Your Sunday Funny
A reminder from Charles Krauthammer's essay "A U.S. House Of Lords?":
The problem with Caroline Kennedy's presumption to Hillary Clinton's soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat is not lack of qualification or experience. The Senate houses lots of inexperienced rookies -- wealthy businessmen, sports stars, even the occasional actor.Of course, Barack Hussein Obama has been channeling Camelot since the early days of his campaign, never mind that the Kennedy Camelot is nothing more than an illusion in the first place.
The problem is Kennedy's sense of entitlement. Given her rather modest achievements, she is trading entirely on pedigree.
I hate to be a good-government scold, but wasn't the American experiment a rather firm renunciation of government by pedigree?
Yes, the Founders were not democrats. They believed in aristocracy. But their idea was government by natural -- not inherited -- aristocracy, an aristocracy of "virtue and talents," as Jefferson put it.
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Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against Caroline Kennedy. She seems a fine person. She certainly has led the life of a worthy socialite helping all the right causes. But when the mayor of New York endorses her candidacy by offering, among other reasons, that "her uncle has been one of the best senators that we have had in an awful long time," we've reached the point of embarrassment.
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...[W]e should resist encouraging the one form of advantage the American Republic strove to abolish: title.
No lords or ladies here. If Princess Caroline wants a seat in the Senate, let her do it by election. There's one in 2010. To do it now by appointment on the basis of bloodline is an offense to the most minimal republicanism. Every state in the union is entitled to representation in the Senate. Camelot is not a state.
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