August 26, 2009

Ted Kennedy, R.I.P.

Sen. Kennedy sponsored both the 1965 immigration act and the 1990 act that created the absurd diversity immigration lottery. The irony is that Kennedy intended both laws to bring more Irishmen to America to vote for Kennedys. The two laws largely failed at that, but had remarkable unintended consequences.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

134 comments:

Roy said...

Quite possibly the worst American ever.

Mr. Anon said...

From the Drudge Report's Banner:

END OF CAMELOT
DEAD IN HYANNIS PORT... KENNEDY,
LION: In senate since 1962...
Man who knew triumph, tragedy...
Passing Of Era...
Liberal standard-bearer...
Legacy...

Legacy?

Mary-Jo Kopechne......dead.
Sensible, self-interested immigration policy............dead.
Right to keep and bear arms................ailing.
America...............dying.

Good Riddance Teddy. I don't regret his passing one bit. I wish he'd packed it in in that plane-crash in 62'.

Anonymous said...

Much as Canada's Pierre-Elliot Trudeau, TK was one the earliest of the current caste of 'supra-nationalist' parasites, who like to play God with their host societies. They of course know perfectly well that their privilege will shield them from any unpleasant consequences of their social engineering. TK's policies brought in a wave of Third world immigrants. They were closely related to the civil rights movement, which was a way to deal with the first wave of Third world immigrants, i.e. slaves from Africa. Both policies, not surprisingly, have been dismal failures.

Evil Sandmich said...

Someone with so much ill intent would have been put somewhat in check, were it not for his last name.

Svigor said...

The irony is that Kennedy intended both laws to bring more Irishmen to America to vote for Kennedys. The two laws largely failed at that, but had remarkable unintended consequences.

Failed to help the Irish, but managed to screw the English. I'm shocked, shocked...

Anonymous said...

I think the intention was to bring in more Catholics to vote for Kennedys, not necessarily Irishmen.

Anonymous said...

I hadn't heard that Kennedy supported the 1965 immigration bill in order to allow more Irish to come to the US. In 1965, the population of the US was about 194 million and of Ireland, 2.8 million, or about 1.4% of the US. Even if every single Irish person had packed up and moved to the US, it wouldn't have made much of a difference - the one-time increase would have been less than the annual population growth.

Truth said...

R.I.P.

I met and shook his hand once in my late teens. He seemed like a nice guy, although he could barely stand up at the time.

Speaking of aging, there was a huge retrospective on Good Morning America on the originators of Your Swipple movement today.

The broads seem to have aged much, much better than the dudes.

Jim Bowery said...

SL writes: Kennedy intended both laws to bring more Irishmen to America to vote for Kennedys

How does the math work on that?

Were Irishmen not considered European prior to 1965?

Anonymous said...

Steve, at the risk of appearing really crass, shouldn't the wish be R.I.E.A. (Rest In Eternal Agony)?


JT

Tanstaafl said...

The irony is that Kennedy intended both laws to bring more Irishmen to America to vote for Kennedys. The two laws largely failed at that, but had remarkable unintended consequences.

Is he documented somewhere expressing the intention you ascribe to him?

Given how he responded to the true consequences of the laws as they became increasingly clear, it seems those consequences were exactly what he intended.

Obviously, he knew exactly what he was advocating for at the very end.

Anonymous said...

i have trouble believing that was the only reason for his support of immigration.

The only thing good I can say about this man is that he is dead.

Anonymous said...

I wish as a human being I could mourn for him. But looking at his record, I can not.

-Vanilla Thunder

Shane said...

I wonder if you're just throwing a bone here to Brimelow and the other Paddy haters over at VDare.

Or if you've really soaked some of it in after years of writing there.

All the more reason VDare won't be getting a dime from me. Between Brimelow egregiously overpaying himself with donated funds, the site's atrocious web design (there are native born white American web designers out there you know, if that's the problem; you just have to pay a little extra), and the incessant, palpable, and cutting anti-Irish sentiment and hostility, they've given me more than enough reason to think twice about handing them any money.

However, I will continue supporting you, Steve.

Dave said...

Ted Kennedy also was a big advocate of nationalized health care. Under a nationalized system, would a non-famous, non-rich person in the condition Kennedy was in at the beginning of 2008 would have gotten the cutting-edge brain surgery Kennedy got? I'd guess no. That surgery seems to have worked out pretty well for Kennedy: it extended his life by well more than a year, and gave him a high enough quality of life for most of that time that he could spend it in Florida and Martha's Vineyard rather than in a hospital.

Anonymous said...

The irony is that Kennedy intended both laws to bring more Irishmen to America to vote for Kennedys.

Or maybe the goal was to destroy America. Kennedy was working for others when he sponsored the immigration act, worked for amnesty Mexicans, and worked to expand the welfare state to the grotesque proportions it has grown to.

Ted is singularly responsible for most of the bastard children, illegal immigrants, ruined cities and the near bankruptcy of the Federal Government and our society.

A thousand years from now someone in China may write The History of the Decline and Fall of Western Civilization and an entire chapter, if not an entire section will be devoted to that man.

The rest of America stands indicted too for sending Democrats and "moderate Republicans" to assist Ted in his demonic work.

Anonymous said...

There's a Milwaukee, Wisconsin radio station which is running a piece claiming that the Packers tried to sign Teddy out of Harvard:

Ted Kennedy Was Packers Prospect
Story Created: Aug 26, 2009
Story Updated: Aug 26, 2009
620wtmj.com

...The senator's web site says that Kennedy, a senior right end for the Harvard football team in 1955, received a letter from Packers head coach Lisle Blackbourn.

"You have been very highly recommended to us by a number of coaches in your area, and also by our talent scouts as a possible pro prospect," said Blackbourn in the letter...


Ten or fifteen years ago, I might have believed the story at face value, but that was before I learned that Arthur Schlesinger wrote Profiles in Courage.

Now I assume that everything I read in the press is just an amalgam of propaganda and disinformation and lies.

There is this choice little nugget, however:

...In 1960, Packers head coach Vince Lombardi gave Kennedy's brother John his endorsement for the Presidency. John Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon in that election.

A year later, JFK personally made sure running back Paul Hornung, linebacker Ray Nitschke and wide receiver Boyd Dowler
[WERE GRANTED?] passes from the U.S. Army so they would be available to play in the NFL Championship game on December 31st, 1961 against the New York Giants.

The Packers won that game, 37-0, to take their first of five NFL titles from 1961-67...


Gotta love those bedrock principles - like Equal Protection of the Law.

PS: Did Arthur Schlesinger ever blow up a townhouse in Greenwich Village?

Anonymous said...

If his intention was only to get in more Irish, then he really f. it up. Maybe he was just plain drunk when he dreamed up this scheme.

Anonymous said...

Unintended, my hind end.

The man was pure destruction and was bent on that agenda. He should have gone down in the waters of Chappaquiddick, or before then. Good riddance.

Rob Sherwood said...

Steve, can you point me to any corroborating evidence of your assertion that the 65 immigration bill was intended to increase irish immigration? I was just wondering this morning what Teddy was after with that bill, and I'd love some pointers to analysis or primary sources.

Anonymous said...

I doubt that this was actually his intention. He wanted to be prominent in the Senate and, at least until 1980, he wanted the big prize as well. To achieve those goals he had to be more effective than his rivals at doing what editorial writers and think tank sponsors wanted all politicians to do. This included relaxing immigration laws. While it's possible that he rationalized this to himself through Irish nationalism, it's not very likely. If he did, he was delusional.

I'm not Irish, but when I imagine what an actual Irish nationalist's goals would likely be, I come up with the following:

1) Reversing recent third-world immigration to Ireland.

2) Kicking out the Protestants and the British government from the north.

3) Attracting the most talented Irish people in the diaspora back to Ireland with money and advertising campaigns.

