Why Are They Always On The Wrong Side
By Mitch Berg
Tom Emmer has taken some heat – unjustified as usual – for a (out of context) remark in the Marshall newspaper last year:
“I don’t think you can call yourself a freedom-loving American and be a Democrat,” Emmer said. “I don’t think that’s a grassroots Democrat who says now ‘That’s not what I voted for, this isn’t the America I want.’ It’s the leaders of the Democrat party.”
Some Democrats have gotten exercised over the quote, lately – out-of-context, naturally. Of course freedom-loving people can be Democrats…
…even though so many of their leaders S have sided with the world’s totalitarians, mass-murderers and tyrants that it seems Emmer may have been too kind in his treatment of the left:
Senator Edward M. Kennedy offered to work in close concert with high level Soviet officials to sabotage President Ronald Reagan’s re-election efforts and to arrange for congenial American press coverage of General Secretary Yuri Andropov, according to a 1983 KGB document.
That’s Ted Kennedy.
The patron saint of the mainstream Left in America.
Actively working with the KGB against then-President Ronald Reagan.
That’s the KGB; they of the Lubyanka and the Black Marias and the Gulag and show trials and sixty million dead Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Germans. The KGB of the Holodomor, the government-imposed starvation of Ukraine.
One more time from the heart: Ted Kennedy worked with the K G freaking B against a sitting President.
Specifically, Kennedy offered to have “representatives of the largest television companies in the U.S. contact Y.V. Andropov for an invitation to Moscow for the interview.” The idea here would be for the Soviet leader to make an end run around Reagan and make a direct appeal to the American people.
Kennedy suggested that Walter Cronkite, Barbara Walters and Elton Raul, the president of the board of directors for ABC, be considered for the interviews with Andropov in Moscow.
That’s Yuri Andropov – former KGB head, one of the architects of the “Prague Spring”, a man with rivers of human blood on his nicotine-stained hands – for whom Ted “Camelot!” Kennedy, leader of the “Mainstream” American left, was serving as a Public Relations flak.
Question for all of you liberal hamsters who were calling Michele Bachmann and the Tea Party “seditious” for fomenting suspicion of government, and who huffed “Don’t you dare question the left’s patriotism” between 2001 and 2008; where is the revulsion?
I’m sure it’ll happen as soon as the mainstream media covers Kennedy’s treachery:
The confidential correspondence between Sen. Kennedy and Soviet agents first came to light in a Feb. 2, 1992 report published in the London Times entitled “Teddy, the KGB and the Top Secret File.
To sum up: A mainstream liberal leader goes behind the back of the sitting President to double-deal with not just any foreign power, but the most murderous group of butchers in human history, because he saw them as the reasonable party.
Of course it was a rare, one-off aberration, right?
So it might be possible to be a freedom-loving American and a liberal Democrat. But I’d love someone to explain the baggage for me.
June 16th, 2010 at 8:05 am
Thankfully Kennedy didn’t say anything really treasonous, like ‘I hope he fails”.
June 16th, 2010 at 8:12 am
Why, Mitch, you just don’t love America the way they do. They like to show their love by making nail bombs to kill American soldiers, just like Obama’s political mentor Bill Ayres.
June 16th, 2010 at 9:04 am
It was Reagan! That’s all the justification they needed. You know Progressives don’t care about silly things like the Constitution.
June 16th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
“That’s Ted Kennedy. The patron saint of the mainstream Left in America.”
Had me thinking….
“And the devil who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Revelation 20:10).
June 16th, 2010 at 4:40 pm
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June 17th, 2010 at 10:29 am
A few little pesky details……this appears to be an attempt by multiple senators to contact the Soviet government for a television interview on the subject of US – Soviet relations. Nor is it established that all of those other senators were liberal.
The article you link says it was Andropov, not Putin, not that Andropov was any great humanitarian.
And this is not about undermining the diplomacy of a sitting president— unless you would liket to define any political viewpoint that is active against the second term re-election of a sitting president as unpatriotic?
Does that mean that you would be unpatriotic if you oppose a second term for Obama by campaigning against his re-election?
