A Conservative Reflection on Ted Kennedy

Human events ^ | August 27, 2009 | Daniel J. Flynn

[notaliberal]

Political figures are said to be remembered in one line. George Washington was the father of his country. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot. Ted Kennedy let a woman die at Chappaquiddick and tried to cover it up. If obituaries rightly remember the Massachusetts solon as America's third longest serving senator, they do history a disservice by downplaying why he served so long in the Senate and not a day in the White House.

[notaliberal]

Truth hurts!

Human Events

[Birdsbane]

Teddy passed out on the bank of the slough for ten hours...that’s the truth.

[a fool in paradise]

And yet you can bet your bottom dollar that GW Bush’s obituary will including “Plamegate”.

[Right Cal Gal]

For all its touting of Ted Kennedy as some kind of mystical heroic politician by the MSM, I imagine the majority of the American people couldn’t stand him. They may have stopped speaking ill of him once his affliction was announced, but I doubt America held him in high regard.

[choctaw man]

As Laura said this morning, somewhat echoed by George Will, Kennedy helped clarify conservative positions: if he’s for it, conservatives are against it...can’t be much clearer than that...

[FatherofFive]

His brother Jack escalated the Vietnam War and is remembered as a dove who never, ever would have involved America in Vietnam had he lived. His brother Bobby, who wiretapped the Rev. Martin Luther King,Jr.’s phones and bugged his hotel rooms, is perversely remembered as a civil-rights martyr -- with his picture hanging alongside King’s in the homes of many black Americans. And Ted Kennedy, who caddishly left a woman to die as he plotted ways to rescue his political career, found himself canonized as a saint of the women’s movement.

Its who writes the news and the history that matters.

[raccoonradio]

>>The frivolity certainly masked pain. His was a life of tragedy.

Heard on WRKO Boston yesterday: “My mother kept voting for him. I asked her why. She said, ‘That family has been through so much...’”

YIKES!

THERE is the problem!

Vote with your head not your heart, people.

[NavyCanDo]

Here's a conservative/capitalist commentary on Kennedy.

My parents in the mid 1960s has a record Album with all the famous JFK speeches on it. I don't know whatever happened to it. I suspect it was sold at a Garage sale in the early 1970’s in a box containing other 1960’s record albums my parents owned. But as a true capitalist, I would love to know what that JFK album would go for on Ebay today.

[Constitutions Grandchild]

I didn't know Edward Kennedy. I'm certain he was beloved by his family, with the possible exception of his first wife, Joan, and made every attempt to put a life wracked by poor judgment and choices back on track. It is evident that until that very last decades of his life, he struggled mightily with judgment issues. I only know Edward Kennedy through the public lens of the coverage of his poor choices. It made me wary of him which may have been a great disservice, yet I still adhere to the old maxim “Everyone has a purpose in life — even if it is to serve as a bad example”.

I will refrain from further denigration of someone I admittedly only knew through the microscope of intrusive curiosity. His public and erroneously thought to be private choices are an enigma to me at best. What I cannot (and could not) tolerate is the fact that there is a definite inequity in the way his life has been judged and lived based on the facts in evidence (or lack thereof) that the rest of America is not privileged to experience. For all his battles on behalf of the little man, he never had to pay the price on the scale the rest of us "little people" would have. I expect (and hope) to see him in Heaven, for his sake, as I would hope to have the same mercy shown to me, and for the sake of his family, I wish them well and extend my sympathy for their loss. Let it be. Let it go and make sure to thank God daily for his guidance and protection, as there, but for the Grace of God, we might go. Good-bye, Senator, fare well.

[Big Jim 5711]

“A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death.”

Lucius Accius didn’t just write those words before the death of one “Edward Kennedy.” He wrote them before the birth of Christ. He knew nothing about print media, radio, television, cable, satellite communications — astroturfing, bootlegging, or even neckbraces, automobiles, and talk of family curses.

He *is,* however, the man Caligula always quoted when he intoned, “Let them hate, as long as they fear.”

As American civilization now weighs the worth of the loss of this “lion of the left,” I sincerely hope that *some” of us consider the true depths of the debt that we each owe on his behalf.

[ErnBatavia]

I was just flipping thru FOX news and watching the Kennedy Klan gathering for some sort of motorcade....and it got me to wondering - will Skakel get a weekend pass from prison to join the family festivies?