Notice that 3) is pretty much the opposite of your guess about Ted Kennedy's motivation in pushing through Immigration Reform.

John Seiler said...

The Old America was drowned by Teddy in 1969 at Chappaquiddick along with Mary Jo.

Varangy said...

I think Ted Kennedy is best remembered for actively and secretly collaborating with Soviet leaders in an attempt to undermine the president of the United States' nuclear defense policy during the height of the cold war.

http://www.washtimes.com/news/2006/oct/27/20061027-084248-4386r/

Anonymous said...

Well, the political advisers around him probably understood the likely consequences and deliberately misled him. That would make him a retarded dupe -- a fat, drunken, philandering, overpriveledged, murdering, retarded dupe. As for the people who repeatedly returned him to the US Senate, maybe THEY should be shipped BACK to Ireland.

Actually, throughout his life Teddy has been a sock puppet for American despising hyper-socialist globalist douche-bags like George Soros.

There, I've proven that I can label with the best of them.

Dutch Boy said...

The Kennedys (from father Joe on) have been a national disaster. The Romans would have issued a damnatio memoriae against them.

Anonymous said...

Actually, under the Immigration Act of 1924, the Irish had a very big quota due to the fact that quotas were apportioned in line with national origins in the census of 1890, and at that time Ireland was and integral part of Great Britain and the Irish were counted in the British quota, which was enormous.
Of course the unwritten subtext of the 1924 Act was to keep Jews and Italians out.
Teddy Kennedy was merely the sponsor of the 1965 Act, the authors were a certain Jakvits and Celler.

josh said...

That old Sailer sense of humor!! Some guy said that Kennedy's sick obsession was inspired by guilt over MJK. I dont buy that;Kennedy seemed singularly free of that emotion.He was born rich and privileged and he governed like a rich privileged man,with no concern for the outcome of his governance.Good riddance! In another time and place Kennedy would have made a great Irish priest,bringing down all sorts of calumny on those lads and lassies who would dare violate Gods laws and partake of the sins of the flesh. (Tho no doubt allowing himself to transgress said laws on a regular basis with young Christ-filled colleens and devout wives of the,should I say it?,Ok Ok the beta male farmers. )You could just imagine his self righteous rage and arrogance.What a loathsome SOB. He kept Bork off the Supremes but welcomed Sottomayer and Ginsburg! Ha snay one man done more to intercourse-up his own country?? On a somewhat related topic:Did anyone else get pissedd off by Ahnolds wifes comments at the funeral of her mother,Eunice Kennedy Whomever?? (Oh,Shriver. Heh heh sorry)Eunice devoted herself,we are told,to the Special Olympics,which is a purely charitable cause to help needy people. But Maria made her mom seem like afeminist icon,blubbering about how she proved women could do this'n that and yada yada yada.:) But she worked in a totally altruistic field,trying to help people;she wasnt some vain self centerd needs-to-get-over-herself feminist bitch trying to grab for the glory...like some people!

Anonymous said...

The Kennedy relationship to Irish America is one of the most covered and least understood of 20th century American political phenomena. A family that, by and large, lived quite distantly from its own, the Kennedys were far more disliked than is previously thought. The Immigration Act actually cut off much immigration from Ireland, by removing the national origins quota which benefited the Irish. This contributed to the Irish moving in large numbers to Britain during the 60s, though I wouldn't say it was the primary reason.
Besides that, I wonder whether his departure will change Irish America's attitude to American politics. My own feeling is that because the Kennedys went so far, many Irish-Americans adopted a liberal ideology that was at odds with their natural political instincts. Will his departure lead to a more politically conservative Irish America? Does that block even exist as an independent force in American politics? (I think not). If it does it is broad and shallow. Does it even matter if that shift leads to more ITW, ITW type conservatives?

Anonymous said...

Tool. In every sense of the word.

Richard Hoste said...

Now be nice everyone.

Anonymous said...

Mary Jo Koepechne (and her unborn child)


1)Joan Kennedy's pathetic falling-down-alcoholism, caused by a philandering and unsolicitous husband.


2)The 1965 Immigration DE-form Act, which was the most destructive piece of legislation this nation ever implemented on its citizens.



3)The hyena-like support of the Equal Rights Amendment in the late 1970's. Remember the E.R.A. folks?


4)The votes against the B-1 Bomber at the height of the Cold War, and consistent votes against strengthening of our military at that precipitous time.


5)The support for the 70's and 80's Nuclear-Freeze movement, which we know know were Soviet-funded agiti-prop


6)The support for endless new taxation, and endless new ineffective left-wing social programs that employ endless left-wing bureaucrats and activists with jobs like ACORN, etc.


7)The opposition to what would be a very fruitful wind-energy operation off the Coast of Massachusetts (Not in my backyard!)


8)The 86' vote to amnesty farmworking illegals, that led to much chain migration.


9)The de-fanging of every attempt to address illegal immigration since Peter Brimelow's valiant and visionary book, "Alien Nation" was written in 91'.


10)The co-authroring of the latest "Amnesty" Bill which would have passed if not for a groundstorm of -real- grassroots opposition in 2007.



11)In the top 5 of "most liberal senators" by anyone's accounting.



If I could spend some time with Google, Im sure I could find out quite a bit more about the guy I didn't like, but had forgotten. We tend to forget about things that make us mad, probably as a psychological defense mechanism, as we would be mad quite a bit indeed. I did forget much about Kennedy, but I didn't forgive it.



12)Let us not forget he waited an entire day before informing the authorities at Chappaquidick. Blackout drunks are too drunk to effectively drive cars. I never bought it. I hope the "aura" of the Kennedy's dies with him, and Patrick is sent packing next election. I'd like to see them *all* out of elected office. We were not supposed to have a ruling class in this nation according to our forefathers and drafters of our Declaration. No Bush's, Kennedy's, Cabot-Lodge's, etc.




Parting Cheap shot:

13) Patrick Kennedy, nuff' said---off to polish my pitchfork tips

Fred said...

"Much as Canada's Pierre-Elliot Trudeau, TK was one the earliest of the current caste of 'supra-nationalist' parasites..."

Are you saying they were both Jews?

James Kabala said...

"Teddy Kennedy was merely the sponsor of the 1965 Act, the authors were a certain Jakvits [sic] and Celler."

For the record, the bill was the Hart-Celler bill, named like many bills of that time (Taft-Hartley, etc.) after its chief Senate sponsor (Philip Hart of Michigan, Irish Catholic) and chief House sponsor (the aforementioned Emanuel Celler, Jewish). Kennedy and Jacob Javits were big boosters but not official sponsors; I suspect Congressional staff were the actual "authors."

"the site's atrocious web design"

I can't be the only one who thinks the "white doe" looks like the cow skulls in old Western movies.

"In another time and place Kennedy would have made a great Irish priest, bringing down all sorts of calumny on those lads and lassies who would dare violate God[']s laws and partake of the sins of the flesh. (Tho no doubt allowing himself to transgress said laws on a regular basis with young Christ-filled colleens and devout wives of the,should I say it?,Ok Ok the beta male farmers.)"

Besides the numerous other problems with this passage, it surely offers evidence that the always-useless phrase "beta males" has grows even more useless by the day.

Jim Bowery said...

I've never understood the purpose of Damnatio memoriae. Why in the world would you want to forget treachery except to ensure that you would experience it repeatedly?

Sideways said...

Actually, under the Immigration Act of 1924, the Irish had a very big quota due to the fact that quotas were apportioned in line with national origins in the census of 1890, and at that time Ireland was and integral part of Great Britain and the Irish were counted in the British quota, which was enormous.

Right, the large majority of immigration slots were reserved for citizens of the UK, Ireland, and Germany.

Anonymous said...

