcomes of that life through his/her decisions and labors. I also believe that the founders believed such labors and decisions are challenging enough without governmental intrusion or burden adding to them (these are of course my own interpretations of the collective body of the founders' writings as I have read and understood them).
Pursuit of happiness is a tough lifelong journey and we are often our own worst enemies in that pursuit, making decisions to get the nearest, cheapest happiness at the expense of more distant, deeper and long-lasting happiness (i.e. immediate gratification). And as someone, who despite some relatively difficult challenges early in life, was taught to make decisions with a view to their consequences, and to work hard at pursuing my own happiness, I resent politicians who in the name of, quite often, "the people" who find themselves in the aforementioned straits by their "pursuit" decisions, make governmental policy that says, "Hey Mudge, we need to re-level the field the founders plowed because clearly it isn't working for 'the people.' So we're going to take a bit more of your earnings, we're going to give someone less qualified that position you were working for and we're going to re-wicker that health care that you are so fond of, so everyone can have even more of what you have."
As for grave-dancing, I do not, for one second, doubt that you would be among the more fervent voices calling for respect were the obituary for someone for whom liberals might feel compelled to regale. As I think I've stated in the past, I hold a decidedly different perspective than you of the way we should permit ourselves to be governed in this country, but I have come to respect you for the way you explain, defend and, when appropriate from your own principled foundation, critique your own sub-group of "the people". You are an able defender of your principles, and I greatly enjoy the fact that you have the courage to step into a conservative blog and make us think a bit more about how we express ourselves...and maybe even sometimes about how we think.
I look forward to meeting you (and just about everyone else on here, especially "anonymous--he or she is a prolific contributor) perhaps when CW uses his Google ad proceeds to host an annual CW crabfeast. C’mon CW, how many times do I have to beg? Share the wealth. OOPS! Ghost appears to be rubbing off on me.
Damn nice debate here, gang. Civil, high minded, just the way I like it. As for "the people", I tend to fall nearer Mudge on this one (surprise). The only phrase progressives/liberals use that sticks further in/up my craw is "working people".
As for an event to gather the CW flock, that sounds like a fun idea--something to spend some time thinking on.
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