2,271 words
Jon Ward
Camelot’s End: Kennedy vs. Carter & the Fight that Broke the Democratic Party
New York: Twelve, 2019
The US Presidential Election of 1980 turned into a vicious civil war within the Democratic Party. The conflict centered upon the incumbent President Jimmy Carter and Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy of Massachusetts. (more…)
Niccolò Machiavelli
2,612 words
Recently the question of realpolitik in the White Nationalist movement came up, and it generated the best kind of debate: pointed and informed, yet civil. In my favorable review of the 2017 film Chappaquiddick, I decided to take a novel approach to the Chappaquiddick affair by suggesting that Ted Kennedy had done the right thing by not resigning afterward and that the people of Massachusetts had done the right thing by standing by him, despite their man’s transparent acts of cowardice and deception. In other words, can – or should – a person sacrifice his own soul for the betterment of a political movement? (more…)
2,251 words
Chappaquiddick (2017)
Directed by John Curran
Written by Taylor Allen & Andrew Logan
Starring Jason Clarke, Kate Mara, Ed Helms, & Jim Gaffigan
Whenever I contemplate the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident, the Republican in me always asks in anguish, “Why couldn’t it have been Teddy Kennedy who drowned and not the girl?” (more…)