What is it with all these American Plastic Paddies acting as if they just got off the boat from the Emerald Isle yesterday?

As a non-American, I've never understood the exaggerated 'Irishness' displayed by those of Irish descent in the United States.

My country, Australia, also received a large number of Irish during the 19th Century, but they did not go on feeling as 'Irish' as their cousins in the United States did. Today, most Australians of Irish descent have little or no sense of Irishness, having largely discarded that identity long ago.

Could somebody please explain why the Irish in America never really fully assimilated?

Anonymous said...

Ah Steve-O, you really don't like the Irish. A pity, but you have other qualities that make up for it. Even more interesting, you don't like the Irish, yet I'd wager a good portion of your readers are Irish. We've always been suckers for the self-hatred.

Anonymous said...

TK was a bad guy. He did immense damage to America. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Anonymous said...

Kennedy intended both laws to bring more Irishmen to America to vote for Kennedys.



Sorry, Steve, but I have to call bs on that one.

You're better than this.

Anonymous said...

I'd wager a good portion of your readers are Irish

Orange, not Green.

Anonymous said...

"Kennedy intended both laws to bring more Irishmen to America to vote for Kennedys. "
Actually, I was told once that the Immigration Act of 1965 was intended to allow Italian-Americans and other Southern Europeans in the Northeast to bring in more relatives through chain migration. Most of whom would vote Democrat of course.

"Could somebody please explain why the Irish in America never really fully assimilated?"

The vast majority have. And I share your puzzlement. My sister occasionally blathers about her Irish heritage, even though she was born and raised in Illinois. I don't get it.

-Vanilla Thunder

Anonymous said...

As a non-American, I've never understood the exaggerated 'Irishness' displayed by those of Irish descent in the United States.

Sure and I'll explain it to ya boyo.

Irish-American identity isn't really Irish per se, it's urban Catholic American. We have more in common with Poles and Catholic Germans and even Eyetalians and PRs than we do with the other kinds of white Americans. The identity is composed of the things that come out of generations living in ethnic enclaves, protected and exploited by local politicians, with a social life centered around the parish. This world was destroyed by integration and its destruction has been shoved down the memory hole. Irish-Americans know we lost something but we're mostly prevented from understanding our real nostalgia is for Washington Heights, not for County Clare.

And in passing, I'll note that trying to meld the needs and desires of ethnic white Americans with those of the descendants of the original settlers is a project that is doomed to complete failure, and therefore white nationalism in America is doomed.

tommy said...

Quite possibly the worst American ever.

Definitely the worst American in the last 100 years.

I predict that within a decade or two, we will learn that he was an even more atrocious individual than any of us knew.

Cicero said...

"I've never understood the purpose of Damnatio memoriae. Why in the world would you want to forget treachery except to ensure that you would experience it repeatedly?"

The ancient Romans were a noble race, not a bunch of petty and effete materialist-reductionists. They weren't a bunch of sissies with long hair.

anony-mouse said...

Joe Sr had a stroke near the end of his life that made it impossible for him to speak.

Jack and Bobby both got shot in the head.

Ted died of a brain tumor.

My conclusion-don't be the brain of a male Kennedy.

testing99 said...

I think everyone here is forgetting the obvious. The guy held a Senate Seat for 47 years. HOW did that happen?

Duh. Gender Gap. Teddy Kennedy did not generate tons of male votes, he drew most of his support for women, whose economic and cultural causes he constantly championed. Moreover, that he was a Dynast, and one of the more "glamorous" ones at that, generated even more female votes. Women being enamored of princesses, kings, princes, aristocracies, and such as anyone who has seen how effectively Disney's pop princess machine works to extract parents cash can attest. It's hard-wired, and any Dynast who displays the appropriate hereditary rule and "style" including a 'let them eat cake' type of attitude can reliably return to the Senate decade after decade. For nearly half a century. It is part and parcel of what Victor Davis Hanson noted the trend of married SWPL women writing about their fantasies of sex with Obama.

Men do best reproductively in a "flat" and less hierarchical society, women do better in an aristocratic, hierarchical society (a fraction of a guy like Teddy's wealth is worth more than ALL of Joe Averages).

Part of the big story in American politics is demographic -- the collapse of marriage, large amounts of divorcees, or single mothers, or single with no kids women, delayed marriage, explain the gender gap (married women are more conservative) and Teddy's long reign. It's assumed the laws will be changed again so Patrick can appoint either Teddy's wife or a relative to his seat.

BTW, most of the media is female. Kansas Journalism School is 70% female, saw the link on "Why Boys Fail" which is well worth your reads.

[Women of course don't face immigration threats that men do, working in mostly office jobs off-limits to limited English speakers with no Education credentials. In fact Rosa the illegal alien Nanny offers cheap child care. Which explains the polling gender gap on immigration.]

James Kabala said...

Damnatio memoriae never really worked, since the names of all those who were subjected to it are still familiar to historians.

Furthermore many of the nastiest characters escaped the fate for political reasons, while in the decadent age of the empire relatively innocent persons suffered the fate for political reasons. So the debate above is largely moot.

Anonymous said...

What is it with all these American Plastic Paddies acting as if they just got off the boat from the Emerald Isle yesterday?

As a non-American, I've never understood the exaggerated 'Irishness' displayed by those of Irish descent in the United States.

Could somebody please explain why the Irish in America never really fully assimilated?


It's simple. In America today, people of all types are strongly encouraged to flaunt their ethnicity, with one exception: whites. Whites are viciously attacked if they flaunt their ethnic pride. So, it has to be done "in code". Since the Irish are lower class whites, it's a way of celebrating whiteness without seeming like you are an imperialist bent on dominating non-whites.

Anonymous said...

Funny how lots of isteve readers object when Steve applies the same "ethnic interests" logic to Kennedy, immigration policy and the Irish that is usually taken for granted here with the regard to the Jews.

Matra said...

The 1965 act was a legacy of JFK. He had taken a keen interest on immigration matters from the early 1950s onward. Look up his book A Nation of Immigrants published by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. (Abe Foxman recently wrote a new forward for the 50th anniversary edition). In this book he argued that the US was never Anglo-Saxon but a nation of immigrants. He highlighted all the accomplishments of the Irish, Italians, non-white minorities, and made the occasional reference to the Anglo-Saxons (Ku Klux Klan, discrimination against non-WASPs etc). In 1963 JFK and RFK decided to re-issue the book in preparation for the legislative fight on immigration.

JFK planned to change the country's immigration laws but time ran out for him. But many of those appointed by him worked tirelessly with RFK and Teddy to get the Hart-Celler bill passed. Teddy later told Newsday in 2003 that it was in many respects a posthumous tribute to his late brother who according to RFK cared as much about immigration as any other issue.

Svigor said...

I was just wondering this morning what Teddy was after with that bill, and I'd love some pointers to analysis or primary sources.

Default fall-back guess? Figure out what the English want, do the opposite, and call it Progress.

Matra said...

In America today, people of all types are strongly encouraged to flaunt their ethnicity, with one exception: whites.

Whites are the only race not encouraged to celebrate but when it comes to ethnicity it is only Americans of British heritage, the Anglo-Saxons, who are not supposed to celebrate their ethnicity. Even the Germans are given some slack on this as long as they stick to beer and folk customs.

For example every year baseball has its diversity celebration week. In recent years in addition to celebrating the usual blacks, Hispanics, etc, for their contributions to the game, Italians, Jews, and the Irish usually get their night as well. But not the Anglo-Saxons who, you know, invented the game, along with America itself.

whiskey: I think everyone here is forgetting the obvious. The guy held a Senate Seat for 47 years. HOW did that happen?

Duh. Gender Gap. Teddy Kennedy did not generate tons of male votes, he drew most of his support for women, whose economic and cultural causes he constantly championed.


He got 69% of the vote in 2006. Males voted for him too! He cleaned up the Irish and non-white vote.

