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Yet another truly excellent endorcement for Sarah Palin The true enemy of the Tea Party movement, contrary to what oh so many in the the clueless and wilfully blind MSM would have you believe, is not Obama and the Democratic Party, it is the Republican Party’s establishment… i.e. the people who made Obama presidency possible.
And so when George W. Bush, the very embodiment of everything that brought the Tea Party into existence, says “Sarah Palin is unqualified“, then it is time to start counting the days until the Tea Party propels her into the White House at the head of the angry mob of peasants with torches and pitchforks soccer moms, office workers and garage mechanics.
Often the quality of a person can be judged by who their are enemies… and that means Sarah Palin is looking more appealing by the day.
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“I am not a political pundit. I’m really not,” he said.
Nope George, you are a political pillock.
I have no clue.
Refreshingly honest there George, but we’d rather gathered that by now!
I have my doubts about Sarah Palin, but she certainly annoys all the right people.
Palin is certainly not overqualified, but she’s every bit as qualified as was George W. Bush (whose only political experience was as governor of Texas; Palin has been both a governor and a mayor), and she’s vastly more qualified than the current occupant of the White House (not that that’s a high bar by any standard). Furthermore, she’s energetic and energizing, which counts for something.
It will be interesting to see who the Republican Party puts forward in 2012. Of the three current putative frontrunners (Palin, Romney and Huckabee), Romney is clearly the best-qualified on paper. However, I just don’t trust him on economic matters (he’s responsible for Massachusetts-care). And Huckabee is a disaster; if Ian B gets worked up over poor Christine O’Donnell wait until he gets started on Huckabee! The second-stringers have issues, too (Bobby Jindall, for instance). So at the moment I don’t see anyone I like better than Palin.
And I agree with Perry: if GWB is against her, that’s a pretty good sign.
I have my doubts about Sarah Palin, but she certainly annoys all the right people.
Palin is an advocate of small government, and that’s all that should matter to a liberalist alliance like the Tea Party.
Doubts about Palin originate from her stated beliefs on subjects like stem cell research and creationism, as a VP candidate it was going to be obvious her personal views would be aired and criticised or ridiculed.
But _if_ she is committed to small government, and she does get into power, then her personal views don’t matter, she wont be forcing her educational and health policies on any one, so she claims. That’s a big “if” there, and that’s probably where doubt creeps in.
The spectre of President Palin is a bit daunting, but not so much to the Western world as the Islamic one, I don’t see her bowing in deference to the Saudi King, she’d scare the sh*t out of him.
I hope they can find somebody better. It’s time the non-left had a candidate that isn’t ridiculous. A better word would be ridiculable, but I don’t think that’s a real world. There are 300 million people in America. One of them must have a preference for small government and some statesmanlike gravitas. Many people didn’t like Maggie Thatcher, and she was accused of many things, but nobody could call her an ignorant fool. They need somebody like that.
I don’t know why Palin was chosen as VP candidate. The woeful political ignorance, that unsettlingly brittle speech delivery, the moon-faced pregnant daughter with her new Abstinence Corporation, the personal philosophy derived from a book of fairy tales. Really, Palin will only prove to the middle ground that non-Progressives are all idiots. To any campaigner trying to show that the non-left has intellect, reason and gravitas, she’d be an insurmountable burden.
There has to be somebody better.
I find her a bit like a Hienlein character. And that is a complement because he created interesting, strong and independent women.
Is the “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” series being advertised over there yet?
Anonymous source, British press ??
This does not sound like Bush, he’s never been one to backstab behind people’s back.
Take this report with a few grains of salt.
here’s one to watch
(Link)
I thought it was spelt “endorsement”?
Which book of fairy tales would that be, Ian B ?
The Bible, John B.
One of the best presentations I have seen regarding the historical accuracy of the Bible was on old determinedly secular aunty BBC about a year ago.
Ian, if even the BBC can manage to present convincing facts that run contrary to the accepted general prevailing mindset at that institution, by comparison, it really would indicate your impartiality and dedication to simple facts is questionable.
John, God doesn’t exist. The Bible contains some historical elements, but the parts about God are not true. We know this because we know that God does not exist. It’s just a fact of the Universe. Like, Isis and Osiris and Odin and Thor and Quetzalcoatl, they just don’t exist. That the Bible does contain some historical facts woven into it- because it includes king lists and so on- does not prove in any way the parts about God.
He just doesn’t exist, and there is no way around that. Yahweh was just one of the tribal gods of the primitive people of Canaan, elevated and mixed with another god, El, when the Persians wanted the Jews to have a monotheism similar to their imperial Zoroastrianism, so Yahweh/El became the Jewish Ahura-Mazda. Judaism was just Zoroastrianism for the hicks in the hills.
