While Palin may not be ready for prime time, neither are our POTUS and VPOTUS. Anyone recall Obama’s “inflating tires is the energy equivalent of increased drilling” gaffe, for which he never apologized nor acknowledged he made a mistake? The vituperation heaped upon Palin was horrible.

Regarding going tit-for-tat with the Democrats, I am not sure I want to stoop to their level. But we DO need to make the powers that be that we are paying attention. I would endorse a non-stop call in campaign to our elected representatives in DC to heap scorn on their heads for voting for 800-page bills that they haven’t read. Go to their local offices, well prepared, and shame their aides. We need to make them AFRAID of their constituents, and ashamed that they were asleep at the wheel. Those with Democratic representation, get on the stick.

A Garden of Piggish Delights , from National Review, gives a good overview on the Cap and Trade Bill. Just think if each Senator got 100 angry constituents to discuss the bill, and if something similar had been done for the Representatives. The NR article will give us “laymen” some ammo to fire at our elected representatives in Congress.

Yes, BrianE, nooilforpacifists is a good blog.

It is in this context.

Provincial=not my tribe. In this analogy, the Left is to Sarah Palin as the Cave Man is to a Stranger. See Stranger, Kill Stranger.

Spengler’s own forum is the proof

Those are not his views. Those are just his crowd.

These are his views

The point of the matter is that Edwards was right about there being two Americans. Half of America wants to see justice done, the other half wants to purge their sins through graft, favoritism, government muscle, and so forth. One side believes guilt is best expiated through good works while the other side believes scapegoats and a hate receptacle is all they need to expiate guilt.

One half of America believes in the theory of aristocracy, which says a select few of good breeding and educational background have the skills required to rule, and only those select few elites in the West are valid rulers. The other half of America believes the process of competition produces qualified leaders.

Certainly America has become polarized. But that’s not because the people changed. It’s because the language changed. White vs black. Rich vs poor. Military vs civilians. Well educated ivy league vs non-ivy league. The powerful vs the non-powerful. The politically well connected, the politically non-adroit. Provincial vs cosmopolitan. Citizen of America vs citizen of the world.

These are concepts which are communicated every time an American speaks, writes, or read.

The overarching principle that a good education is beneficial to a person is no longer relevant, because the context of that principle, that of a good education, is meaningless when the very idea of “education” becomes certification of one’s qualifications for the aristocracy. What is left then? Trade school skills, ala utilization abilities: those are what is left to be taught, given that Americans have proportioned more abstract and cerebral fields to themselves.

The only requirement of a good king, executive, or president is that they hold the nation together, and in so doing allow other factors to continue to strengthen that nation, which consists of their people.

All these foreign policy questions and whatevers are just indirect litmus tests. They, like the aspect of a judge’s political party, do not strictly determine what their philosophy and future behavior on the bench will be.

There are no professional Presidents. A person that is at a job for 4-8 years is not a professional. At best, he is a very very competent journeyman nearing master level. Thus this idea that you need to prepare for the Presidency through years and years of whatever, is nonsense. Competition is what will decide things in the end, not a strictly defined number of years or training, and not definitely not decided by mysterious agents with ulterior motives.

A republic that is ruled by a system for the people needs educated people, so that the system is by the people and not just over the people. They do not need educated leaders, except in so far as the leaders need an education to know what the people are telling them to do. The strength and wisdom of a leader is not imparted through education. Alexander was educated by one of the greatest philosophers of the age, Aristotle. Look what he used that education of his for. And look how it all turned out.

Issues of education and questions of policy will always be eternally subjective tests for a candidate. Thus fragmentation and disagreement will always result. Some people have less education and may want their leader to have more education, or they may see education as being unimportant. Those with several decades of formal education will usually never tolerate those that have less.

I know plenty of people who think they know military history, because they read some things in a book. I know plenty of people who can recite the timeline of what they claim is the “WMD story”. These are not people disinterested in foreign policy. But it doesn’t make them right. Knowing facts does not equal knowing knowledge. Knowing what has transpired in the past is no indication that one knows what should transpire in the future. These aspects can increase the chance, the luck, of the draw, but it is not certain. What is certain when it comes to judging human behavior is personality, past behavior, and current psychological profile (aka character).

A megalomaniac/sociopath has a particular character that is different from the character of someone like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, to use two examples. Americans would have done us all a favor had they asked the important questions about Obama and Sarah Palin, and not just the superficial tests that the Western elite aristocrats preferred the masses to ask. Because americans didn’t ask about Obama’s character, only about his policies, people are supporting him so long as they get their kick back bribe. Cause the policies were all they voted for, and it will be all that they expected. Character? Honesty? What are those? They have no value to Obama’s voters. No value whatsoever.