Anonymous said...

He was not the worst American ever.....Dahmer was worse

Dan in DC

Svigor said...

I don't get it.

What's not to get? Irish is the only white heritage allowed and encouraged by the establishment and media.

Mystery solved.

Concerned Netizen said...

Chappaquiddick: Teddy waited 10 hours to report. He must have been awful drunk, but even drunk he knew that he left a young woman in that car. Imagine what Mary Jo Kopechne went through in those last minutes.

Anyone else would have been successfully prosecuted for manslaughter.

Oh well, we get the leaders we deserve.

Anonymous said...

Cicero said...

Hey, are your the Cicero from over here?

If so, then welcome aboard.

Matra said...

Thomas Maier's 2003 article for Newsday "A Legacy of Diversity" was about JFK's impact on immigration, starting with his book "A Nation of Immigrants":

“A Nation of Immigrants” had very personal roots...His sense of history made him see a universal quality to America’s immigration.

“I know of no cause which my brother championed more warmly than the improvement of our immigration policies,” observed Robert Kennedy, who later said the book was “deliberately designed to provide those who were unfamiliar with this aspect of our history with an appreciation of the enormous contributions to American life made by immigrants.”

Years later, Edward Kennedy would agree that the book had sprung from some of his brother’s most deeply held values. “It was very important to him,” Edward Kennedy recalls. “He was very proud of his Irish heritage… He came to see that immigrants from many other nations enhanced America and helped the nation to move forward into the future. He knew that there were misconceptions about immigration and immigrants. ... So he wrote that book to show how much immigration helped America and how much it was needed and should be appreciated.”


Thomas Maier continued:

The book seemed to find common ground in the experiences of all minorities in America. Kennedy reminded readers that as minorities increased, so did nativism and the level of hostility “against the Irish, who, as Catholics, were regarded as members of an alien conspiracy.”

Was it Steve Sailer who dubbed this "Ellis Island Syndrome" or words to that effect?

Above all, Kennedy emphasized their place in American history: “The Irish were the first to endure the scorn and the discrimination ... inflicted ... by already settled ‘Americans.’ In speech and dress they seemed foreign; they were poor and unskilled; and they were arriving in overwhelming numbers.

Certainly Jack’s version of American history, recounting as it did instances of hatred and bigotry, was not flattering to a Protestant nation he would soon ask to vote for him


Political calculations also mattered. Joseph Kennedy (the father) said: “Just remember, this country is not a private preserve for Protestants,” he said… “There’s a whole new generation out there, and it’s filled with the sons and daughters of immigrants from all over the world, and those people are going to be mighty proud that one of their own is running for president...”

So ALL minorities, not just Catholic Irish, would see non-WASP JFK as "one of their own". Everybody against the Anglo-Protestants is how the Kennedys saw the world. (Even Teddy and JFK's grandfather "HoneyFitz" Kennedy was an activist for immigrants during the Grover Cleveland years).

Newsday

On immigration Ted Kennedy simply continued from where previous family members left off.

Anonymous said...

Look up his book A Nation of Immigrants published by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. (Abe Foxman recently wrote a new forward for the 50th anniversary edition).

Dollars to donuts it was written by Arthur Schlesinger [& friends].

Matra said...

Shane: I wonder if you're just throwing a bone here to Brimelow and the other Paddy haters over at VDare.

Or if you've really soaked some of it in after years of writing there.

All the more reason VDare won't be getting a dime from me.


I guess Shane would like history rewritten to suit his own ethnic group.

Care to give an example of this Paddy hatred?

gordon-bennett said...

@Concerned Netizen:
"Imagine what Mary Jo Kopechne went through in those last minutes."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1209313/Ted-Kennedy-The-Senator-Sleaze-drunk-sexual-bully--left-young-woman-die.html

"It was nine hours before he reported the accident. In the meantime, he walked back to his motel, complained to the manager about a noisy party, took a shower, went to sleep, ordered newspapers when he woke up and spoke to a friend and two lawyers before finally calling the police.

Divers later estimated that if he had called them immediately, they would have had time to pull out Mary Jo. She had not drowned, but had survived in an air pocket inside the car - she was asphyxiated only when the oxygen ran out several hours later."

Emphasis added.

So it wasn't last minutes.

Richard said...

In 1965 Boston was awash in Micks. Teddy would have won no matter what. The 1965 bill did nothing to fave\or the Irish and Irish organizations were screaming about it almost the minute it passed.

Teddy alienated most Irish over busing. He kept the grudging union tradesmen by bring home the pork. His real constituency was in Roxbury and Cambridge, Northampton and Amherst.

Duuuudddde, I know you live in Cali, but put down the bong.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

Ten or fifteen years ago, I might have believed the story at face value, but that was before I learned that Arthur Schlesinger wrote Profiles in Courage."

I thought Ted Sorensen (another obsequious Kennedy toady) ghost-wrote Profiles in Courage.

"josh said...

Eunice devoted herself,we are told,to the Special Olympics,which is a purely charitable cause to help needy people."

Or perhaps she felt guilty at the way her father - rotten old Joe Kennedy - treated her metally retarded sister, Rosemary. He had her lobotomized.

Another interesting fact about Uncle Ted which emerged during the William Kennedy Smith affair - he routinely polished off a bottle of wine and a half a bottle of Chivas a night.

Oh yeah, and he was kicked out of Harvard for cheating.

The Kennedy family is rotten, root and branch. I find it interesting that the democrats - the purported party of the people - are such slavish devotees of America's low-life "royal family".

Anonymous said...

For as much as the left rails against white male privilege, one of their own had it in abundance!

That he could swim away from that drowning woman more mindful of his future political career than her life tells us that he led a life of privilege where there was little thought for other people.

Truly one of the political class. And scum.

Anonymous said...

Thomas Maier's 2003 article for Newsday "A Legacy of Diversity" was about JFK's impact on immigration, starting with his book "A Nation of Immigrants"




Does anyone really believe that JFK ever wrote any book, about anything?

Anonymous said...

Funny how lots of isteve readers object when Steve applies the same "ethnic interests" logic to Kennedy, immigration policy and the Irish that is usually taken for granted here with the regard to the Jews.



I think that "readers" are asking Steve to back up his allegation with facts. That's hardly an unusual request around these parts.

So far nobody has offered a shred of evidence that Teddy was motivated by a desire for more Irish voters when he championed various changes to immigration law. If he was so motivated then he was a lot dumber than I think, as he did not have that result.

Anonymous said...

I'll note that trying to meld the needs and desires of ethnic white Americans with those of the descendants of the original settlers is a project that is doomed to complete failure, and therefore white nationalism in America is doomed.



You may allege that, but you are certainly not noting it.

The "descendants of the original settlers" are indistinguishable from other whites in their politics. John McCain, a true Scots-Irish if ever there was one, is identical to Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer on the immigration question.

You people are akin to Kossacks in your contempt for factual information.

Steve Sailer said...

"So far nobody has offered a shred of evidence that Teddy was motivated by a desire for more Irish voters when he championed various changes to immigration law."

Follow the link in the posting.

Anonymous said...

The link (to you) does not substantiate your claim.

In fact, your own earlier words contradict your words here.

When the 1965 immigration law opened the new era of mass immigration, a few Asian and Latin American countries quickly came to dominate the flow of immigrants. Those early arrivers, in turn, brought in their relatives who eventually brought in their relatives -- what's called "chain migration." This left very little opportunity for people from countries that hadn't gotten in on the system early to qualify to immigrate




So how do you get from this to "Ted Kennedy wrote the 1965 bill to flood the country with Micks"? You can't.


As for the 1886 law, you quote Krikorian "It was cooked up in the 1986 law to provide a way to amnesty Irish illegal aliens, since the main amnesty in that law primarily benefited Mexicans."

