Posted by
Bert Chapman on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 4:12:12 PM
My morning drive to work was invigorated considerably by the news of Ted Kennedy's death. While he may have had collegial relationships with many of his Senate Republican colleagues and been a skilled parliamentarian, I cannot allow the orgy of revisionist history and mainstream media hagiography which are greeting his death to go unquestioned.
Most of what is wrong with America today features Kennedy's fingerprints. As a liberal Democrat, Kennedy's political career was predicated on increasing the aggrandizing power of the federal government and reducing individual autonomy and responsibility. His political power base was built on creating a class of individuals utterly dependent on the federal government for the preponderance of their economic livelihood. Kennedy thought the federal government represented an unlimited piggy bank from which money could be borrowed and spent endlessly without worrying about the consequences. When Kennedy became U.S. Senator in 1962, U.S. public debt was $302.928 billion and as of Aug. 25 it was $11,730 trillion! Legislation Kennedy advocated and crafted over his 47 years in the Senate helped accelerate that debt and are responsible for contributing to our fiscal problems today which will not be resolved by further expansions of governmental spending and economic intervention. At no time in his political career has Ted Kennedy expressed concern over the debt burden individual Americans and the American government have accumulated or take any constructive legislative steps to rectify this problem. He has also uncritically embraced the intellectually dubious environmental policies of cap and trade which would seriously injure the economic prospects of the average Americans he claims to care about.
As a long-time member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kennedy sought to expand the rights of criminals, lessen police power, was hostile to crime victims, and sought to ensure that federal judicial appointments adhered to his liberal government interventionist and anti-Judeo-Christian worldviews. Kennedy's shameful and fraudulent rhetoric against Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination in 1987 cost that court the opportunity to have what could have been one of its greatest justices and show the abject moral character symptomatic of the Chappaquiddick Mariner. Much of the decline in the civility of American political discourse stems from Kennedy's infantile tirade against Bork but you'll never hear most media portrayals of the Dread Ted hold him accountable for it. Kennedy has also been particularly egregious in pandering to the leftist victim grievance mentality of many Black Americans instead of encouraging them to take full advantage of American opportunities by educating themselves and living moral and law abiding lives.
On national security policy, Kennedy favored the nuclear freeze which would have disarmed our military as it was increasing its strength in the 1980s enough to enable us to win the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Kennedy favored delegating American national security policymaking to the United Nations, opposed giving American soldiers and intelligence agents the tools and freedom of action they need to defeat Islamist terrorists, and provided aid and comfort to the terrorist Irish Republican Army. He has opposed ballistic missile defense systems and resolute responses to the emerging threats posed by Iran and North Korea.
Continuing to social issues, Kennedy's infamy accelerates. Despite claiming to be a Catholic, his life and career demonstrate no evidence of Christian redemptive living let alone the incorporation of such living into governmental policymaking. He was an advocated of unrestricted abortion, opposed prayer in schools, enthusiastically endorsed embryonic stem cell research, and favored the radical aims of homosexual activists. Despite never attending public schools, Kennedy's long-term service on the Senate Education Committee enabled him to craft a large variety of ill-advised federal education policy and seduced President Bush into believing he shared his desire for educational reform in the controversial No Child Left Behind program. Kennedy sought to deny parents the opportunity to remove their children from failing public schools and transfer them to more successful public or private schools. Kennedy did not seek to encourage students or teachers to achieve personal academic excellence. He just thought throwing more money was the solution to every educational problem. How can you expect someone who was expelled from Harvard for cheating on a Spanish examination to speak with credibility on educational issues is beyond me.
Kennedy's reputed health care expertise is also fraudulent. Despite the negative personal service and economic performance of government run health in numerous countries, Kennedy arrogantly thought that the "public option" will reduce health care costs and improve health care performance and quality. He and his ideological kindred spirit Barack Obama seek to impose a "one size fits all" approach on health care to a subject which eventually effects all 300 plus million Americans without regard for how it will affect our lives. Of course, Ted Kennedy never had the slightest idea of the health care realities and concerns of Americans outside the Beltway, those covered by the federal employees benefit plans, or the Kennedy compounds at Hyannis Port or liberal vacationland Martha's Vineyard.
His personal life was also a shambles. He should have been sentenced to death for murdering Mary Jo Kopechne though his political connections and personal wealth helped him dodge what should have been a trip to death row. Behind a facade of rhetorical compassion for the purportedly underprivileged, he was a rampaging philanderer and alcoholic who allowed his nephew William Kennedy Smith to rape a woman on a Florida beach in 1991. Unfortunately, Kennedy wealth enabled them to hire lawyers with the skill to acquit young Kennedy. Kennedy personified political sleaze like few late 20th and early 21st century politicians with the possible exception of Bill Clinton. Kennedy's own degenerate behavior also probably drove his first wife to alcoholism.
Our nation and world are far better without Ted Kennedy and this nation needs to get over its prepubescent puppy love affair with him and his self-serving and often degenerate family. He is the consummate example of how not to live a personal life and of someone not to entrust with any level of governmental authority. The wisdom of Daniel 5:27 must serve as his legacy!