We know the history of how the superstition spread; we know how a belief in a messianic saviour arose in the latter period BC, how Jews in the Eastern Roman Empire developed that into proto-Christianity, how a pretender to the Roman Imperial throne adopted that superstition to gain Christian support for his coup, how his descendants imposed it upon the Empire as an absolute religion. We know how after the fall of Rome missionaries hornswoggled simple tribal kings like our Aethelbert into adopting it and imposing it on their subjects.
We know it isn’t true. Yahweh doesn’t exist, and he never did. There was no Eden, no Deluge, no Abraham, no sojourn in Egypt, no Moses, no forty years in the wilderness, no Conquest of Canaan; we know that if David and Solomon existed they were minor tribal kings and there was no imperial Great Israel. We know that the first (minor) power in the region was Omri of Samaria, and that the myth of a glorious past and “lost” tribes was invented to magnify little backward Judea when the Persians set it up (briefly) to be a tax-gathering centre for the satrapy of Eber-Nari, before they were squashed by Alexander the Great.
It isn’t true John. This silly foreign superstition has been plaguing us for 2000 years now; we now have a new wave of its fanatics surging into Europe just as we were finally shaking off the last lot. Look, I know you’re a believer, so I should cosset your feelings with limp platitudes about faith being a private matter and so on. But it’s not true, John. It is not, “in my opinion” not true. It is objectively not true. Yahweh does not exist and he never did, and it is time, three hundred years after the Age Of Reason supposedly started, that we were rid of him.
newrouter-
Johnson certainly looks interesting, doesn’t he?
Well Ian, I rather leave this up to Him.
You evidently have very strong beliefs and I wouldn’t want to be harsh 🙂
God does love you and He forces no one’s hand.
Jesus extends His hand to you.
Don’t let your beliefs stand between you and reality.
Oh for fuck’s sake John, give it up. You can’t be loved by a fictional character. How hard is this to figure out exactly?
You may have seen this article by Palin(Link) in NR(via PW). It includes a pretty good short statement of what the political goals of the conservative movement must be over the next two years and beyond:
Ok, it’s politician speak, but it’s good politician speak of the kind that can spur on the troops.
Oh, and for those who worry that she might theocratize America, in her twenty years as a pol, including spells as mayor of Wassilla and Gov. of AK, she hasn’t theocratized so much as a school. For her, it seems, the personal is not the political.
As for who else. It has to be a Governor, not a Senator, (even Rubio who’s being talked up already), since the Senate is part of the problem, not part of the solution, and it has to be someone outside the country club rebublican cabal, who gave us the aformentioned Dubya, (though I agree it’s unlikely he would diss Sarah publicly).
Personally, I can’t see Palin, or anyone else, succeeding in turning America round. The problem is too deep rooted and I fear the collapse must come before the regeneration, but I’m a miserable old cynic so don’t mind me.
Ian B, your interesting timeline doesn’t work. Aside from its reliance upon a purely subjective basis -your assertion of the nonexistence of a creative God- your fanciful timeline depends upon the complete rejection of what little archaeological exists from the era. The Abrahamic origin of monotheism, a prime example, is maintained by both Jewish tradition and archeological texts such as Ugaritic literature and the controversial Ebla tablets. It doesn’t prove Abraham correct, but it does toss the convenient-but-unbacked “Persian conspiracy” theory out the window.
Most tellingly, you are forced to begin each of your assertions with a subjective statement of belief. This word you keep using, “know” … I do not think it means what you think it means.
I guess we all have to find out for ourselves, Ian.
However.
Such rigid beliefs do indicate why the likes of the Tea Party will have a difficult time in a seriously anti-God America, and why it is extremely likely that there will be more-of-the-same career politicians (professional con men) running the show for the foreseeable future.
Being qualified to oversee the Leviathan is not a loveable trait.
Being unqualified to oversee the Leviathan isn’t either, and it is a waste of time to debate which is better or worse.
Being qualified to destroy the Leviathan from the inside is what is needed. I don’t see Palin as that person.
The Tea Party is made up of many different types. The danger is that it will make inroads into the corridors of Power only to be over taken by the modern Right.
I’m hoping for a Christie/Petraeus ticket for 2012.
Mose- true, I wove a little too much reasoned speculation regarding the Persians in there, but the things we do know we do know for facts; most specifically that this God, like all gods, does not exist.
All the archaeology we have shows the glaring absence of the grand legends- the sojourn, the conquest, David and Solomon. The Jews developed out of the Canaanite tribes. No magical origin required.