Which also contradicts your claim. The 1986 law "primarily benefited Mexicans".

It's odd that Ted's laws, which according to you are all aimed at getting more Irish into America, always have very nearly the opposite effect.

Steve Sailer said...

Krikorian explained about Kennedy's 1990 Diversity Immigration Lottery legislation, "It was cooked up in the 1986 law to provide a way to amnesty Irish illegal aliens, since the main amnesty in that law primarily benefited Mexicans. In fact, to this day the lottery is often referred to by congressmen and their staff as 'The Irish Program.' But as the program evolved, and as there were fewer and fewer Irish illegals, its emphasis changed, and it's now more accurately described as the Middle Eastern, East European and African program."

Only 331 visas were awarded to Irish applicants this year.

Rob Sherwood said...

From the linked document:

"Oddly enough, the diversity lottery originated as a way to bring more whites to the United States. White ethnic politicians in America felt that their distant relatives in Europe had been squeezed out by chain migration from the Third World. So, natives of the 14 largest sources of legal immigrants -- such as Mexico, India and China -- are banned from participating. In particular, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., saw a diversity lottery as a way to boost the number of legal Irish immigrants."

Mr. Sailer, I'm not sure the link in the article provides anything but the same assertion expressed in more words. You mention Mark Krikorian, however. I'm suspect that this is left as an exercise for the reader.

Anonymous said...

The 1965 Immigration Act had nothing to do with increasing the number of Irish immigrants, it had to do with fulfilling that highest of all possible human aspirations: repudiating racism.

Everyone is getting the 1965 Act confused with the 1990 Diversity Lottery, which was intended to make it easier for the Irish to come here, after family based chain migration from Asia, as a result of the 1965 Act, had ballooned, swallowed up all the immigration slots, and locked out would-be European immigrants, in particular the Irish.

Unfortunately the main consequence of the Diversity Lottery has been to initiate new waves of chain migration from new parts of the world. Frankly, we would have been better off just sticking with the Asians. :-(

Anonymous said...

I second the reason given by the prev anon about the pride expressed by some Americans of Irish descent. Urban Catholics were ethnically cleansed from their neighborhoods by the migration of blacks from the American South.

These Catholics took great pride in their neighborhoods, parishes and schools. All of that was taken from them and they were forced out to the suburbs, the land of strip malls and DUI checkpoints.

For more on the destruction of urban Catholic America, see a book by E. Michael Jones entitled "The Slaughter of The Cities." He and my mother were from the same parish in North Philadelphia. That neighborhood now is as dark as the NY Knicks locker room.

One excerpt of the book describes ML King's campaign to integrate Chicago neighborhoods. A Southern black-female King agitator was struck with confusion about the different types of Caucasians she encountered in The Windy City. I think Jones quotes her as saying: "These people don't identify as "white", they keep saying their Polish or Italian."

I love Sailer's insight, but I'm not buying the Ted Kennedy story about his jihad for further Irish immigration.

And Ted Kennedy did NOTHING to help his brethren in South Boston during the bussing fiasco of the 1970's. Liberals love blacks ... as long as they don't have to live near them or have their children atttend school with them.

Anonymous said...

Krikorian explained about Kennedy's 1990 Diversity Immigration Lottery legislation



That program gives US residence to 50,000 people per year.

Fifty thousand.

If we want to look for the source of our immigration woes, we need to look elsewhere. Even the H1-B program dwarfs the "diversity lottery" in scale.

You claimed "The irony is that Kennedy intended both laws to bring more Irishmen to America to vote for Kennedys."

The diversity lottery, by definition CANNOT do what you say Kennedy wanted it to do. If Kennedy thought it would bring lots of Irishmen to America, the man was an idiot.

Alas, he was no idiot.

Anonymous said...

Krikorian "It was cooked up in the 1986 law to provide a way to amnesty Irish illegal aliens, since the main amnesty in that law primarily benefited Mexicans."


Something is fishy there. The diversity lottery does not and cannot "amnesty Irish illegal aliens" or anyone else.

Also, he is describing a "1986 law", not the 1990 law you cite.

Steve, I strongly suspect that the "it" in Krikorians words was not the diversity lottery. If it was, then Mark K was confused.

Anonymous said...

Kennedy is the prime example an elite. Rich guy who is himself excempt from the hard consequences of life but who wants to push his ideals on the rest of society.

The Boston busing issue is a classic example. No doubt his kids went to private schools.

He wsa the type of liberal that was against cracking down on crime - cause he lived in a walled off island compound. He didnt' care that New Bedford workers had to compete for jobs against illegala immigrants from the third world - it didn't affect him and you are a racist loser if you had a problem with it.

He was a cheater at college. He let his female companion drown without calling the authorities (and feminists will always love him cause he's pro-choice). He only ever got where he was cause of his last name, thus helping to bring back the Aristocracy we thought we nuked with King George.

Shameless, obese, drunken little brother of guys who if they hadn't been martyred would be just more political chumps.

Too bad cause I actually enjoyed Camelot the musical.

RIP and let your legacy go with you.

Anonymous said...

Everyone is getting the 1965 Act confused with the 1990 Diversity Lottery



Steve wrote -"Sen. Kennedy sponsored both the 1965 immigration act and the 1990 act that created the absurd diversity immigration lottery. The irony is that Kennedy intended both laws to bring more Irishmen to America to vote for Kennedys."


That is the claim being responded to. The 1965 Act AND the 1990 one.


the 1990 Diversity Lottery, which was intended to make it easier for the Irish to come here



It is being claimed by some that the 1990 Diversity Lottery was created with the specific intent of allowing more Irish to come here. The evidence for that proposition seems to be somewhat lacking.

It seems peculiar that a measure supposedly written with the explicit intent of allowing more Irish to come to America is not having that result. Either it was not intended to have such a result, or Ted Kennedy was a fool at writing laws.

He seems not to have been a fool at writing laws.

Richard Hoste said...

Interestingly, this program run by the State Department increases immigration from the seven countries that the State Department has declared "state sponsors of international terrorism:" Iran (768 visas this year), Iraq (71), Syria (62), Libya (61), Cuba (529), North Korea (four) and Sudan (1,297).

North Korea lets its citizens participate? How? That contradicts everything I've read about the country.

Anonymous said...

How the Diversity Lottery works.

A maximum of 3,850 visas are issued to natives of each eligible country (to be eligible, a country must have had fewer than 50,000 visas, excluding diversity visas, issued to it during the previous five years).




As a mechanism for populating America with loyal Irishmen beholden to Ted Kennedy as their liege lord, this seems somehow .... inefficient. Perhaps Teddy was exceptionally hung-over when he thought that one up.

Anonymous said...

John McCain, a true Scots-Irish if ever there was one, is identical to Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer on the immigration question.

Yeah, wow, those three politicians are TOTALLY representative of white America.

The ONE thing that white America shares is opposition to immigration. Ethnic whites, who are mostly Catholics, are so sick of having it shoved down our throats by the American bishops you can't even imagine.

But shared opposition isn't enough. White people just don't have the kind of love for each other that black people do because we're just all too different from each other. I don't want to live in Whiteistan, I just want to sit on my stoop in the Bronx and watch kids play stickball, a fate that the Scots-Irish and the WASPs would find as appalling as I would find their ideal state, which probably involves mountain hollers and military service for the former and I dunno, discreet adultery and Lilly Pulitzer dresses for the latter.

güzel kızlar said...

We love our children, thank you

togo said...

"One excerpt of the book describes ML King's campaign to integrate Chicago neighborhoods. A Southern black-female King agitator was struck with confusion about the different types of Caucasians she encountered in The Windy City. I think Jones quotes her as saying: "These people don't identify as "white", they keep saying their Polish or Italian."