As for attracting a “devoted following of millions,” so what? Obama did that. So do the incipient cults of Michael Jackson and freaking Princess Di. So did many people. Attracting followers is one thing. Leading is another.

You don’t judge the quality of people in an army by numbers. You don’t judge the quality of a leader by the numbers in their army, either.

A mass murderer with a loyal following of millions of sadists and serial killers is not the same as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Harry Truman.

Any loyalist of America and its Constitution should have known this already. It should not have to be said.

Attracting followers is not one thing. It is the only thing. Or do you think Obama can gain the loyalty of the US Marines just because he was elected President? Just like that.

People forget all too often that you don’t get to lead, unless people are willing to follow. And people ain’t gonna be willing to follow unless they believe in you or something that serves the same purpose. To reiterate my point, a leader does not exist if nobody is on the wagon. Thus it isn’t split between “a mass following” and “leadership”. Rather it is integral to itself, in which leadership is the cause of that “mass following” of whatever kind or stripe.

If people will remember the incident with Flight 93 on 9/11, they may wish to ask themselves when was the question ever raised concerning the expertise, qualifications, and training of the passengers of Flight 93 when it comes to leading small units, conducting tactical operations planning and execution, hostage crisis management, negotiations with Middle Easterners, and etc etc “qualifications”.

Would they have necessarily passed the “test” that current America would have given them? No, they would not have. Why, given their actual performance? Because current America is not fit to judge the qualities of leadership. That judgment is only valid from a peer. And there are few peers of real leaders in America in comparison to the total number of people voting.

Things were simpler when you could just vote in your neighbor as mayor or even Governor. Simpler, but not necessarily easier.

I hope the “drill, baby, drill” line wasn’t hers though. That will be the fight we need to wage in 2010, hopefully with a slogan that isn’t quite so irritating.

I like this one- “no oil for pacifists”.
http://nooilforpacifists.blogspot.com/

That means McCain wasn’t ready.

Some journalists went beyond even that.

They became — not columnists — but calumnists, competing with one another to see who could come up with the most outrageous things to say about Sarah Palin and simply making up ugly things to say as they saw fit.

Middle School kids do things like that. Adults don’t.

Very good! I _like_ that description!

Provincial? Just for the hell of it, name a 45 year old woman who has accomplished more at this stage of her life. Name one who has traveled the country speaking her beliefs and attracting a devoted following of millions? Sure she made mistakes. Did McCain? Did Biden? Did Obama? Did any of the three, or any other candidate, face the unrelenting hostility from the media and the left wing ideologues that she faced?

I do agree that she was not ready for a national campaign. On the other hand she did not force herself onto the national scene. McCain came looking for her; she did not seek out the national spotlight. As she herself has said; when the door opened, she went through it. In retrospect I imagine she wishes she had not gone through that particular door, because other doors would certainly have opened in good time.

I also agree that she is an authentic breath of fresh air. That is part of her problem She is a threat to stale, old Pols and members of the chattering class, who have reached a cozy level of comfort with each other. As some commentator remarked today (it may have been Mark Levin) there is a fairly large segment of the population in this country that cannot tolerate an attractive, accomplished woman with conservative beliefs. Unfortunately, many of them control the microphones and printing presses.

Sarah Palin has become a national obsession. No one knows what she will do next; and few are willing to wait until she speaks before they speculate and pontificate.

We’re not in a mediacracy; with Al Franken’s elevation to the Senate, I’d say we’re in a burgeoning idiocracy. But then, I am an irascible old geezer who never sat through an entire episode of American Idol and firmly believes watching network news or reading Time and Newsweek destroys brain cells.

Regarding Palin, of whom I am not that great an admirer, I think the press treatment of her was appalling — they flocked around her like a hysterical troop of white blood cells determined to destroy this infection — and I agree with the assessment of David Goldman writing on-line as Spengler in Asia Times, that Sarah Palin represents both the best and worst of America: yes, she is unsophisticated, provincial, badly educated, uninformed, and not ready for prime time, but her lack of slick is compensated for by her authenticity. This is a woman of very modest origins and education, with a forceful personality, who ran a small business and kept a family together, and Got Involved — that great activist sine qua non — in local politics and progressed from small town mayor to reform minded governor of the last pioneer state. That the Stepford liberal snobs abhor her says more about them than her.