Thomas Sowell: Palin a threat to intelligentsia's vision of the world

Bay Area News Group via CoCo Times ^ | 2/27/9 | Thomas Sowell

[SmithL]

IF BARACK OBAMA has been the most remarkable phenomenon of the recent political scene, Sarah Palin must be second. The emotional responses to each — especially by the media and the intelligentsia — go beyond anything that can be explained by the usual political differences of opinion on issues of the day.

That liberals would be thrilled by another liberal is not surprising. But there are conservative Republicans who voted for Barack Obama, and other conservatives who may not have voted for him, but who are quick to see in various pragmatic moves of his since taking office an indication that he is not an extremist.

Anyone familiar with history knows that Hitler and Stalin were pragmatic. After years of denouncing each other, they signed the Nazi-Soviet pact under which they became allies for a couple of years before going to war against one another.

Pragmatism tells you nothing about extremism. But the conservative intellectuals who seize upon President Obama's pragmatism to give him the benefit of the doubt are obviously bending over backward for some reason.

With Gov. Palin, it is just the opposite. The conservative intelligentsia who react against her have remarkably little to say that will stand up to scrutiny.

People who actually dealt with her, before she became a national figure, have expressed how much they were impressed by her intelligence.

Palin's "inexperience" is a talking point that might have some plausibility if it were not for the fact that Barack Obama has far less experience in actually making policies than Palin has.

Joe Biden has had decades of experience in being both consistently wrong and consistently a source of asinine statements.

Palin's candidacy for the vice presidency was what galvanized grassroots Republicans in a way that John McCain never did. But there was something about her that turned even some conservative intellectuals against her and provoked visceral anger and hatred from liberal intellectuals.

Perhaps the best way to try to understand these reactions is to recall what Eleanor Roosevelt said when she first saw Whittaker Chambers, who had accused Alger Hiss of being a spy for the Soviet Union. Upon seeing the slouching, overweight and disheveled Chambers, she said, "He's not one of us."

The trim, erect and impeccably dressed Alger Hiss, with his Ivy League and New Deal pedigree, clearly was "one of us."

As it turned out, he was also a liar and a spy for the Soviet Union. Not only did a jury decide that at the time, the opening of the secret files of the Soviet Union in its last days added more evidence of his guilt.

The Hiss-Chambers confrontation of more than half a century ago produced the same kind of visceral polarization that Gov. Sarah Palin provokes today.

Before the first trial of Hiss began, reporters who gathered at the courthouse informally sounded each other out as to which of them they believed, before any evidence had been presented. Most believed that Hiss was telling the truth and that it was Chambers who was lying.

More important, those reporters who believed that Chambers was telling the truth were immediately ostracized. None of this could have been based on the evidence for either side, for that evidence had not yet been presented in court.

For decades after Hiss was convicted and sent to federal prison, much of the media and the intelligentsia defended him. To this day, there is an Alger Hiss chair at Bard College.

Why did it matter so much to so many people which of two previously little-known men was telling the truth? Because what was on trial was not one man but a whole vision of the world and a way of life.

Gov. Sarah Palin is both a challenge and an affront to that vision and that way of life — an overdue challenge, much as Chambers' challenge was overdue.

Whether Palin runs for national office again is something that only time will tell. But the Republicans need some candidate who is neither one of the country club Republicans nor — worse yet — the sort of person who appeals to the intelligentsia.

[devolve]

.

It’s just you!

[RobbyS]

Reagan’s strong point was not his oratory but his sincerity and his intelligence. Look at the way he took Robert Kennedy apart. Kennedy though he was just an actor and lived to regret taking Reaqon on. I speak as a fan of Bobby. Reagan was a good actor, but probably his radio experience made him effective before a microphone, as much as his comfort before the camera. Sometimes I wish he had been willing to wear his glasses, simply because he would have come off more like a professor than a movie star. Obama has none of his depth or passion.

[RobbyS]

But of course. That was Palin’s mistake. She underestimated Katie’s ferocity and blinkered view of the world.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

But Reagan cleaned Jimmy Carter’s clock in the debates in ‘80. That dispelled many of the reservations some voters had based on the media’s attempts to paint Reagan as a warmonger. His sense of humor also helped him. Reagan appeared more confident and more coherent than Carter. By ‘84 he had triggerd significant realignment. People like a winner. That helped. As did growth in the economy. Whichever candidate gets closest to that Reagan formula will have the edge.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"Obama has none of his depth or passion." 102 posted on Saturday, February 28, 2009 12:03:17 AM by RobbyS

Obama seems not really to believe in America the way Reagan did. And he is really alienated from much of American's Christian and conservative culture. How would it come across if - in the middle of this socialism frenzy - if Obama started trying to speak about "our great tradition of freedom and personal liberty..."?

[ntnychik]

I went to a Palin rally in Oct. and she rocked the place. She may have had some unfortunate editing of MSM interviews, but she’s no dummy. I’m glad to see a columnist of Sowell’s stature “get it”. That said, I couldn’t rave about Sarah with female acquaintances without them cutting me off with a glare. It’s like talking to the hand.

[ntnychik]

Wasn’t it recently a national crime for Hail to the Chief to be played for President Bush? Zero is so much into the trappings. I don’t think arrogance plays well over the long run.

