Ted Kennedy’s Legacy

Sen. Ted Kennedy was no friend of free markets and limited government, but as John Berlau of the free market Competitive Enterprise Institute notes, there was a brief time during the 1970s when Kennedy rightly saw free markets and “progressive” policies as one and the same. One wishes that this brief time period would have lasted longer.

Nick Gillespie of Reason Magazine views Kennedy’s legacy as (hopefully) the end of an era of bigger government and greater centralization. And, while I agree with Nick’s thinking that greater numbers of Americans are growing frustrated with centralization and the straight jacket it creates, I don’t know if our political system is capable of re-embracing the Constitutional principles of federalism that the founders designed to protect against the encroachment of powerful central government.