An intersting piece in Asia Times argues that much of America’s economic strength is due to our Sarah Palins.
via Lead and Gold.
Elections
Those Who Live in Glass Houses…
The latest kurfuffle in this years election is how a Representative from Georgia, a Democrat, accused Republican John McCain of creating the same “hateful atmosphere” that was fostered by Gov. George Wallace with his racist and segregationist policies.
Someone needs to pull the honorable lawmaker aside and explain that George Wallace was a fellow Democrat. While they are at it, they might also mention that most of the truly ardent racists during the Civil Rights era were Democrats, while the Republicans were the people who did the most to advance the cause of equality.
Talk About Cognitive Dissonance
Count up the innocent dead. Measure human misery, pain, and despair. Pile the corpses high.
The accounting makes it very clear that Communism is the greatest tragedy, the most murderous blight, in all of human history.
And yet, for some reason, the Left doesn’t seem to care. Liberal ideology is always worthy no matter the body count. It seems that the only real crime is in opposing their pet political philosophies.
Joseph McCarthy is a demon in their eyes, an odious and insidious monster. The fact that history has proven that some of his charges were valid is carefully ignored, as are the mountains of stinking corpses left behind by their favorite dictators and totalitarian regimes.
To be completely candid with you, dear reader, I have a hard time understanding why. How obvious does it have to be, anyway?
A recent article at The American Thinker sheds some light on this puzzle. It seems that the majority of educators, people who should be smart enough to know better, simply refuse to mention these undeniable historical facts to their students.
“This stuff isn’t rocket science. It is easy to teach, if the professor desires. The problem is that it isn’t being taught. Consequently, Americans today do not know why communism is such a devastating ideology, at both the level of plain economic theory and in actual historical practice. It is a remarkably hateful system, based on literal hatred and targeted annihilation of entire classes and groups of people.”
The author of the article, Paul Kengor, also explains why this refusal to pass on important details concerning the recent past has done much to create the situation we find facing us today.
“What does it all mean for November 2008? It means that millions of modern Americans, when they hear that Barack Obama has deep roots with communist radicals like Bill Ayers and Frank Marshall Davis, don’t care; they don’t get it. Moreover, the leftist establishment — from academia to media to Hollywood — will not help them get it. To the contrary, the left responds to these accusations by not only downplaying or dismissing them but by ridiculing or even vilifying them, given the left’s reflexive anti-anti-communism. The left will create bad guys out of the anti-communists who are legitimately blowing the whistle on the real bad guys.”
I never had a problem telling good from bad. It is a pity the Left does.
The Tempting Irrational
Voltaire observed that “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”  Well, maybe;  he sparked our adolescent conversations late into boozy nights and forty years later we haven’t settled it. But we also feel the need  of Satan, directing frustration and anger at Emmanuel Goldstein, internalizing a picture of Bush taking the form BDS dictates.  We laugh, but the haters’ anger makes us uneasy; we feel the impotency of rational arguments against passionate irrationality.
That disease is one I fear for myself. It is dangerous: to our understanding, our reasoning, and our souls. I don’t want to feel what I’ve seen from the opposition the last few years. I don’t want to simplify & ignore the causes of war, natural catastrophes, history; I don’t want to become conspiratorial; I don’t want to ponder the sexual preferences of a chief justice’s four-year-old or gloat over the young death of someone whose chief fault is representing that opposition. I don’t want to lose my sense of proportionality, always a small enough counterweight to my passions and assumptions. I don’t want to become the worst of them and need to remember most of them are not the worst.
Foster’s Clip – and Others Floating Out There
Another comment to yet another interesting post by Foster. Â (The advantage I have over some of our commentors is that I can put up a post when I realize I’m getting too long-winded and too off-topic.)
Palin’s high energy may not  rescue the McCain candidacy but at least it’s enlivening.  Obama appears to have energized some passions in  Manhatten as well as across the country,  if  dulling other  civil & communal qualities.   Transferring religious fervor  to the political leads to  some strange results.  Of course, that is why political fervor is both compelling – and disturbing.   Belmont Club discusses one.