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We’re Even, Senator McCain
Photo credit: Krista Kennell / Shutterstock.com
First off, I generally agree with Senator John McCain on foreign policy, even the aspects thereof that have fallen out of favor. That said, I’ve been thinking a lot about how much respect and restraint is due John McCain in his dying days and in the days immediately following his death. Here’s what I’ve concluded: not much. This post is not about denigrating him. It’s about declaring a debt paid. It’s about the Right’s freedom from any further obligation to a senator who has been justly compensated over a lifetime. Please tell me if we can stipulate the following assertions:
- John McCain leveraged his heroism and sacrifice into decades of fame, power, adulation, and fortune.
- John McCain, for decades, has made a regular practice of going out of his way to smite his enemies, primarily in his own party (i.e., people who Ricochetti generally agree with, respect, and/or like).
- McCain has continued that regular practice in his dying days, even going so far as to settle scores with his enemies in his own party. We get it, sir, you don’t like us very much. Point taken.
- McCain generally held his fire against then-Senator Barack Obama in the 2008 general election campaign, even going so far as to denounce Republicans who ran ads about Obama’s extreme anti-American pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
- McCain voted against the Bush tax cut; co-sponsored the unconstitutional campaign finance reform bill; supported immigration amnesty; and killed Republicans’ last chance at Obamacare repeal.
To the extent that we can stipulate these assertions as facts, I hereby free the Right from the obligation to praise John McCain. I further free the Right from their vow of silence over McCain’s history of abusing anyone and everyone on the Right who disagrees with him. John McCain has been amply compensated for his honorable military service during the Vietnam War. The Right has paid its debt to him. We’re even.
Published in General
By the way, the last book on this topic that I read was “Koba the Dread” by Martin Amis. Finished it a few days ago.
Somebody on Ricochet recommended it. If Ricochet had a system for bookmarking comments, maybe I’d be able to look up who it was and thank him/her.
One night I made the mistake of reading myself to sleep with this book, and found myself being very careful around Comrade Stalin and the others in his office. (I won’t tell you which extended family member somehow became Stalin in my dreams.) I didn’t sleep well that night.
I’ve been learning about the horrors of Soviet communism since I was about five years old, and while I have had a few unpleasant encounters with it in dreams, one when I was about five or six, I don’t think I ever before had any quite like this with Stalin himself.
I can think of only two other characters on the big political stage that I’ve met in dreamland: Richard Nixon and Hillary Clinton.
[rendered pointless upon further reading]
Now, now, I feel compelled to defend my once and future home state. (@exjon, help me out here.) McCain is an outlier in terms of AZ senators, as is the aptly-named Flake. Goldwater is his prime (not his later years) is closer to the type. You’ve already forgotten Sen. Jon Kyl, a fine conservative who served honorably from 1995-2013, another good example.
In earlier decades, there were Democrats sent to the Senate from AZ, but they were conservative by modern standards.
Just setting the record straight.
Did communists fight with us against Nazi Germany? Did they help our soldiers land in German-occupied France?
Not all communists are like the Gulag.
But the ideas are still anathema to this country and her ideals. I do not want socialism or communism here, not because the people who follow it are horrifying people, but because their ideas lead to horrifying ends when allowed to be carried out.
McCain was elected by conservatives to help stand against that growing popularity in the Democrat party. In many instances, he stepped aside and let them through. We now have the beginnings of socialized health care, and in many ways, we lay responsibility for that at his feet. One thing that should be evident from the Gulag, Nazi Germany, and (to much lesser extent) England is that the government running health care is something we should abhor.
Wasn’t Flake elected as part of the tea party wave as a return to Goldwater style libertarianism?
The communists who fought with us during WW2 were lead by Stalin who killed over 20 million people and put millions more in gulags.
Moderator Note:
This is rude. If you're going to disengage, just disengage. Don't insult the person on your way out.I think you’re deranged soI’m not going to engage further with you on this. I said about all I can on the subject in comment #57and I find your responses incoherent.How rude.
You see nothing wrong with the door we have opened in this country to these ideologies? That’s what I was criticizing McCain for, which is what he does when he sides with Democrats who are playing with the fire growing in their voter base.
No, Bernie isn’t the Gulag. Most people, taken as individuals, are not.