Chicago , for many years, was routinely called the "largest Polish city in the world after Warsaw"

This-and the non-WASP white ethnic identity in general is a thing of the past and little more than a figment of the imagination of the charming anti-Semite E. Michael Jones. The Chicago Poles, for example, dispersed to the suburbs, disappeared as an identifiable
group and have zero political or social clout. They are white; Michael, and not all that Catholic. Get used to it.

Jews, of course, are the major exception along with East Coast Guidos who use their "Italianess" as a form of shtick.

What's the word for "shtick" in the Sicilian dialect?

Anonymous said...

Richard Hoste said

"That contradicts everything I've read about the country [N. Korea]."

Question everything.

Much of what we are told is lies.

Markus said...

I knew a great Ukrainian girl whose family won the visa lottery. I don't have too much of a problem with it. Perhaps we don't need any immigration, but to the extent that we need a small number, I would rather they come from a wide range of countries rather than just Mexico and Central America.

MacSweeney said...

I'm quarter Irish, does it make me a plastic paddy whenever I defend the Irish? I'd do it anyway because Scots and Irish are bros. Also, remind me again which white groups are allowed into your exclusive Aryan paradise?

Leo McKenna said...

Anon

You are correct to state the justification for the 1965 immigration was a repudiation of racism. A young Vernon Briggs-labor economist at Cornell- and a very strong opponent of current immigration policy-writes about how he and his comrades were fanatically committed to ridding the nation of racism including the Nations immigtation policy. He know regrets this.

Racism is such a vague and poorly defined term. But the way ani-racism briagde uses the word is very clear:having a racial preference to live among yur own kind. The young Vernon Briggs,Jacob Javitts and others would have you believe that this is morally wrong and abnormal. Actually it is quite normal to want to live among your own kind. So if you want to call this racism you can. But it would follow that racism-wanting to live among your own kind and giving preferences to your own kind within the territory controlled by your own kind over foriegners from China who want to live in America for example is normal and morally justifiable.

But the fact of the matter-historians have done very interesting research on this-the movement to cleanse the US of racism was driven by the Cold War. The Cold War propaanda had at its core the ideology of the noble moral intentions of America. US intervention around the world was and continues to be justified by noble moral intentions. The integration of the US miltary and the pasage of the 1965 immigration reform act are a direct consequence of the Cold War. Or to put it another way:there is a very strong link between US foriegn policy and the race replacement of the White Majority.

Another point:Are White Americans better off or worse off with increasng levels of Asian immigration. The answer is obvious:worse off. This is not a coincidence.

There was no moral justification for changing the national origins aspect of US immigration policy.

Waiting for Steve's post about Usain Bolt and the Jamaican track team.

Anonymous said...

'This world was destroyed by integration and its destruction has been shoved down the memory hole.'

You mean you all became Americans?

Richard....London

Dutch Boy said...

Jim Bowery said...
I've never understood the purpose of Damnatio memoriae. Why in the world would you want to forget treachery except to ensure that you would experience it repeatedly?

The Romans (and other ancients) believed there was an intimate link between one's name and one's existence. Removing the images and names from a traitor's or tyrant's monuments was thus a form of post hoc assasination.

Anonymous said...

Too many people here not steeped in MA politics.

First, the legal Irish immigrant in Boston was about 1/3 the total. I'll bring you to any number of bars in Southie and Quincy (Boston suburb) where you can meet some of the estimated 25,000 Irish illegals in metro Boston. Immigration quotas applied to the East Coast Irish back in 60s about as much as they apply to Mexicans in Cali today! The difference was that the stereotypical Irish cops in Boston had no interest in enforcing any sort of immigration laws where their fellow tribesmen were concerned.

The Boston Irish of the 60s-90s period were to the Hyannisport Orca what the black community was to Obama: 90%+ support. Go to any Boston Irish domicile back in the day and you would have likely found photos of the Pope and JFK sharing the mantle. Being so insular and tribal, the thought of not supporting the First Family (Irish Division) in an election would have been tantamount to your daughter marrying a "colored" (still the term used by my Irish buddy's 90-something grandmother!).

And today's more assimilated Boston Irishman STILL can't get over the sainted status of this rotten family (Mr. Anon, poor Rosemary was a bit slow, but not "retarded", she was lobotomized because Joe couldn't stand her promiscuity. And Saint Rose (mother) stood by and watched her husband essentially end her daughter's life). I have Irish friends unable to explain why they continue to vote for this late, unlamented cad, but vote for him they did; the disconnect between beliefs and votes seems to apply to many Obama voters (as well as those supporting Deval Patrick, MA governor). At the risk of supporting ol' Testy, he's absolutely correct about women being the core support for these guys, abetted by the blacks (Obama & Patrick) and the Irish (Kennedy).
A
nd to stir the pot a bit more, their true core constituancy is really Semitic hausfraus...

Brutus

albertosaurus said...

When I was an undergraduate with several friends who attended UVa (University of Virginia - Charlottesville), they remembered the Kennedy brothers (Bobby and Teddy). One anecdote was revealing. Bobby and Teddy decided they wanted to play tennis. They went into a local sports store and bought rackets and balls. They played a bit and then just left the equipment on the court.

In the "Dark Side of Camelot" Seymore Hersh tells the story of John and Teddy swimming in the White House pool with the two secretaries Flic and Flak (as I remember). All were nude. The girls serviced the boys after the swim. Bobby may have gotten in on this action too.

The Kopechne incident was maybe not his worst offense. In the early nineties he was out drinking with his newphews. Later that night William Kennedy Smith apparently raped a young woman. Smith had had a history of sexual assaults or at least sexual assualt charges. But the law always had a problem making charges stick to a Kennedy.

Hacienda said...

"I would rather they come from a wide range of countries rather than just Mexico and Central America."

Stunning childishness of some of the commentary on this site.

I have no problem with Mexican immigration. None. There. I've matched you.

Anonymous said...

You mean you all became Americans?

You're being snotty, but that question is actually at the heart of the failure of paleoconservativism/ white nationalism.

I look at my lineage and I see a distinct group of people who basically took an American vacation for four generations. We're not Irish anymore obviously but are we Americans just because that's the passport we hold? My family could expatriate with no sense of loss whatsoever. Conversely, we lost what we loved nearly two generations ago, so we can stay here and the continuing death of white America isn't very painful for us. We can easily identify with the incoming Catholic immigrants and intermarry with them. I feel y'all's pain, but it isn't mine, and you sure don't give a toss about mine.

Mark said...

Wanting to live among your own kind is normal, of course, and the immigrationist movement is savaging that normality. Worse, in my opinion though, is the corollary in our foreign policy whereby we sacrifice the lives, health, and futures of millions of young Americans for the purpose of brightening up the fortunes of Vietnamese, Iraqis, Afghans ad nauseam.
I grew up in the VN era and will never forget the complete loss of freedom the draft imposed on millions of young people like myself, for the supposed purpose of bringing freedom to the Vietnamese. I remember running into a young New Zealander who could hitchhike and cavort fancy free in the USA while young Americans were being arrested for wanting the same things, except of course they were draft material and so ineligible for freedom. What a country. To be honest, I still don't like it, and it has been a long time.

Anonymous said...

Flic and Flak

Fric and Frac???

Svigor said...

Oh yeah, little anecdote relevant in a couple of ways. Met a lot of illegal Irish while in college (just walk into the back of any Irish pub and you'll find them all over the place). One of them related all the lovin' going on between the "bros," Irish and Scots; "the Scots are just jealous of the Irish because the Irish are a real nation, and the Scots never made it." I was bowled over with the love and respect, let me tell you...

Svigor said...

But hey, who cares, right? The last war is always the best war to fight, right? Yeah, let's all fight over who got the first class berths and who got the third class berths on the Titanic...

Anonymous said...