There is no historical or archaelogical evidence for the fanciful tales of the Patriarchs. The appearance of names like Abram-u in the Ebla tablets give us simply a glimpse of early gods/folk heroes in the pre-Judaic period which are woven into the persianised narrative. They do not attest the mythic history of the Jews and, needless to say, Jewish “tradition” is meaningless as an evidenciary source, for it is post-hoc. What we do have is lots of evidence, in the form of idol figurines for instance, showing pre-exilic polytheism, including lots of lovely models of El and his wife.
On a practical note- not proof, but commonsense- it defies that commonsense that the Jews, pottering about in the barren crags with their sheep, would have spontaneously developed a complex monotheism and literature. The texts are all much later in origin than they claim to be, and are post-exilic. By far the most sensible explanation is that whoever the Persians dumped into Judea as the new ruling class, whether they were really the descendants of those who (may have) left or somebody else, brought the new complex, Persia-friendly faith with them. We know for certain that they cannot have previously had a complex temple-ritual based religion, because there never was a temple. Not a brick of Solomon’s glorious edifice has ever been found. It wasn’t there. It was retconning by the new faith to explain the new temple built with Persian sponsorship.
So anyway, we do know for an absolute fact that gods don’t exist, and therefore God doesn’t exist. We know that the Jewish history is fake and written years later than it claimed to be. We don’t really need to know any more than that, although it’s fun to speculate and argue about what really happened more than 2000 years ago. What is astonishingly depressing is that any of this is still controversial.
“… just as we were finally shaking off the last lot.”
Once day you’ll realise the little liberal utopianism you yearn for would never be possible without something like Judeo-Christianity happening at some point in history.
It’s a sad fact that humans, left to their own godless inhibitions, will quite willingly beat the cr*p out of anyone who looks at them a bit funny. It takes a merciful but vengeful deity to convince the uneducated that it’s actually better to be nice to others once in a while to secure your place in heaven, and then when we’re all enlightened and suitably educated we can suffer the real meaning of it all, as you have.
Yeah, yeah, there was the unfortunate episode of the religious elite getting their power fix for a few hundred years, but it only took someone to point out that singing hallelujah whilst running swords through the innocent didn’t actually make you a good person and that deeds and faith were what really matters, then reformation, reason and enlightenment were just around the corner, it was bound to happen, that was the nature of the creed.
The next wave of fanatics is a bit more deadly, though, because freedom of thought isn’t going to get a look in under their ideology, which doesn’t include the golden rule, pray they never get a foothold because you can kiss your liberal ass goodbye.
So go easy on the Jesus freaks, they do mean well, and they do at least let you live to prattle on the truth of it all (you’ll burn in Hell later, but hey, you don’t care).
I’m as enlightened as you are and agree 100% with your analysis, but I’ve got over my embarrassment of having Jesus as an intellectual ancestor, particularly when I’ve seen the kind of god-bothers that happen in other parts of the world and thank Yahweh I wasn’t born where they have dominion.
Ian B, not to mention that prior to the Persian-sponsored return to Judea, Jews appear to have been polytheistic like all other canaanite tribes, with goddesses, including a consort for the deity that evolved into Yahweh.
Raphael Patai did a lot of work in this area.
Just a weeeeeee bit off-topic, folks 😀
I guess everyone is where they are at because of all that has gone before.
However there is enough information for relatively informed choices.
I am not a Biblical historian and to venture out into that territory is baited land, replete with red herrings, straw men, and when all else fails, the occasional ad hominem.
However as far as I know there is plenty of archaeological evidence for that history. And, very simply, you are misinformed.
As to the existence of God.
Well, I guess that is for you to find out if you wish to.
You might consider that you are misinformed in that, as well.
There does come a point at which reality is no longer avoidable.
And that there good things, and bad things.
Ian B — if I give you one miracle (the existence of the universe), will you then explain the rest?
Sarah Palin — if Samizdata likes her, let’s hear what she has to say (I really don’t have a clue) rather than posting opinion pieces about her.
What would have been much more enlightening (well, at least interesting) were some attempts to outline the qualifications required for an effective President in this particular phase of our (U.S.) development as a nation-state.
Note: Effective as contrasted with Preferred views or abilities.
Ian B…
If you think that you don’t believe in fairy tales…
maybe, but that would probably make you the only one.
Lots of people even believe they’re not idiots.
I don’t care if Palin believes in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Yahweh, the Invisible Pink Unicorn or her own belly button lint. It’s not my problem.
What does matter is whether or not she worships The State.
Unfortunately, a great many non-religious types have instead chosen to worship Leviathan.
of course W doesn’t approve, her blood isn’t blue.
