From Taki

• The mythical anti-war movement. The Buckleyite project turned the American right inside-out, one of Murray Rothbard’s points.
• The trouble with Ted. Like all good liberals Teddy believed America’s greatness was in its government. If it is true that Kennedy represented what was best about our government, it must also be true that he represented what was worst.
  
  The American Spectator’s James Antle notes that, “Kennedy paid less of a price for behavior that led to the death of a human being than did professional football player Michael Vick for cruelty to animals.” Indeed. And for me, liberals’ ongoing love for his lifelong pursuit of “social justice” remains hard to reconcile with the fact that the career of Edward M. Kennedy would have never even been possible if he had not first used his privilege and family name to get away with murder.
  
  Mary Jo Kopechne, RIP, apparently was pure, a practising RC and a sincere RFK believer; she suffocated in that car and did not drown. Inexcusable. You can say it’s symbolic of putting your trust in such princes who don’t deserve it.
  
  Mark Sanford had an affair, none of our business, and used government money to have it. He didn’t kill anybody. Media hypocrisy. (But his treatment of the Clinton affair arguably makes him a target.)
  
  American statesmen are typically measured by how much they’ve “accomplished,” which basically means how much money or liberty they’ve extracted from citizens to put toward their own political ends. In his book “Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty” author Ivan Eland takes the opposite approach by categorizing American presidents by how little they accomplished, or in other words, actually took their oaths seriously by keeping the executive branch within its constitutional boundaries.

Labels: history, politics