I'll bring you to any number of bars in Southie and Quincy (Boston suburb) where you can meet some of the estimated 25,000 Irish illegals in metro Boston.




25,000 in metro Boston? And you think that's a lot? There are small towns in NJ with populations of 40,000 which have 25,000 illegals in them. Hispanics, mostly.

Anonymous said...

Also, remind me again which white groups are allowed into your exclusive Aryan paradise?




I can tell you from long experience on these blogs that the acceptable whites are all Protestants.

That is to say, a lot of people here are still stuck fighting the wars of the Reformation. They're not so much pro-white as they are anti-Papist.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, wow, those three politicians are TOTALLY representative of white America.



The point is not that they are representative of white America, but that politicians of all ethnic backgrounds favor open borders, and that it makes as much sense to say that the Irish are pro open borders because of Kennedy as it does to say that the Scots-Irish are pro open borders because of McCain. Not much.

Concerned Netizen said...

NNDB had the best obit. A few tidbits:

Kennedy earned C grades at the private Milton Academy, but was admitted to Harvard as a "legacy" -- his father and older brothers had attended there, so the younger and dimmer Kennedy's admission was virtually assured. While attending, he was expelled twice, once for cheating on a test, and once for paying a classmate to cheat for him. While expelled, Kennedy enlisted in the Army, but mistakenly signed up for four years instead of two. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, former U.S. Ambassador to England, pulled the necessary strings to have his enlistment shortened to two years, and to ensure that he served in Europe, not Korea, where a war was raging. Kennedy was assigned to Paris, never advanced beyond the rank of Private, and returned to Harvard upon being discharged.

While attending law school at the University of Virginia, he was cited for reckless driving four times, including once when he was clocked driving 90 miles per hour in a residential neighborhood with his headlights off after dark. Yet his Virginia driver's license was never revoked. He passed the bar exam in 1959, and two years later was appointed an Assistant to the District Attorney in Massachusetts' Suffolk County.
(snip)

Concerned Netizen said...

NNDB on Chappaquidick:

On 19 July 1969, Kennedy attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts. At about 11:00 PM, he borrowed his chauffeur's keys to his Oldsmobile limousine, and offered to give a ride home to Mary Jo Kopechne, a campaign worker. Leaving the island via an unlit bridge with no guard rail, Kennedy steered the car off the bridge, flipped, and into Poucha Pond. He swam to shore and walked back to the party -- passing several houses and a fire station -- and two friends returned with him to the scene of the accident. According to their later testimony, they told him what he already knew, that he was required by law to immediately report the accident to the authorities. Instead Kennedy made his way to his hotel, called his lawyer, and went to sleep.

Kennedy called the police the next morning. By then the wreck had already been discovered. Before dying, Kopechne had scratched at the upholstered floor above her head in the upside-down car. The Kennedy family began pulling strings, ensuring that any inquiry would be contained. Her corpse was whisked out-of-state to her family, before an autopsy could be conducted. Further details are uncertain, but after the accident Kennedy says he repeatedly dove under the water trying to rescue Kopechne, and he didn't call police because he was in a state of shock. In versions not so kind, it is widely assumed Kennedy was drunk, that he was having an affair with Kopechne, and/or that he held off calling police in hopes that his family could fix the problem overnight.

After the accident, Kennedy's political enemies referred to him as the distinguished Senator from Chappaquiddick, or worse. He pled guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, and was given a suspended sentence of two months. Kopechne's family received a small payout from the Kennedy's insurance policy, and never sued. There was later an effort to have her body exhumed and autopsied, but her family successfully fought against this in court, and Kennedy's family paid their attorney's bills.

In 1973, at the height of Nixon's Watergate scandal, Kennedy thundered from the Senate floor, "Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law? Or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty?"

In 1980, Kennedy challenged Carter, his own party's sitting President, for the Democratic nomination. Kennedy's bid was hampered by questions of Chappaquiddick and by an interview with CBS Newsman Roger Mudd, who asked the straightforward question, "Why do you want to be President?" Kennedy couldn't come up with a straightforward answer. Carter was nominated for re-election, but the party's divisions contributed to the victory won by Reagan.

In a late-1980s media profile, Kennedy was succinctly described as someone who "grew to manhood without learning to be an adult". He was rumored to have had several affairs while married to his first wife, and had often been seen in public while thoroughly tanked and/or behaving obnoxiously. In 1987 he was caught in flagrante delicto with an unidentified woman on the floor of a restaurant. His public image after the early 1990s and during his second marriage was more conservative and restrained. In 1994, Kennedy became the first member of Congress to have an official website.

Steve Sailer said...

"Before dying, Kopechne had scratched at the upholstered floor above her head in the upside-down car."

It would be kind of cool is Senator Kennedy's body is exhumed someday and they find he had scratched at the upholstered ceiling above his head in the casket.

Anonymous said...

It would be kind of cool is Senator Kennedy's body is exhumed someday and they find he had scratched at the upholstered ceiling above his head in the casket.

And you censor two-thirds of the stuff that I post here?

Good grief.

[Nice thought, though.]

Svigor said...

As for the Catholic/Protestant divide, I grew up Episcopalian. It's like Catholicism with the serial numbers filed off. Or at least, Anglicanism with the serial numbers filed off.

I do remember the one time I attended mass with Catholics, they told us they didn't want us second-class Christians to receive eucharist. I don't know of any policy like that among Protestants.

Anonymous said...

There are reports out tonight that Teddy Kennedy especially enjoyed Chappaquiddick jokes.

Apparently this is not an Onion parody.

And it's not the 1st of April.

Anonymous said...

Waiting for Steve's post about Usain Bolt and the Jamaican track team.


Might as well sit outside your local pharmacy. That South African girl/boy-whatever that won the 800m is apparently being force-fed drugs by a Herr Arbeit who worked in the old GDR state sport system, and overdrugged a Frau Krüger so badly she had to have a sex-change operation to fit into society after her career.

Anonymous said...

... when it comes to ethnicity it is only Americans of British heritage, the Anglo-Saxons, who are not supposed to celebrate their ethnicity.

Anglo-Saxons aren't meant to have an ethnic identity full stop.

Anonymous said...

I don't know of any policy like that among Protestants.

That will be the case a lot. I know some Lutheran groups have closed communion.

It depends on the church; often the expectation is unspoken but still real.

Anonymous said...

North Korea lets its citizens participate? How? That contradicts everything I've read about the country.

Option A: these four were specially selected as moles.
Option B: they're refugees who made it to SK/Japan/Russia and applied from embassies or consulates there.

MacSweeney said...

I've heard conflicting accounts as to whether Scots support independence from the UK or not. The de facto national anthem, Flower of Scotland, is basically one big guilt trip laid out on the Scottish people for allowing themselves to be controlled by England, which makes the effort of past heroes in vain. As far as inspiring separatism goes, a more brilliant song could not have been written.

Dutch Boy said...

Dear Svigor: It's called communion for a reason - you gotta be a member of the club (furthermore, Protestants don't believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, so it's just a piece of bread to them - who cares who receives it?).

Tanstaafl said...

Funny how lots of isteve readers object when Steve applies the same "ethnic interests" logic to Kennedy, immigration policy and the Irish that is usually taken for granted here with the regard to the Jews.

That's right, we've all heard "But is it good for the Irish?" a million times.

Anonymous said...

"It would be kind of cool is Senator Kennedy's body is exhumed someday and they find he had scratched at the upholstered ceiling above his head in the casket."

Damn, why didn't I think of that? It would also be cool if, when his body was exhumed, it was discovered that the brain cancer was still alive, had sprouted tentacles, and was feasting on his remains.

gig said...

is there the slightest indication anywhere that Kennedy supported the 1965 act in order to increase the immigration of Irish people?

considering that Sailer is part of the Vdare school of webwriting taht considers that every single noun must have an embedded link, the absence of links here makes me wonder if this post is just another stab in the face of those Papists

Richard Hoste said...