Oh no, Sarah Palin believes in God. Thus she is just as bad from a libertarian standpoint as Obama. Because the Ten Commandments in front of courthouses are equally as oppressive as the leftist conception of the State as God with all the police and laws that come with it.
This is the mindset that leads to the least productive of libertarian activities: insisting that there is no appreciable difference between the two major American parties, and that both are equally bad. Never mind all the libertarians who are members of the GOP, and working tirelessly to reform it.
This is especially useful when that 2% votes Libertarian and allows a Democrat to win the race. Yay for purity! Yay for never compromising! Damn the consequences. So what if Harry Reid is still a Senator? So what if Michael Bennett got elected in Colorado? Long live the Judean People’s Front.
My dream world? The two major parties in the US are the Libertarian Party and the Moral Majority. The only thing at stake in elections would be if the pot and porn would get banned. I wouldn’t have to worry about my money getting stolen or my guns getting taken away.
The existence of the universe isn’t a miracle Ian, it’s just a plain ‘ol fact. How it came into existence is still up for grabs, but I’m standing four square with Ian B here, the sky fairy explination is just a superstitious copout.
I have asked God on many occasion to reveal himself to me, to whack his wang dang doodle on the coffee table if he so wishes. I would treat it as a magic wand rather than an act of perversion, but so far he has declined. I know he must be busy confusing non Christians, like Hindu’s, Taoists, Animists and Pagans, and especially those who believe in Mohammed, the Directors cut, God 2.00 about his nature and intents, but even so… He’s supposed to love everyone isn’t he? Just clear the existence thing up for me Lord and I’ll be your Altar Boy till we run out of Incense. You have my email address dont you?
Now as to the point of the thread.
We have had two catastrophic “Professional” fuckwit politicians in a row as President, how bad could Palin possibly be in comparison?
Libertarianism has NO view regarding the existence or otherwise of God. Complete non sequitur. ‘God’ is a libertarian non-issue.
Oh really? Actually it is constant compromise that allowed the catastrophic Bush presidency, which in turn was what made the even more catastrophic Obama presidency possible. It is compromise that brought the Republican party to where it could offer up John “I support the bailout” McCain as a viable alternative to Barack “I support the bailout” Obama.
THAT is where your compromise got you and Obama was the consequence of tolerating a complete lack of principle.
GWB did not say Sarah is not qualified for POTUS
just because he said he is not a political pundent.
LOve him or hate him you have to respect the
fact he has not critized Obama and what he has
done.
THAT is where your compromise got you…
Too much standing and fighting on things that don’t matter, while compromising away the things that do.
Me, I’m willing to work with almost anyone who rejects Leviathan, even if I think they’re complete nutters…
… just as long as they can tolerate my having found The Goddess (and what I did to her when I found her).
Me, I’m just fascinated by the certainty some folk that the Deity doesn’t exist – especially when their proof boils down to “Well, He/She never returned my calls ! Waaahhhhhhhh!” (sometimes with accompanying stamping of foot, sometimes absent said footwork) …
Last time I looked, it used to be considered impossible to prove a negative …
I find it especially humorous when someone pontificates upon the Flood never having taken place … cuz *I* don’t have a good explanation why pretty close to all the societies and cultures throughout history seem to have their Flood story of one form or another … I cannot prove it happened, but I’m not sufficiently arrogant to assert that it never happened …
Oh – and when folk assert that GWBush badmouthed a current politician, I want to see the *proof* first … like him or not, the guy has class – and has resisted saying anything bad about Obama, no matter how much Obama has provided fodder for such things …
I have also learned, over the years, that those who assert the common man’s connection of the Democrats don’t know the Democrats, and those who assert the blue-blood elitism of the Bush family and the GOP don’t know the Bush family or the GOP … and, as we learned this past Tuesday, more and more of the US electorate is coming to realise that what they have been told by the BDS-syndrome folk ain’t necessarily so …
A passing thought for the GWBush-detractors of this blog …
Rather than the Obama Presidency being a direct result of the existence of GWBush and his Presidency, the evidence is much more supportive that, absent GWB in 2000, President Gore would have been Obama – just 8 years earlier … just as Kerry would ahve been Obama 4 years earlier … it makes much more sense to blame Gore and Kerry (and Hillary) for Obama’s current position – had *any* of the three been better candidates, Senator Obama would have remained a tool of the Chicago Machine …
Except we live in the snout counting world. It sucks, but that’s how things get decided. Political parties look after their supporters first, and the ones inside the room get listened to, not the ones outside the room.
The Libertarian Party can be a third party, or it can be a political pressure group. It cannot be both. Everytime a close race goes to the socialists because the far, far, far less than ideal Republicans aren’t good enough for the purists, things get worse, and it gets harder to move the needles back in the right direction. The enemy of your enemy is your friend….as long as your enemy is a threat.
