Barry Soetoro

Teddy’s Temple: A Taxpayer-Funded Shrine to Leftism
by Robert James Bidinotto
At a time when the American taxpayer is on the hook for trillions in current and future federal spending—when the Congressional Budget Office warns that the current rate of federal spending is “unsustainable”—liberal Democrats in Congress have earmarked over $68 million of taxpayer dollars for a Boston shrine to the late Senator Edward Kennedy.
In a detailed report, the Boston Herald describes the planned Edward M. Kennedy Institute as a “temple for Ted Kennedy built with pork.”

According to their account, congressional Democrats—especially Massachusetts senators John Kerry and Edward Markey—have been cramming earmarks for the project into various government funding bills. The Herald found that Kerry and Markey even intend to siphon $28.9 million of the institute’s funding from the Defense Department budget, with almost $19 million of that amount already signed into law.
Why do they think taxpayers should be paying for this shrine? A statement from a Kerry spokesman declared that the institute will bring “knowledge and good citizenship to thousands of young people.”
This has raised the ire of taxpayer watchdog groups. “If the Kennedy family wants to honor the senator, they should find a way to fund it themselves,” David E. Williams of Citizens Against Government Waste told the newspaper. Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense agreed that “this could be independently funded and doesn’t need to be getting taxpayer dollars.”
Indeed.
Clearly, it’s not as if the Kennedy clan is without financial means to fund the project themselves. Or, if they wished, they could send out private appeals on the family stationery to, say, George Soros—or to John Kerry’s wife, catsup heir Teresa Heinz Kerry—right from their posh family compound in Hyannisport. I’m sure Laurie David could be prevailed upon to throw a fundraiser in memory of “the lion of liberalism” at the Beverly Wilshire.
However, their reliance on federal funding suggests a broader agenda is in play. After all, in an era of trillions in red ink, why would congressional liberals insist on adding tens of millions to a national debt that their president has promised to “get serious about”? Why earmarks for something that most Americans would find to be a frivolous expenditure?
Obviously because liberals don’t think of it as a frivolous expenditure. In fact, it is a project of great importance to them—because it’s meant to establish an official, symbolic, governmental shrine to political liberalism.
Consider: What, exactly, is significant about Senator Kennedy? What does he symbolize?
To millions in Flyover America, “Teddy” was despised as a pampered playboy, known for decades of drunken philandering even after his unforgivable role in the death of a girl in Massachusetts.
But to the left, Ted Kennedy was and remains an icon of liberalism—and specifically, a lifelong champion of socialized medicine. That, after all, was his signature cause.
So, I believe that establishing Teddy’s Temple with millions of taxpayer dollars is meant to serve twin purposes.
First, it is intended to enshrine the pretense that one’s politics is more important than any other aspect of one’s personal character. The issue here transcends Kennedy. A central pillar of the liberal worldview is its sweeping rejection of self-responsibility—its claim that no one is ultimately responsible for his actions, but is instead a victim or plaything of circumstances beyond his control. Liberals forgave Kennedy for his personal failings just as they did Bill Clinton—because in their worldview, nobody is to be held individually accountable, either for his sins or his virtues. The ironic flip side of this premise is that everyone is instead his “brother’s keeper,” responsible for everyone on the planet except himself.
Thus, professing liberalism gives you a free pass for all manner of personal immorality and irresponsibility. All you need to do to dry clean your reputation is to advocate policies that promote egalitarian “fairness” toward your fellow “victims of circumstance.”
Second, Teddy’s Temple is a means to an even broader end. That end is to elevate his liberal ideology to the status of an official, government-approved “ideal.” You can be sure that the “good citizenship” propagated at his shrine will translate into speeches, writings, video clips, totems, classes, and materials extolling his liberalism generally, and his advocacy of socialized medicine specifically—all paid for with your hard-earned dollars.
The leftists backing this institute know all this, and they intend for precisely these lessons to be preached there and absorbed by future generations. They understand perfectly well the power of moral symbolism and government-imposed “standards.” So, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute is calculated to establish liberalism’s anti-self-responsibility ideology as a national moral doctrine, to supplant the American legacy of individualism and personal self-responsibility that they despise.
I believe there is a third, more subtle goal here, too. Senator Kennedy was a fierce opponent of a strong national defense generally, and of virtually every specific military action our nation has conducted since World War II. Diverting millions from the Defense Department budget to the Kennedy Institute can only symbolize the liberal value hierarchy, which places a moral priority on domestic social-welfare programs over national defense.
Opposition to federal funding for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute has focused almost exclusively on its ballooning costs to the taxpayer. But we should not oppose this simply as a wasteful and unnecessary expenditure of federal funds. We should oppose the use of taxpayer dollars for this project on grounds of ethical principle—as both an explicit and symbolic rejection of American individualist ideals, and as a deliberate slap in the face of our men and women in uniform.
Thomas Jefferson summed up concisely the moral issue at stake: “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.”

The General and the Community Organizer

by Paul R. Hollrah
June 24, 2010

Channel-surfing from ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN through MSNBC and Fox News, the inside-the-beltway pundits had a field day trying to get inside the heads of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, General Stanley McChrystal, and McChrystal’s top aides. The one thing common to all of the analyses, by the most famous and highly-paid talking heads in the Western World, was that they are all wrong… dead wrong. What is certain is that they all owe General McChrystal and his senior aides an apology for assuming that they are lame-brained numbskulls.

The facts of the McChrystal case are not in dispute. General McChrystal and his senior officers allowed a reporter for Rolling Stone Magazine, Michael Hastings, to have almost unprecedented access during an extended stay in Paris. The extended stay was due, in part, to an excess of atmospheric ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano, keeping the McChrystal party grounded for days.

