Webster defines patriotism as “love for or devotion to one’s country.” It is time to drop the charade and just say it. Ted Kennedy is no patriot.

I can hear the collective whine of liberals everywhere (liberals always do everything collectively) over having their patriotism questioned. In some cases, it is simply a matter of disagreement between Americans of good faith about the issues of the day. But with Kennedy, who has been in the United States Senate since 1962, there is no longer any defense.

Over the years, Ted Kennedy has impugned the integrity of our military in time of war, promoted homosexual special rights, championed a radical policy of abortion on demand, attempted to strip the American public of the right to keep and bear arms, worked to cripple small businesses and done everything in his power to erase the borders of his own country.

He accused United States military personnel of atrocities similar to the horrors Saddam Hussein inflicted on his political enemies at Abu Ghraib prison. Kennedy said that the prison was “simply under new management.” Saddam Hussein and his ghoulish offspring, Uday and Qusay, carried out torture against the Iraqi people at Abu Ghraib that would have impressed Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Our troops engaged in a few inappropriate and admittedly illegal (by our standards) acts that humiliated and frightened detainees — acts for which they were severely punished. Yet in Ted Kennedy’s mind, the two are morally equivalent.

Kennedy has been one of the most vocal advocates of same-sex marriage and partial birth abortion over the years. Anyone who needs further explanation of the wrong-headedness of these two positions cannot be reasoned with.

His hostility to the Second Amendment is legendary. He even voted against the Vitter Amendment, which, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, was introduced to prohibit the confiscation of legally possessed firearms during a disaster. The provisions of the bill eventually became law in the form of the Vitter Amendment to the 2007 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act. But Ted Kennedy voted against it. In his leftist utopia, no one but police and other governmental authorities can be trusted with a firearm.

Then there is his notorious opposition to capitalism (his trust fund is secure) and his seeming determination to destroy the borders, language and culture of the United States (he won’t be much affected in his family’s Hyannis compound).

Kennedy’s penchant for illegal alien amnesty goes back to his support of the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, which radically altered American immigration policy to favor Hispanics over European immigrants. Two decades later, he supported the 1986 bill that gave amnesty to a million illegal aliens. And, of course, he is the co-sponsor of the McCain-Kennedy legislation that would legalize as many as twenty million current illegals.

Of course, Kennedy’s support for amnesty does not occur in a vacuum. It goes hand-in-hand with his support for new labor law that could put many of America’s entrepreneurs right out of business. The big one at the moment is the grossly misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act,” which does exactly the opposite of what its name implies.

In a nutshell, this legislation could force millions of American workers into labor unions against their will. It sweeps away the current system of permitting workers to cast a secret ballot to determine whether they want to join a union, and replaces it with a “card check” system that allows union organizers to approach a company’s employees about signing a card stating they would like to be part of a union. If a company has ten employees and the union can intimidate six of them into signing the card, the other four employees lose their right to vote on the matter at all.

Combine this sweeping change in labor law with Ted Kennedy’s obsession for granting amnesty to all those illegals and it’s not hard to spot his agenda. One can just picture union organizers telling millions of newly legalized workers they should be paid five times as much to do “those jobs Americans just won’t do.”

That is a recipe for a whole new generation of good little liberal Democrats. That is Ted Kennedy’s agenda, and it is not the agenda of a patriot. From his denigration of our troops to his support for the destruction of our national sovereignty, it is the agenda of a traitor.

© Copyright 2007 by Doug Patton

Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.