Look, the way to create a culture of liberty involves fighting on quite a few different fronts, but the absolute first thing is stopping the statist trend. It does no good at all to go one step forward and four steps back.
The nature of American politics is a two party system. That’s the way it must be. For libertarians, there are essentially three possible results.
1)The Libertarian Party remains a ~3% party, usually playing a spoiler to aid the Democratic Party in close races
2)The Republican Party disintegrates, and some of it’s former supporters turn to the Libertarian Party
3)The libertarians take control of the GOP.
3 is our best chance. Here’s the thing: the people who take over American parties are always people who supported that party and then took it over. You cannot take over something you’re not a part of. Every time a libertarian votes Libertarian because the Republicans only check 5 of the 10 boxes, as opposed to the Democrat’s 1, he is not helping the cause of freedom. Because the goal is to do outreach, and to bring people to your point of view. It’s much easier to do that with someone who already agrees with half of what you say, rather then someone who agrees with only a small portion of what you say. The generic Republican is going to be much much friendlier to libertarianism then the generic Democrat.
I’m in the process of becoming a GOP precinct captain. Why? Because then I get to have a say in the nominations process. As I work my way up, I become more powerful in the party hierarchy, and I get to influence who the GOP runs. Mustard seeds, people.
Or, you know, keep leading with the drug legalization thing. That’s working out great. I was at the huge rally on 9/12. A million people there. What’s the Libertarian Party doing? Drugs. Nothing about the Fed, nothing about the entitlement bubble, nothing about the huge expanse of government regulation and power. You’ve got a bunch of people here, most of whom have never voted for the LP, and you’re not going to lead with something more approachable? Oh yeah, the guy who’s voted GOP since 1956 is really going to listen to the bearded college kid with pot leaf on his sign. Except he might listen to the bearded college kid explaining how the Fed is really the root of all the problems. Because he never learned about the Fed in public high school. Even though he’s a diehard Republican, he probably feels pretty good about the New Deal, because his teachers told him it was awesome. A 5 minute conversation about the Fed might convert him from a kneejerk R voter to a libertarian leaning Republican. Except he didn’t have that 5 minute convo. He just nudged his wife and said “look at this damn hippie” and moved on. Of course the Drug War is awful, but people like that aren’t coming to come around to that opinion first. Seeing that issue first is actually going to turn them off to the whole libertarian package. How is that helpful?
Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
What IanB said at 07:40.
I respectfully depart from the editor on the point of judging the quality of a person by their enemies. I can’t understand how that is supposed to work.
Annoying George Monbiot or George Bush might be a good thing in itself, but there are infinitely more ways of doing that while still being mistaken, evil, lamebrained, or crazy yourself, than there are of doing it with sanity and sense.
I agree that you should never compromise the principle(s), Perry, but compromise in actions is unfortunately necessary to get anywhere. Okay, the further you stray from principles to the actions, the longer your spoon has got to get.
(Thatcher compromised hugely, but without her we might be part of an expanded USSR rather than the expanded EU. Yes, the USSR was bankrupt, but so would the EU be without the sucker payments such as iDave has just authorised.)
Regarding GW, I think there was a lot more that went into subverting his presidency than compromise.
The setting up and the knocking down is very clever.
It is almost enough to convince me there is a conspiracy!
Hey, RAB, I am sorry (sad, puzzled, concerned) that you have not had an answer. Seriously.
He does promise to answer those who ask.
Is there some requirement/condition that you are hanging on to that by its very nature negates the enquiry?
Oh my.
You have made several mistakes here Britt based on certain faulty assumptions.
1. I could not care less about the Libertarian Party in the USA.
2. I have always agreed that the best chance for ‘small staters’ (which means small-L libertarians, classical liberals and genuine conservatives) in America is taking over the Republican party and THAT is exactly what the Tea Party is all about.
3. However the libertarians, classical liberals and genuine conservatives within the Republican Party over the last 15 years have not been the solution to anything, indeed they have been the root of the problem…
…why?
Because in thinking that they must compromise on even the fundamental core principle of constitutionally limited government, they have voted for and abetted Big State Republicans like George “I started the bailout” Bush and John “I support the bailout” McCain. If you can ‘compromise’ to that extent, you are either lying about being in favour of limited government or you have no conception of what the word ‘limited’ means. ‘Limited’ does not mean “vast-but-growing-less-than-the-other-guy”.
It is the very fact so many people who want a smaller state refused to ever say “THIS IS A DEAL BREAKER” but rather keep endlessly holding their nose and voting for The Lesser Evil that made it possible for the state to keep growing remorselessly under Republican governments. The Cold War in over, we won, so Reagan’s excuse no longer applies.