In an interview with CNN, Hastings reported that he had a tape recorder in his hand most of the time and that McChrystal was “very aware” that his comments would find their way into print. He said, “McChrystal and his people set no ground rules for their conversations, although they did ask that some parts of their conversations were off the record.” Hastings subsequently published a lengthy profile of General McChrystal on June 22, titled, The Runaway General.

As Hastings wrote in his profile, McChrystal thought that Obama looked “uncomfortable and intimidated” by the roomful of military brass during their first meeting. Of their second meeting, an advisor to McChrystal quoted the general as saying that it was “a 10-minute photo op.” He went on to say, “Obama clearly didn’t know anything about (McChrystal), who he was. Here’s the guy who’s going to run his f_ _ _ing war, but he didn’t seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed.”

As General McChrystal flew from Afghanistan to Washington to face Obama in the Oval Office, the almost unanimous opinion of the talking heads was that the comments made by McChrystal and his staff were off the cuff and inadvertent. But to believe that is to totally ignore who these men are.

General McChrystal and his top officers are not simple-minded, knuckle-dragging brutes. To the contrary, they are intelligent, thoughtful, highly educated, patriots… graduates of West Point and other fine universities… who are dedicated to duty, honor, and country. To think that such men would be so careless as to speak unflatteringly of Obama, Biden, and other top administration figures, in the presence of a reporter for a notoriously left wing publication, defies logic… at the very least. To think that men who are trained to be careful and deliberate in everything they do, could do something so careless and so unguarded is simply beyond comprehension.

I would argue that McChrystal and his aides knew exactly what they were doing.

From the day that he became the handpicked “spear carrier” for Obama’s unique brand of warfare… playing at being Commander in Chief while playing to his far left constituency… McChrystal’s life had been one of constant frustration. After telling Obama exactly how many troops he needed to carry out his mission, Obama dithered for months before deciding to give him just half the troops he requested. McChrystal could not have been happy about that.

The Obama team insisted on new Rules of Engagement designed to reduce collateral damage (civilian casualties). Obama’s ROE required that U.S. troops must be able to see the enemy with weapon in hand before they were allowed to return fire. One videotape circulated on the Internet showed a platoon of Marines pinned down by enemy sniper fire. But since the enemy was firing from some distance behind the open window of a building, the Marines could not actually see the weapon being fired. Although they were taking deadly fire, they were prohibited by the ROE from putting small arms fire or an RPG through the window opening.

Under Obama’s politically correct ROE, our soldiers and Marines were required to fight with one hand tied behind their backs. McChrystal could not have been happy about that.

A strict new interrogation policy, dictated by Attorney General Eric Holder, required that prisoners must be delivered to an Interrogation Center within twenty-four hours of being captured or be released. A great deal of actionable intelligence was lost as a result and battle-hardened enemy fighters were returned to the field to kill Americans. McChrystal must have found that to be incomprehensible.

But the greatest insult to our troops in the field, and to the officers who lead them, may be a new battlefield medal designed by the Obama team. It is called the Courageous Restraint Medal and is awarded to soldiers and Marines who demonstrate uncommon restrain in combat by not firing their weapons even when they feel threatened by the enemy. Would we be surprised to learn that the preponderance of these medals were awarded posthumously? McChrystal must have found that to be an insanity.

I suggest that, having his best military judgments subjected to the White House political sieve for nearly a year and a half, McChrystal decided that he’d had enough. And when he announced to his senior staff that he was prepared to retire they decided to push back… to make the most of a bad situation. It was clear that, if McChrystal were to simply take off his uniform and walk away, his retirement would be page-twenty news for a day or two before the mainstream media and the American people forgot all about him.

They had to make the most of his retirement because it provided a one-time opportunity to show the American people, as well as our enemies and our allies, that the man who claims the title of Commander in Chief of the U.S. military does not command the respect of our men and women in uniform. To make the most of that opportunity they had to choose their messenger very carefully.

They knew that, by openly showing their disrespect for Obama in front of just any newsman, they may not attract the attention they desired. Like any astute observer of the MSM, they knew that most reporters would turn on their own mothers if it meant a good story. But they could not take a chance that a mainstream media reporter might suffer a rare pang of conscience when confronted with the prospect of ruining the careers of some of the most senior officers in the War on Terror. They had to fix the odds as much as possible in their favor so they chose to use Michael Hastings and Rolling Stone Magazine.

During the long hours that General McChrystal was in the air between Kabul and Washington, Obama knew that he had just two choices… both bad. He could declare McChrystal to be an irreplaceable asset in the war effort, give him a public reprimand, and send him back to Kabul. Or he could fire McChrystal, sending a clear message that, at least in his own mind, he was the Commander in Chief.

In the former case, he was certain to appear weak and ineffectual… a man not totally in charge. In the latter case, he might at least win a few rave reviews from the Kool-Ade drinkers in the mainstream media. He chose the latter of the two options.

But what is now lost in all of the hand-wringing and speculation is the fact that McChrystal and his people have succeeded in doing exactly what they set out to do. They wanted to plant the seed in the minds of the American people that Obama is not up to the task of being Commander in Chief and that he does not command the respect of the men and women of the uniformed services… from the newest Private E-1 up to the top four-star generals and admirals.

That seed is now firmly planted and it cannot be unplanted.

From this day forward, no one will have to tell the American people that Stanley McChrystal is a true warrior, a man’s man, and that Barack Obama is nothing more than a… community organizer. Well done, General!