Did it ever occur to anyone that maybe Senator Ted Kennedy felt guilty — for being born rich (given his hatred of the wealthy); for killing an innocent woman in a reckless accident and then running away from it; for not living up to the image of his brothers, an image generated by myth, not by reality? And does it go on to occur to anybody that people with excessive amounts of guilt, who acquire excessive degrees of political power, can end up doing perfectly awful things — such as advocating the drafting of doctors into permanent civil service and the imposition of mediocre (or worse) care on to their patients? I don’t understand how, or why, dying alters any of these facts. And by the way, it’s not courageous to be a socialist, as Ted Kennedy proudly and openly was (even without admitting to the label). Socialism is merely savagery; dictatorship; authoritarianism. It’s a comparatively new name for the oldest — and, sad to say, most prevalent — approach to social relationships in human history, to date. Capitalism and individual rights, when they flourished for a time, were the exception. Courage belongs to those who advocate for the unpopular, rare and yet true — not the same old destructive things. It doesn’t take courage to fight for what everyone claims is true and most understand is false and dishonest. It doesn’t take courage to champion a myth. I don’t see Ted Kennedy as the “lion of the Senate.” He was just the cowardly lion.