I have nothing against compromise with fellow travellers and usually see little value in obsessive purity tests, but the key here is compromise with fellow travellers (such as libertarians compromising with conservatives and visa versa), but not compromise with people whose objectives are in fact antithetical.
So in short, what oh so many ‘small staters’ have been calling ‘compromise’ when they hold their nose and vote for a Big State politician just because he is running as a Republican, is not “compromise” at al… it is surrender.
What possible reason did the likes of Bush or McCain have to accommodate your views if when they knew you would vote for them regardless of how much they grew the state? No reason at all. None.
You want to know the problem? Look in the mirror and the problem will look back at you. THAT was the realisation that spawned the Tea Party and I was calling for that before the Tea Party even existed.
This has happened before in North America. The Reform party was founded by Preston Manning back in 1987 because the Tories in Canada had become a copy of the statist big spending Liberals. In the 1993 election the Tories won just 2 seats and the Reformers became the official opposition. Now Reform has gone and its members are now Tories. The second in command of the original Reformers is now the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper.
Which Western country has the best economy. Exactly Canada.
Karl Rove has said, publicly, that Sarah Palin was unqualified.
Maybe those who attribute the remarks to Bush heard Rove, and assumed that anything Rove said would reflect Bush’s opinion.
As for me, I don’t see how Palin is any less qualified than both Bushes, or Obama. If the presidency is mostly about spin and talk, Sarah Palin does fine.
Besides, “qualification” is overrated. I’m perfectly willing to have an unqualified President (like, say, Calvin Coolidge), who isn’t hyperactive doing things.
The problem with Obama isn’t that he’s unqualified (though, obviously, it’s true), it is his Neo-Marxist anti American beliefs.
@Britt
I have to agree regarding Liberatarian appeal. This in one case where I think messaging really is the problem. I agree with Perry that Libertarianism has no position on God (or rather has the position that it shouldn’t politically matter), but more often than not I hear a LOT of anti-religious sentiment coming out of Libertarian outlets.
And I don’t mean merely arguments against religion; I mean ignorant blanket statements and accusations against the evil and stupidity of Christians in general, half-baked epistemological assertions, pontifications over guilt-by-association, and the like. This is usually coupled with portraits of the non-religious Libertarian as the noble independent mind, on analogy with his refusal to join either the Republicans or the Democrats.
In other words, there’s a clear judgmental streak about the moral order of the world and/or the nature of reality, which in turn necessarily influences ideas about how one should live–granted not in reference to a specific set of positive principles, but it’s still a vision of order, howsoever loose. You don’t have to be religious to be holier-than-thou, and I constantly read about Libertarians telling everyone else how wrong and stupid and sheeplike and irrational and prejudiced and tribal everyone else is.
And maybe they are.
But that’s no way to win political support.
I mean, I really like Libertarianism, but it’s a real struggle to deal with the smugness you see occasionally on this site and all the time at Reason magazine. I realize that Libertarians often have very good reason to be frustrated, and that that easily lends itself to expressions of smugness when statist policies that have failed over and over in the past do so yet again to everyone else’s surprise. But if you’re really trying to effect change in the world, at some point you have to ask yourself how many people you are alienating.
On the drug issue, for instance, I think Liberatarians have a very strong case for legalization. But the component of the argument for public support is to explicitly and loudly demonstrate how one can vote for legalization and still consider pot smoking a destructive activity. Lots of people have a moral objection to marijuana. Maybe they shouldn’t have, but it seems to me that Libertarians more often than not prefer to mock and denigrate these people for their moral objections rather than demonstrate how Libertarian policies don’t imply acceptance of the permitted behavior and in fact can even help all parties achieve the character of local community that they want.
But instead what you more often see is cruel mockery and riffs on Reefer Madness. Is it any surprise that people are turned off by this kind of thing?
And for the record, I’m not trying to say that other groups aren’t guilty of the same kind of thing. But it’s just part and parcel of the unfairness of life that when you’re in a vastly less influential position, you have to work harder to gain support. More often than not, I think Libertarians prefer to remain content with the correctness of their beliefs and give everyone else the finger for not seeing the light.
Gravitas is overrated. Obama has gravitas – even with the teleprompter. I don’t give a crap about what a politician radiates when they speak on TV, or the timbre of their voice, or if there are hidebound volumes as a background on the studio set they’re broadcasting from, or whatever. I look for two things in a politician – firstly, they need to espouse what I believe as much as possible. They also need to give me some confidence that they will make a decent fist of enacting these beliefs if they get into power. My major concern about Sarah Palin is concerned with the latter point. Her small government stance – of which I approve – seems to be fairly recently acquired, and there seems a distinct possibility she would discard this if it were expedient to do so.
