9.01.2009

The Old Git Died While I Was Out

I had plans to write during my vacation, but the pull of perfect weather, sandy beaches, the pool, and fun with family and friends was too much to resist. And while I was out of blogging action, that old bastard Ted Kennedy up and died. All I could muster in response was "well, it's about goddamned time!" I may have danced a small jig, too.

I did get to answer a million questions from my daughter about who Teddy was, "why are all those people dressed in black?", "did you like him, dad?", etc. For some reason, others in our beach house felt compelled to watch the coverage. And for the record, my answer to whether I liked him or not was, "I didn't know him personally, but I strongly disagreed with most everything he ever said or did." It's a similar answer I give when she asks whether I like the president or not; it's not about personality or likability, it's about ideas. That's as far as I'm willing to go with a 5-yr-old right now.

One comment I heard from others at the house was that even if they didn't agree with Kennedy, he was a good man, and acted in a principled fashion on his beliefs. My assertion that he was an unprincipled power luster was rejected as absurd. "He's already got all the power he could ever use!" was the argument against mine. To which I say: bullshit. An evil scumbag like that is motivated primarily by his thirst for power over others, and in Kennedy's case, by systematically attacking individual rights in every way he could. Just becoming a senior senator is not enough for someone like that, and they aren't happy unless they are doing something like, say, working on a bill like Obamacare which would enact perhaps the largest violation of individual rights in our nation's history. If Teddy really thought he was "doing the right thing" based upon his altruist morality -- an assertion I highly doubt, as he was much too jaded, cynical, and slippery to be a wide-eyed idealist -- then it is merely his professed morality which is evil, as well as all of the actions he took. This doesn't leave much room for him being good, in any way, shape, or form. In other words, a person can be judged to be a bad person even if he thought his "heart" was in the right place. Good intentions don't excuse bad actions or bad philosophy.

I was very happy to see Doug at The Rational Capitalist take aim at Kennedy and his legacy. In his post, "In Memoriam - an Anti-American," Doug takes both Kennedy and the media to task:
Ted Kennedy stood for everything that America is not - which is precisely why he is being posthumously lionized by the liberal media....

Kennedy's body of "work" in the Senate is a paean to the liberal values of statist control and wealth redistribution excepting, of course, his own. Apparently, he considered his "lifework" to be his efforts on behalf of socialized medicine, and, fittingly, Obama's statist monstrosity has now been renamed in his honor.

Indeed, Kennedy's second-handed prestige, derived from an aristocratic life of pull peddling and power lust, represents everything America is not.
Finally, I can't resist quoting Billy Beck on Kennedy, in an open letter to Mary Jo Kopechne:
Your killer's brain finally rotted out, today. It's something of a fitting end, given how the evil toad lived anti-conceptually all his rotten life.

The horrible thing is gone now. I hope it died choking like Josef Stalin.
To those who think this is too harsh, or unbecoming of the debate, keep in mind what Kennedy stood for and that his every official action was to increase both his and the government's power over your life. The man worked tirelessly to take your freedom. Should one mince words when describing him?

Driving into work this morning, I saw a Boston city bus with a special tribute on its scrolling sign. In between the standard items stating the route number and end stations of the bus, it said "Thank you Senator Kennedy!" I looked at other buses, and this message was the personal initiative of one little fool of a bus driver. Thank you, Mr. Bus Driver, for advertising your idiocy to the world.

Now that I'm back in Massachusetts, I fear that I'll be hearing about the old bastard for much longer than the rest of you, especially as all the scheming parasites angle for his job. The only possible bright side in this is that it's hard to imagine how someone worse than Teddy could be elected. But if any state could do it, it would be this one.

Ted Kennedy: Good riddance to bad rubbish.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Don't hold back! Lol.

Kelly Valenzuela said...

Rush Limbaugh said it best about Kennedy. "He was the lion of the Senate and we were his prey."

The Rat Cap said...

Good post and thanks for the link.

The statement your friend made re already having enough power...and your response that a certain amount of power is "never enough" for someone like that really struck a chord with me. For this kind of mind, it is, indeed, never enough. How much power satiates the power luster's appetite?

It reminded me of something I heard Leonard Peikoff (I think) once say regarding Bill Clinton's sexcapades with his secretaries. He said something to the effect that the thrill he gets out of having sex while other's are in the next room is related to his desire to control reality. In other words, the desire is not just to control other people but to in a sense control reality itself by controlling other's perceptions - a sort of God complex. Of course, this can be seen with the notorious megalomaniacal types such as Stalin, Hitler, Mao, etc. that go to such extreme lengths to control every aspect of what is perceived by the citizenry.

Anyway, we should never underestimate the power luster's thirst for more power and think that "they now have enough."

Also, the sentiment that "he thought he was doing good" is the essence of the problem - that liberals are 'well-intentioned idealists' albeit flawed - this is the basis of the left's dismissal of Clinton's crimes or of the atrocities routinely committed by socialist dictators - as you point out, it is motivated by altruism as an ideal

Thanks again for bringing this critical point out

Doug

The Rat Cap said...

Also, the "well intentioned" idealist sentiment is the basis for why the left decries supposed corporate exploitation and pursues heinous violations of rights in the form of anti-trust yet is willing to entrust the state (who controls the police!) with an unlimited amount of power. In other words, the government is supposedly "well intentioned" because they are trying to do "good" whereas the corporations must be doing "evil" since they are motivated by profit.

This is just the absolute essence of everything that is wrong!