"Option A: these four were specially selected as moles.
Option B: they're refugees who made it to SK/Japan/Russia and applied from embassies or consulates there."

For option A the Korean government would've had to ensure their special moles had won. Either that or train whoever wins to become one.

Option B makes a little more sense. Even escaping from North Korea is supposed to be something of a big deal.

"Question everything.

Much of what we are told is lies."

If you've got evidence that North Korea is less repressive than we've been led to believe, present it.

Anonymous said...

"It would be kind of cool is Senator Kennedy's body is exhumed someday and they find he had scratched at the upholstered ceiling above his head in the casket.

I think that's the most malicious thing I've ever heard you say.

I hated Ted Kennedy as much as the next guy here, but it's kind of weird hearing it from you.

anony-mouse said...

Deval 'Patrick'?

Weird.

The dream shall never die, indeed.

Baloo said...

It did seem a little over-malicious at first read, but then I remembered that Teddy was probably uniquely despicable in US history, and that it's really logically impossible to be too malicious toward him.

Anonymous said...

Ed Klein, former foreign editor of Newsweek, and former editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine, as interviewed on the Diane Rehm show, by guest-host Katie Kay, wistfully recalls Ted Kennedy's fondness for Chappaquiddick jokes - audio here, discussion here:

Katie Kay, guest-hosting for Diane Rehm: Doug, thank you very much. Ed Klein - that's, that's what I'm hearing today, that people are sad at his passing, and yet celebrating this huge life, and his huge long list of accomplishments.

Ed Klein: I think he'd be the last person who would want us - those he's left behind - to be morose and, and full of bathos. I think he, he -

Katie Kay: He would come in with a big guffawing laugh and make us laugh too.

Ed Klein: He would, and, yes, and he - you're so right - he would, and he'd probably have a joke to tell, as well.

Katie Kay: UNINTELLIGIBLE [???]

Ed Klein: Well you know he - I don't know if you know this or not, but one of the, his favorite topics of humor was, indeed, Chappaquiddick itself. And he would ask people, "have you heard any new jokes about Chappaquiddick?" I mean - that is just the most amazing thing. It's not that he didn't feel remorse about the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, but that he still always saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things, too.

Katie Kay: Ed Klein, former foreign editor of Newsweek, and author of a new book on Ted Kennedy. We will be taking more of your questions and comments after this short break. We are remembering the life of Senator Ted Kennedy, who died last night after a battle with brain cancer, at the age of 77. Do stay listening.

Svigor said...

It did seem a little over-malicious at first read

I guess it's down to interpretation. I assume a man buried alive would asphyxiate, much like Ms. Kopechne. If so, I don't see how "an eye for an eye" is malicious at all. I see equivalent retribution as somewhat merciful, as it ignores the issue of instigation. I think "an eye for an eye, plus interest" is more even-handed and pragmatic.

Obviously there's the matter of intent but I'm willing to be flexible given the family in question.

Svigor said...

Ted Kennedy's fondness for Chappaquiddick jokes

Sheez. I've always been into dark humor, but that's just way over the line, over the shoulder, down the bank and off the cliff. He practically murdered that woman, and he makes it all into one big back-slapping running gag?

Anonymous said...

"It would be kind of cool is Senator Kennedy's body is exhumed someday and they find he had scratched at the upholstered ceiling above his head in the casket."

That's harsh. You've become real bitter recently, Sailer. Ever since Obama was elected, you've gone from being objectively and unemotionally critical to being mean spirited.

corvinus said...

While I agree with most here that Teddy was a disaster for America, I have just one point to make about the 1965 immigration act. I noticed that even before that time, there was NO LIMIT on immigration from the Western Hemisphere. Because of this, it seems to me that the 1965 act, while it did indeed cause the immigration of millions of Asians, did not affect the flood from Mexico, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, etc., one way or the other. It's just that before 1965 there were a lot fewer Mexicans than there are now. I don't think we can blame the huge Latino population here now on the 1965 act. If anybody knows otherwise, please clarify!

Anonymous said...

Since this thread is still somewhat active I would like to point out that Ted Kennedy had the full support from the Catholic church for what he did. During Pope Benedict's recent trip to the US Ted received communion during one of the papal masses - link.

Anonymous said...

That's harsh.



It's not harsh. Kopechne had scratched the inside of the car roof while she was down there fighting for her life and Teddy was back at the party.

Anonymous said...

What is it with all these American Plastic Paddies acting as if they just got off the boat from the Emerald Isle yesterday?

I have to concur. Here in the UK there has been a great deal of Irish immigration yet my impression is that, generally, Irish identity wanes after a couple of generations or so. You never come across people parading their 5th generation Irish credentials - just doesn't happen.

Anonymous said...

My family could expatriate[to Ireland I guess] with no sense of loss whatsoever. Conversely, we lost what we loved nearly two generations ago, so we can stay here and the continuing death of white America isn't very painful for us. We can easily identify with the incoming Catholic immigrants and intermarry with them.

These new incoming Catholics, from Mexico or South America or would they be from Africa?

I dont see where you are going to get enough white Catholics from to keep you non-WASP show on the road.

Anonymous said...

I've heard conflicting accounts as to whether Scots support independence from the UK or not.

Scottish nationalism is quite a recent invention. Almost unthinkable 40 - 50 years ago.

Its the sort of nationalism fully endorsed by our enlightened trans-national elites*. Open borders, mass immigration, support for the EU and UN etc etc (Same for Irish nationalism pretty much).

*British and/or English nationalism is of course akin to a rebirth of the 3rd Reich. We know this because the MSM and mainstream politicians constantly remind us - so it must be true.

Anonymous said...

For option A the Korean government would've had to ensure their special moles had won. Either that or train whoever wins to become one.

And how would we know that the person who won had won as it were?

Surely its that four names come up trumps, NK then assigns those four names to its four trained moles who keep those names. Who cares who really won.

Anonymous said...

I dont see where you are going to get enough white Catholics from to keep you non-WASP show on the road.

Not gonna get white ones, gonna get Filipinas. Better than dying off as you all seem to hellbent on doing.

Truth said...

If you intermarry with "Filipinas", you are dying off, aren't you?

Svigor said...

Not gonna get white ones, gonna get Filipinas. Better than dying off as you all seem to hellbent on doing.

Why not choose a handle and emerge from the mass of "anonymous"?

I suggest "Crocodile Tears."

corvinus said...

These new incoming Catholics, from Mexico or South America or would they be from Africa?

I dont see where you are going to get enough white Catholics from to keep you non-WASP show on the road.


Agreed. I'm a white Catholic -- a very conservative one, in fact -- and I'd much rather marry an open-minded white Protestant than a mexican or filipina. Call it caste identity if you will, but I am in fact a white American and not just a "Catholic".

Anonymous said...

Nah if I pick an ID it'll probably be something like PADDY'S REVENGE. And I'd rather have grandchildren than be pure, thanks.

Anonymous said...

Not gonna get white ones, gonna get Filipinas. Better than dying off as you all seem to hellbent on doing.

Right, so if we breed with Filipinas we are dying off. But you (Irish?) with your enhanced genetics & culture defying powers will still remain Irish after a few generations of intermarriage with Filipinas. Care to go into the details of that a bit more, Im not buying it myself.

I don't want to live in Whiteistan, I just want to sit on my stoop in the Bronx and watch kids play stickball, a fate that the Scots-Irish and the WASPs would find as appalling as I would find their ideal state.

Im really smelling a rat now. The suburbs themselves are quite a recent development and its not as if everyone lives there even now. In non-Catholic Europe you can still find elements of that urban life. You seem to be reserving it for certain elect Catholic groups while supposedly rejecting suburbia for them too.