My main concern with Sarah Palin is that she lacks the will, ability, stubborness, perserverance, the balls, to conduct a presidential campaign. It is very hard and ditrty work to get elected, you are subjected to a lot of pressure. I’m not sure she can take it, I’m not sure she is that kind of person.
If she were to be elected, miraculously, I don’t have any misgivings about her qualification to be a good President.
Well, Jacob, the Primary process will determine whether you are correct. These days, that’s more gruelling than the actual presidential campaign.
Ian B. might expect me to attack him for attacking Sarah Palin (and the Bible), but he has a right to his opinion. Bernie Goldberg (a man who has done a lot of good over the years) has very similar views on this to Ian B. – although he expresses them in different language (again I have no problem with strong language). So, again, Ian B. has every right to his opinons.
Even if they are opinions that would alienate about 90% (actually calling the Bible a book of fairy tales would alienate rather more than 90%) of people who might be willing to stand in line on a cold November day (or go into all the weird rules of American absentee ballots – which tend to be vastly more difficult that British postal votes, and are often not counted anyway) to vote against Barack Obama.
Sarah Palin may not be the candidate in 2012 – but whoever is better convince her to support them, and help convince the vast numbers of people who are like her to come out and vote.
Does Sarah Palin have enough experience – actually conventional practice would say “no”, normally someone has served at least on full term as Governor (or Senator) before they are picked.
Of course BARACK OBAMA violates that rule – he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004 and would have been up for reelection last Tuesday.
However, the MSM do not denounce his lack of experience – or his ignorance (misquoting the Declaration of Independence, getting dates wrong, being unware that there are 50 States in the Union, and so on). Instead the MSM just cover it up.
As for George Walker Bush – well he passed the experience rule (just), elected Governor of Texas in 1994 reelected in 1998.
But the man was a terrible mess in office – as Perry and the commentors have pointed out., Bush represents everything that went wrong with the Republican party.
Ian B. has a right to attack Sarah Palin if he wants to – Ian B. has never made a cluster f*** of policy.
But for George Walker Bush to attack Palin………….
The man is not fit to clean Sarah Palin’s boots.
Regarding Sarah’s suitability for the Presidency:
What we on this site want is to turn back the runaway statism that our respective governments have exhibited for decades. And we are hoping that someone like Sarah Palin will be the catalyst that kicks off the process.
I can’t help but see a parallel with the Lord of the Rings plot, whereby a simple country citizen, minding his own business, is nevertheless selected to take the most powerful symbol of Might ever forged, across enemy territory alone, and, with luck, drop it into the only pit which can completely undo it. Tolkien explored how, at the last minute, the power of the Ring was too much for any mortal, even the most well-intentioned and moral character.
I doubt that, once having attained it, Ms Palin has the will power to toss the cursed thing into the Void. Likewise, I doubt she has the ability to trigger the kind of wholesale dismantling of Leviathan that is desired.
If she doesn’t, Darryl, then I fear no one has. We are truly doomed.
Hopefully it’ll be a Palin endorsed Christie/Petraeus ticket in 2012. Many could vote for that…
See, there’s some wishful thinking right there.
A Christie/Petraeus ticket *may* be the best thing since sliced bread, but this is ‘dream team football’ at its very worst.
I have no doubt that Petraeus is an intelligent man, an honorable soldier, and a great scholar, but really – what are his credentials for wielding power and leading a modern civilian state? If he has any, we don’t know about them. All we know is that his nomination would poke a fire-hardened stick in the hard-left’s eyes and let the campaign remind the electorate of that utterly repugnant ‘General Betrayus’ ad in the NYT.
I’ve gone on record here in the past as a supporter of Palin, but she’s almost certainly damaged beyond redemption for executive office, UNLESS the left (and by extension, her detractors in the broadcast and print media) are utterly discredited in the eyes of the public – a demographic with legendary and horribly short attention span.
Any politicians in the US today who adopt anything like the policies we’d like to see them adopt, will be wiped out in the primaries. Again, short of a social (and not the recent political) tsunami that I cannot forsee. So if Americans want more conservative leadership (and that IS what they want, because they’re looking for political leaders to fix the problems with the nation, for the most part), they’ll have to willingly elect men and women who are going to dissemble and lie to them to gain elected positions, and then have them renege on their campaign promises.
Everyone’s slapping themselves on the back for slapping a restraining order on the 111th Congress, but most of those same people have no idea that if the 112th follows through with their mandate, life in the US will be a lot harsher than it’s been for the last 3 generations.