[RobbyS]

Carter is a prick, which became clear when pitted against Reagan, who was anything but. But it was the Reagan of the ‘60s who made such a powerful impression on me. “The Speech” was so good it stunned me. Forty years later it made an even greater impression because I had been exposed to the older man’s style. Stephen McNally played a Reagan-like “governor” in a movie about the Berkeley rebels and how he dealt with them. Can’t remember the name. Anyway, a friend who actually met Reagan around that time, before the ‘68 campaign, and who heard me describe the character as McNally played him, said, yep, that was his impression of the man. Genial, strong, quick to size up people.( McNally often played heavies, but not this time.) “The governor” gave the kids a fair hearing and then decided against them without malice.

[RobbyS]

Obama believes in America, all right: the America of Columbia, Chicago and Harvard. How could he possibly know anything about the rest of the country?

[old school]

Let’s face it folks. At least, half of your compatriots are mentally disabled (no matter what they call themselves)! The remainder were awakened from a troubling dream which hadn’t, yet, progressed to the nightmare stage. But, it’s coming!

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"Obama believes in America, all right: the America of Columbia, Chicago and Harvard. How could he possibly know anything about the rest of the country?"
109 posted on Saturday, February 28, 2009 12:33:00 AM by RobbyS

In other words, Absurdistan. But he can do a lot of damage with these policies while he is in power. That's the problem. So the 2010 congressional elections become all the more urgent.

[Cindy]

SNIPPET from the link in post no. 1:

"Joe Biden has had decades of experience in being both consistently wrong and consistently a source of asinine statements."

[PhilDragoo]

Sowell repeatedly refers to "intelligentsia" and he repeats the classic Eleanor Roosevelt observation that Whitaker Chambers was not "one of us".

I laugh at the "intelligentsia" label--Charlie Gibson intelligent? Katie Couric intelligent? Tina Fey? Barack Hussein Obama Jr. aka Barry Soetero intelligent?

A clique. A snooty, catty, codetalking, America-hating, amoral, blindly ambitious, spiritually rudderless undead.

Eleanor Roosevelt could not have missed what Venona decrypts would confirm, that just as Joe McCarthy warned, the administrations of Roosevelt and Truman were shot through with Communist heartworms.

Sarah Palin has the right stuff--eighty per cent approval and the gas pipeline deal that three male predecessors couldn't get up.

I'll give Charlie Gibson some gotcha. Flaccid drooling puke.

Katie? She starred in a colonoscopy, got her best side. She is strictly high school like David Broad Ripple 65 Letterman and Tina Fire Hatchet Face Fey.

Barack Hussein Obama Junior doesn't have the fire in his belly--it's in his burning tire. His mind isn't as sharp as his machete. He's a tool.

He can read a teleprompter. Skilled somewhere between a Disney animatronic and the Parrot that can identify the color of plastic keys.

Shall we select a leader of the starched boxer variety a la John McCain who sucked up the initial bailout rather than show some Reagan stuff and tell them to stuff it.

Or shall we select someone more like either Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal who has personal convictions in tune with our constitution and our founders and that American exceptionalism which has got us this far through harrowing times.

Shall we accept the ten thousand shrieking fairies of the Ministry of Propaganda that Sarah won't do because she's not intelligentsia.

Thomas Sowell is my kind of intelligentsia, who is a master of books, and a practitioner of logical argument while never eschewing morality, spirituality, integrity and constitutionality.

The perky Katie Couric and the paunchy Charlie Hubris to the contrary notwithstanding, Sarah energized us and has a bright future.

Not so the Kenyan crypto-Islamo-Communist bent on the destruction of all things American, Christian, decent and free.

His slot machine turns up three 6's and his vector is headed for the nadir.

[Vigilanteman]

I don't know how young you are, but I had just turned voting age when Ronald Reagan first ran for president in 1976 and was sandbagged by the country club wing. He generated the same kind of loyalty and enthusiasm among us then that Sarah did in 2008. It would be a waste not to have her somewhere on the ticket in 2012.

Anyone who doubts how she connects with average Americans need look no further than southwest Pennsylvania, where she spent a lot of time during the last campaign. Our area is hardly conservative. It is heavily blue collar, Catholic and 60% registered Democrat. Mondale won here during the Reagan landslide of 1984. McCain had the sense to not even show up here, but send Sarah. Long story short is that we're one of the few places in the nation (and only major region outside the south) where the Republican ticket did better in 2008 than in 2004. Sarah was the reason.

[SolidWood]

You fail to realize that any promising Conservative, non-RINO will smeared and mocked by the media. You delude yourself, if you think that this is about Palin. It's about discrediting Conservatism. They want to force us loser RINOs down the throat.

Please tell me who your favorite is? Jindal? Can't you see the mocking of his speech and SNL playing an exorcism or some racist 7/11 gag?>

Romney? Non-stop mocking of Mormons and "magic underwear" sketches on SNL?

The argument that Palin is lost because the media savaged her, does not fly. To the contrary... they already made the ultimate Anti-Obama out of her. In four years a majority will beg for exactly that.

[jla]

Elizabeth, I just wanted to be sure you read Mr. Sowell’s wonderful article. :^)

[ccmay]

I think they voted for Obama because:

He is handsome and young.

He stood for more freebees from the government, and many single women have substituted the government for a man in their lives.

He also supports abortion on demand at any time during pregnancy, and infanticide thereafter if the abortion is unsuccessful. For a lot of slutty women, that's as big a single issue as gun rights are for most of us.

Single women, as a group, are less sophisticated about politics than any other group, IMHO.

Agreed. And more prone to manipulation of their emotions and insecurities.

-ccm

[ccmay]

Or perhaps you think Bobby Jindal can side-step the Constitutional requirements like Barry Soetoro has done.

What are you talking about? Jindal was born in Louisiana.

-ccm

[caddie]

Perhaps the best FR rant of 2008-9.

Shakespearean.

[potlatch]

I know.