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Tuesday, September 02, 2008
It's been awhile since a Mark Steyn sighting on this blog, but he has finally written something since a summer-long hiatus from public writing. This weekend, he chimed in on the Sarah Palin VP pick.

I am [happy] - for several reasons.

First, Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, "all-American", but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I'm not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin' Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who's done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of "community organizer" and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy.

Second, it can't be in Senator Obama's interest for the punditocracy to spends its time arguing about whether the Republicans' vice-presidential pick is "even more" inexperienced than the Democrats' presidential one.

Third, real people don't define "experience" as appearing on unwatched Sunday-morning talk shows every week for 35 years and having been around long enough to have got both the War on Terror and the Cold War wrong... Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are more or less the same age, but Governor Palin has run a state and a town and a commercial fishing operation, whereas (to reprise a famous line on the Rev Jackson) Senator Obama ain't run nothin' but his mouth. She's done the stuff he's merely a poseur about. Post-partisan? She took on her own party's corrupt political culture directly while Obama was sucking up to Wright and Ayers and being just another get-along Chicago machine pol (see his campaign's thuggish attempt to throttle Stanley Kurtz and Milt Rosenberg on WGN the other night).

Fourth, Governor Palin has what the British Labour Party politician Denis Healy likes to call a "hinterland" - a life beyond politics. Whenever Senator Obama attempts anything non-political (such as bowling), he comes over like a visiting dignitary to a foreign country getting shanghaied into some impenetrable local folk ritual. Sarah Palin isn't just on the right side of the issues intellectually. She won't need the usual stage-managed "hunting" trip to reassure gun owners: she's lived the Second Amendment all her life. Likewise, on abortion, we're often told it's easy to be against it in principle but what if you were a woman facing a difficult birth or a handicapped child? Been there, done that.

Fifth, she complicates all the laziest Democrat pieties. Energy? Unlike Biden and Obama, she's been to ANWR and, like most Alaskans, supports drilling there.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are ridiculous. I would at least be interested in reading what you thought if you weren't so demeaning of the other side. It seems you completely overlook some of the more questionable aspects of her Alaskan reign like the trooper firing and the whole pork barrel spending she claims to not be a part of. Seems like, when I dig in, its amazing how in just 2 short years she has become like so many others in Washington. As a person who works with low income peoples your denigration of people who are community organizers in general is offensive. As a Christian, you upset me. Why you think guns and drilling are in line with anything the Bible preaches is beyond me. The fact that you remark on her attractiveness only adds to my doubts about your evaluative skills.

Anonymous said...

Dear commenter who is so courageous that he/she stays nameless,

Please begin to practice basic skills of reading comprehension prior to making any further comments on my blog. As anybody with such abilities should have recognized, the portion of the above post highlighted in gray are excerpted from Mark Steyn's article. In other words, I didn't write them (even though I do agree with them). Also, you appear to attribute words to me that don't even appear in this post but are actually in the rest of Steyn's article found at the link provided.

Also, as a fellow Christian, I would honestly encourage you to drop the pretense of righteous indignation. It doesn't very well suit believers.

sarah said...

thanks! I just finished "the grace awakening" by swindoll and i have to be honest and say I didn't enjoy it very much. Also, i'm in the midst of "pursuit of God" by Tozer and I can't get into that either. But I'm always looking for more good reading! (I have, somehow, managed to get into the lastest editions of "modern reformation" - sometimes, I don't understand my own reading tendencies! :-) I'll have to check out Mr. Bridges.

Hope the family is doing well!

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Darius' book montage

The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel The Main Thing
Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God
Overcoming Sin and Temptation
According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible
Disciplines of a Godly Man
Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem
When Helping Hurts: Alleviating Poverty Without Hurting the Poor. . .and Ourselves
The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith
Respectable Sins
The Kite Runner
Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak
Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak
A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/calvinist, ... anabaptist/anglican, metho
Show Them No Mercy
The Lord of the Rings
Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass
The Truth War: Fighting for Certainty in an Age of Deception
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming
The Chronicles of Narnia
Les Misérables


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