And I really don’t think that the average American has sufficient bottom to take the medicine.
My original point before sidetracking myself over religion was simply a desire for somebody more credible that isn’t an open goal for the Left. A libertarianish conservative in the USA is probably going to be religious, fair enough, but isn’t there one that isn’t a creationist?
Paul Marks points out that such people will be supported by religious consrvatives, fair enough. But they are a great turn off to more secular types, and I believe America needs a broad coalition of non-Proggie types, not just the Moral Majority slugging it out with the Proggie Left.
Creationism is just an instant FAIL. Yes, people are entitled to believe whatever they like, but to most people it is crankery, and anti-Proggies should be lumbered with having to defend candidates who present an open goal due to their belief in it. It doesn’t help us in our science-based criticism of Proggie pseudo-science to be associated with it either, as when Christopher Booker suddenly came out with Intelligent Design piffle in his column.
I believe it is very important for us to look rationalist at this juncture, because any crankery will be mercilessly exploited by the Enemy. There must be an anti-Proggie potential candidate for the Presidency who isn’t a Fundamentalist too, mustn’t there? If there isn’t, the USA is in worse trouble than we credit.
When Ronald Reagan was elected I can remember the glee with which an LP was received. It was called: The Wisdom of Ronald Reagan. When played all that sounded was the hiss of the needle. There were many such put downs. He was derided as the worst thing for the world since A. Hitler. It went on and on. And almost only ceased once he was out of Government. Subsequent to which he became one of the saviours of the 20th Century.
I would not worry too much how the world tries to put down Sarah Palin.
I think that if she got into that office she would be more than competent, and less worse than most that I can think of.
Palin for President!!
Ian, some of the most beneficial human beings who have lived believed there is a Creator God.
Are you so sure there isn’t? That is the kind of intellectual presumption that can hide the truth.
You may find it cranky because you have so decided. But perhaps you have left out some data?
There have been 43 Presidents.
Of these:
4 were generals who never held civilian office (Washington, Taylor, Grant, Eisenhower).
13 were full-term governors (Jefferson, Monroe, Tyler, Polk, A. Johnson, Hayes, McKinley, Coolidge, F. Roosevelt, Reagan, Carter, Clinton, G.W. Bush).
8 were full-term Senators (Van Buren, Tyler, Buchanan, B. Harrison, Harding, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson).
7 had been Representatives (J. Adams, Madison, Fillmore, Lincoln, Garfield, Ford, G.H.W. Bush).
3 never held elected office (Arthur, Taft, Hoover)
6 served part of a Senate term (J.Q. Adams, Jackson, Pierce, A. Johnson, Nixon, Obama).
4 served part of a governor term (Van Buren, Cleveland, T. Roosevelt, Wilson).
Thus, only 21 had served a full term as Governor or Senator. Several of the others ascended to the Presidency via the Vice Presidency, or had served in important Executive Branch positions, or as commanding generals.
But of the more successful Presidents, Lincoln had only one term in the House, and Cleveland, T. Roosevelt, and Wilson only a part term as Governor (successful in that they all were elected to a second term).
Some of the worst Presidents (Buchanan, A. Johnson, and Hoover) had glittering resumés.
Office-holding doesn’t correlate with “qualification”. A better measure, perhaps, is involvement with the political system. Lincoln was only in Congress for one term, but for almost 30 years before his election as President, he was continually active in Whig and Republican party politics.
Obama had eight years in the Illinois Senate, and four in the U.S. Senate, but in all those years he was notably not in the thick of legislative or party activity; and for most of that period never even had to campaign for election.
Palin was a fighter in the trenches of the Alaska Republican party, won the governorship against fierce opposition, and has remained active both there and nationally.
As for native smarts – Palin has a folksy demeanor that leads many to dismiss her as a yahoo. Much the same was true of Reagan – but both showed up sharp under challenges.
Reagan led the Screen Actors Guild in the contentious negotiations with the studios over revenue from television rights, and by all accounts did superbly – his fellow actors re-elected him as SAG president.
Palin led the Alaska side in negotiations with energy companies. Others who were involved said that she regularly zipped through stacks of documents and had the details at her fingertips.
I see nothing to say that she isn’t “qualified” to be President. One must remember that a large part of her public image has been created by people who despise her and want to make her look bad.
By that logic, Perry, you must admit that McCain isn’t that bad considering that Bush privately preferred Obama over McCain, and said he probably wouldn’t vote for McCain.
John, note the word ‘often’…
“Often the quality of a person can be judged by who their are enemies”
Without that singularly important word, one might suggest Hitler was not all that bad because Stalin did not like him 😛