Shall we discuss current conservative political figures from Congress attempting to negotiate with hostile governments, more actively undermining diplomacy, not simply in opposition to re-election?
June 17th, 2010 at 11:21 am
So Mitch, since you are so incensed at Putin, can you explain away the Republicans so often being on the wrong side? Nixon and Pinochet? Reagan and Saddam Hussein?
Listing just a couple of examples. there are plenty more.
June 17th, 2010 at 11:29 am
Dog Gone said:
“Reagan and Saddam Hussein?”
I’m sure you can explain another way of putting direct pressure on the US enemy Iran in the 1980s. Or maybe not.
June 17th, 2010 at 11:38 am
The article you link says it was Andropov, not Putin
I never mentioned Putin at any point in my piece. How you say…Pesky Detail? 🙂
, not that Andropov was any great humanitarian
Not sure what you’re getting at, here; as I note, Andropov was a KGB chief who led the crushing of the Prague Spring and had his hands in the bloodbaths in Budapest and Gdansk as well, to say nothing of the KGB’s ongoing mass murders throughout his career. It’s safe to say he was a vastly worse human being than the fairly loathsome Putin.
And this is not about undermining the diplomacy of a sitting president— unless you would liket to define any political viewpoint that is active against the second term re-election of a sitting president as unpatriotic?
Consorting with a foreign power to undermine both the election and foreign policy of a sitting president.
If there is a better definition of unpatriotic this side of Tokyo Rose, I have yet to hear it.
Does that mean that you would be unpatriotic if you oppose a second term for Obama by campaigning against his re-election?
DG, I”m getting the impression that you missed a key part of this story.
Kennedy wasn’t “campaigning”; the premier of the USSR did not actually vote in our elections. He was the leader of a superpower that had murdered tens of millions (and was personally complicit in thousands); Kennedy went to HIM saying Reagan made him nervous and, in effect, he and Andropov were the cooler heads that needed to prevail.
You did catch those parts of the article, right?
Shall we discuss current conservative political figures from Congress attempting to negotiate with hostile governments, more actively undermining diplomacy, not simply in opposition to re-election?
Go ahead. They don’t exist, so it should be a very short discussion.
So Mitch, since you are so incensed at Putin, can you explain away the Republicans so often being on the wrong side? Nixon and Pinochet?
Same as every other President, from FDR through the present day but especially Truman through Bush I, who actively supported authoritarian but anti-communist regimes. It was called Realpolitik, and it was the policy of not only the US, but much of the free world for a couple of generations, for better or worse. The bipartisan policies have a history of both moral degradation and, in a few cases (rarely discussed in the media), some real moral victories.
Reagan and Saddam Hussein?
Another liberal chanting point, and comparing apples to dogs in the bargain.
Reagan didn’t “support” Hussein on a moral or policy level; he merely sent Iraq (a relatively paltry amount of) military aid to prop him up against Iran who, let’s remember, seemed like the greater enemy at the time. Again, not unlike bipartisan US policy in dozens of conflicts from the ’30s through the ’80s. He also believed it was best to try to engage authoritarians, rather than actively attack them (unless, like Quaddafi, they attacked us)…
…and more importantly, it was utterly unlike Kennedy. The President’s job is to carry out foreign policy. It’s one of the main reasons we elect him. Reagan did not visit Hussein in 1979 undercut Jimmy Carter! THAT would have been comparing apples to apples.
Listing just a couple of examples. there are plenty more.
All of them equally off-target? 🙂
June 17th, 2010 at 6:12 pm
Kennedy was concerned with providing an alternative view for the voting public here in the US to the one being promoted by Reagan.
June 17th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
DG,
Right. Because the mainstream media, a mere twenty years after Camelot and while Kennedy was still young-ish and awash in celebrity and higher-office potential, and which lined up for the most part *against* Reagan along with most of the wonk, academic and Beltway classes, never gave Kennedy the opportunity to “provde any alternative viewpoints” without going to the head of the USSR first.
And, mind you, doing it under the table and expressly to show Andropov that significant, powerful elements of the US government preferred him to their sitting, elected president.
Interesting version of history, DG. Not sure you’ll find a lot of sources to support it, but keep on trying!