Doesn’t mean his ideas don’t lead there.
Don’t treat me like an idiot.
This is the first sign I’ve seen that you see the difference between a democratic political opponent and a murderous tyrant. Bueno. My work is done.
Hello, Cato. I struck out a couple of spots on your comment towards AlterGirl. Please see the modnote and desist. Thank you in advance.
That explains so much! This is how we can have casual politicians like Mc Cain making deals .
It can’t happen here, so we can just wait the lefties out, let them enact their little schemes… this is America, land of inate and perpetual freedom that is impervious to internal threats!
No vigilance is required because Sanders and Obama (and Hillary) are nice people, they would never use the FBI to spy on their political opponents, put opponents in jail Dinesh D Souza, the guy who made the video that ‘inspired ‘Benghazi, use the IRS on political opponents… well maybe… but that’s minor stuff compared to Stalin…it will never progress beyond that! You’re paranoid!
Except I really can’t imagine Trump being captured. The Left and its wing nuts have done their best to bring him down, and the only result is him dusting himself off and saying, “North Korea. Pull Down Big Pharma.”
And as long as he continues to tackle the far right’s sacred cow of Big Pharma, the witch hunt will continue. By now, he probably uses the adrenaline their attacks bring him as a sort of political Viagra.
I liked your comment for its overall content and also for the Bookmark suggestion.
@juliesnapp, I’ll give you calling her “deranged,” but calling her comments “incoherent” should be fair game. That’s playing the ball not the man, and they were.
Oh? Would you go telling a guest at a dinner party they’re incoherent? Last I checked, that wasn’t a polite thing to say either. :>
Yes, especially after the 4th glass of wine. :)
I called two comments incoherent (and they were, they made no sense). I didn’t call her incoherent. That’s not an ad hominem. It’s just a reason not to respond to the comments. I could have ignored them, but they were comments that responded to me, so I didn’t. I’ll take the fault for starting this. I did call her deranged at the same time, which is an ad hominem and probably colored your perception of the exchange. But you’re over reaching when you prohibit a response to the comments because you consider the response “impolite.”
Moderator Note:
Not helping.This comment is idiotic!Cato, I do believe “rude” comments is on the Code of Conduct that you agreed to when you signed up to this website. I asked you to desist making rude comments, including ad hominem attacks (which, yes, I know the difference.. thanks for that). If you want to continue to argue with me about this, I would recommend you move this to a PM instead of continuing to be rude towards me in this public setting.
Now, I’m going to steer this conversation back to the topic at hand. Any comments not related to the topic from this point on are going to be redacted in full. Thank you.
Heck with that. Let’s torch this thread and start over elsewhere.
How big a glass are we talking?
My point was that it’s okay to criticize John McCain, especially as he criticizes others on the right.
You could say that when we trash John McCain, we’re actually honoring him by showing we have learned from his statesmanlike behavior.
Well, I have to admit that I learned something from all of this. When I don’t understand someone’s statements, I will ask them to clarify said remarks. Doing that is less inflammatory, and not something that can be experienced by the remarkee as a rude attack on them.
Oh and one other thing – not in my deepest darkest most self-sabotage-y nightmares would I ever volunteer to be a mod.
What I remember most about John McCain occurred during his run for President. It was the moment when he chided a little old lady, sanctimoniously telling her that she shouldn’t be so mean to Barack Obama. Those weren’t his exact words, but that was the gist of his “gentle reprimand”. He showed total disrespect to that woman.
My next memory is recent – of him saying he didn’t really want Sarah Palin on his ticket – he wanted Joe Lieberman – but the mean old Republican Party wouldn’t let him put a democrat on a republican ticket.
I respect his service, and past behavior as a POW, but his current behavior and political leanings leave me puzzled and skeptical. So thank you for your post. I don’t think that it is wrong to argue against the ideas of a man, even if that man is dying.
I believe his interest in campaign finance was solely due to his humiliation in the Keating 5 affair. Keating was a constituent. Not of the others involved. He was a freshman Senator without a long history in politics, like the others. He was very concerned about his family history, his grandfather and father. He assuaged his humiliation with a law that has wreaked havoc on the Congress and the rest of us as the “member” now spends all his or her time raising money while the staff writes the laws.
This post is featured on Instapundit this morning.