Here’s Jeff Jacoby’s take, in today’s Boston Globe, on Ted Kennedy.
I almost always agree with Jeff on domestic issues (not so much, though, on American foreign policy). But here’s a domestic issue on which we disagree: the moral merits of the late Sen. Kennedy. I disagree in particular with this point that Jeff makes:
Born into riches and influence, he [Kennedy] could have lived a life of ease, indulging his appetites and paying scant attention to those less fortunate. He chose a different life, and became a towering advocate for the deprived, the disabled, and the dispossessed. I didn’t always like his answers, but I honor him for caring so greatly about the questions.
Jeff is too kind to Kennedy.
While Kennedy didn’t choose a life of ease, he did something much worse: he chose a life of power. That choice satisfied an appetite that is far grosser, baser, and more anti-social than are any of the more private appetites that many rich people often choose to satisfy.
Americans would have been much better off had Ted Kennedy spent his wealth exclusively, say, on the pursuit of sexual experiences and the building of palatial private homes in which to cavort, or to take drugs, or to engage in whatever private dissipations his wealth afforded him.
Instead, Mr. Kennedy spent much of his wealth and time pursuing power over others (and of the garish ‘glory’ that accompanies such power). He did waste his life satisfying unsavory appetites; unfortunately, the appetites he satisfied were satisfied not only at his expense, but at the expense of the rest of us. Mr. Kennedy’s constant feeding of his appetite for power wasted away other people’s prosperity and liberties.
UPDATE: Alan Bock makes a similar point.
