Another Note on Kennedy: Politicization

Atrios and Amanda Marcotte have this exactly right, of course.  And more generally, as Aimai notes, using a major figure’s death to try to galvanize support for the causes that person believed in is a perfectly normal, reasonable thing to do, and it would really be nice if we’d all stop pretending that there’s something wrong with saying: Ted Kennedy is no longer with us, but let us honor his memory by fighting harder, by doubling our efforts, to achieve those goals to which he dedicated his life.  Health care for all.  A living wage for all.  Equality under the law.  The principle that human rights do not end where citizenship does.  A better world.

After all, on the one hand Kennedy was a master politician.  He loved politics, he lived and breathed politics, he believed — as I believe — that politics is not only a necessary, inherent part of human life but has the potential to be used for great good.  To suggest that we would do him best honor by refraining from politics seems odd, at best.  And on the other hand, it’s not as though conservatives are going to scrupulously avoid “politicizing” his death, though they’ll mainly do it under cover of pretending to decry liberal “politicization.”  Indeed, digby points out that Limbaugh is already doing this.

Actually, Limbaugh is a little bit right, here, though I’m pretty sure it’s by accident.  Attaching Kennedy’s name to the bill most likely to pass — some watered-down compromise with no public option and a lot of giveaways to insurance companies — would be an insult to his memory.  Senator Kennedy was a pragmatic incrementalist, as also am I, but he always fought to get as much as he thought he could each time.  Incrementalism ceases to be pragmatic if you seek only the tiniest improvement even when a greater leap is feasible, and health care, now, is surely such a case.  Nearly four in five Americans supports a public option. To fail to take advantage of that opportunity, and especially to embrace such failure as a fitting tribute to Senator Kennedy’s legacy, would truly be an insult.

RIP Ted Kennedy

We have lost one of the greatest public servants our country has ever known.

I can’t write anything else and stay coherent.  Goodbye, Senator.  Thank you.

Update: I still can’t stand to write much, but it’s worth noting that today is a year to the day from Senator Kennedy’s speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention where then-Senator Obama was nominated as the Democratic candidate for President; and that it is the 89th anniversary of the 19th Amendment taking effect, designated Women’s Equality Day in 1971.

Punishment, Revenge, Compassion and the Nature of Civilization

A little less than a week ago, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, a Libyan man convicted of the Pan-Am Flight 103 bombing which killed 270 people over Lockerbie, Scotland, was released from prison to return to Libya, under the authority of the Scottish Justice Secretary, Kenny MacAskill.  Probably the most succinct summary of events is the  BBC’s timeline, but there’s been much ink spilled over this, so by all means ask The Google if you need more information.

As I say, much ink has been spilled, virtually all of it in outrage as far as I can tell.  Al-Megrahi is dying of final-stage terminal prostate cancer, yet there are deafening cries from all over the US and the UK that to have released a dying man who could harm no one now, so that he might die, one hopes a bit more comfortable, at home, surrounded by family, and so that his family might have the comfort of seeing him again — that to have done this is monstrous, horrible, an affront to justice and rightness and an insult to the families of al-Megrahi’s victims.

What I would like to know is, how does it help the families of the victims, or serve the cause of justice, to inflict unnecessary suffering on a helpless, terminally ill person?  Don’t demand revenge and claim it’s justice you want: the two are incompatible.  Indeed, revenge and civilization are incompatible.

Societies have the right to punish people by imprisonment and confiscation of assets, to the extent that such punishment helps to deter future crime and is not disproportionate to what the criminal has done, and to the extent that confiscated assets can help to compensate the criminal’s victims; and societies have the right to imprison people who commit crimes, so long again as the duration of imprisonment is not disproportionate to the damage done to society by the criminal, to protect society from further damage.  No reasonable person could suggest that any of these purposes is served by keeping a terminally ill man in prison, without access to adequate medical care, for the last, painful months of his life.

To refuse to release al-Megrahi would have been to repay barbarism with barbarism.  Secretary MacAskill clearly made the right choice.