When a giant falls, you can’t help but take notice. When that giant is one who spent nearly his entire life championing political causes to which you stand in stark and devoted opposition, the experience is unique and confused. One wonders how to feel and what to say. The death of Senator Kennedy this past week was the passing of just such a giant.

Ted Kennedy was an Irish Catholic. He was brother to two famous heroes of liberalism and son to a man who (as US ambassador to Britain) told FDR to give up on Churchill’s Britain at the outset of World War II. Senator Kennedy was pro-choice. He led the charge to block the nomination of Robert Bork by Ronald Regan to the supreme court in 1987 and was a big reason that judicial nominations since have devolved into questions of ideology more than competence.