Virtue and Sarah Palin

American Thinker ^ | 9-12-09 | Claude Sandroff

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September 12, 2009

Virtue and Sarah Palin

By Claude Sandroff

No republic, not even our exceptional one, can survive without virtuous citizens. 

On July 3 when Sarah Palin announced from her Wasilla home that she would step down as Governor, we got a glimpse of a person none of us had seen before: this remarkable woman, nothing less than a phenomenon, always unflappable now seemed wounded and shaken.  Five simple words were particularly haunting: "...and it's not so comfortable."

Perhaps the most famous woman in the world, Sarah Palin relinquished state power in the simplest of settings.  It was obviously not comfortable, nor easy.   However we define Palin, as frontier feminist, movement conservative or middle class populist this will always stand as her finest hour.  It might not have been her finest performance, but it crystallized in a moment the very essence of virtue.  It was Sir Thomas More resigning as Lord Chancellor and George Washington returning to Mount Vernon.  It showed how rare virtue has become in our politics. It shows why we adore Sarah Palin and why we need her.  And it explains why, even without office, she has become the most important political figure in America.

Of all the attributes we fix to her, charisma, fearlessness, wit, and most recently to our delight, formidable polemicist, we should remember that she entered national life in Dayton, Ohio as the enemy of politics as usual and a champion of the politics of virtue.

She sold her state jet as governor, brought property tax relief as mayor and resigned from appointed office when necessary.  We should remind her vacuous, raging, class-obsessed critics that the governorship was not the first office she "quit".  Her reputation of "quitter" is one we should celebrate and demand that other politicians emulate.  For she hardly quit as Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission  for venal or trivial reasons.  She quit when she found her office so ripe with corruption that she was rendered ineffective as a moral leader. 

The question her political biography begs is why don't more politicians resign? Why didn't Ted Kennedy creep into a hole after Chappaquiddick?  Why doesn't Robert Byrd resign, clearly too feeble to hold office effectively? Isn't fifty-four years in office enough for John Dingle?  Hasn't Mark Sanders learned how to say adios?  And how about Bill Clinton, and John Ensign and Charlie Rangel, and on and on.

Sarah Plain speaks quite often about the way she is "wired" for politics.  This means she can appear unwearied day after day to intoxicate average Americans with a stump speech.  It means too, that she takes an oath of office very seriously.  If ethics reforms boomerang to neutralize her administration, she has the moral courage to step down.  She swore an oath to serve her constituents, and when she could no longer fulfill its requirements she resigned.  No, it was not very comfortable but it was very moving and humbling to watch.   "What is an oath but words we say to God", wrote Robert Bolt in "A Man for All Seasons."

Sarah Palin and virtue and God.  We should take the Governor at her word when she cites faith and family -- in that order -- as her guides in life. I try to imagine a forty-four year old woman, at the height of her power, influence and popularity finding herself pregnant.  Not only pregnant but carrying a trisomic child.  This was probably something not very comfortable, and certainly there was an easy way out.  But Sarah Palin didn't choose it. She would say that we have more to learn from special needs children than they have to learn from us.  Surely this episode and many others show we have more to learn from Sarah Palin than she has to learn from us.

Ultimately, virtue is the result of recognizing evil and ensuring that it does not prevail over good.  It's a simple formulation, but who in politics is audacious enough to speak in such stark terms?  Sarah Palin has, with world-shattering results.

In her first explosive Facebook entry into the health care debate, she pointed out that "death panels" were the logical consequence of the government rationing of health care. And that such rationing was "downright evil."  There were health care policy wonks galore, and Medicare and Medicaid experts by the droves who offered endless technical details about the health care bill.  But only Palin distilled the debate to its fundamental moral core.  No mere politician can create a phrase so mythic, that a national policy debate becomes redefined almost overnight.  In its moral force "death panels" will be enshrined in our political lexicon as definitively as Churchill's iron curtain was over sixty years ago.

America has always done well, when its leaders recognize and call out evil when it threatens.  Ronald Reagan's evocation of the Evil Empire and George W. Bush's citation of the axis of evil stiffened our spines for the coming challenges.

Sarah Palin has too, and not a moment soon. 

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/virtue_and_sarah_palin.html at September 12, 2009 - 01:13:52 AM EDT

[Lexinom]

Virtue is out. The Bamster is in.

[Jeff Head]

"A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security." - Samuel Adams

"Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private virtue, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics." - John Adams

"In fact, after promising to “make sure that no government bureaucrat .... gets between you and the health care you need,” the President repeated his call for an Independent Medicare Advisory Council -- an unelected, largely unaccountable group of bureaucrats charged with containing Medicare costs. He did not disavow his own statement that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost ... the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives....” He did not disavow the statements of his health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, and continuing to pay his salary with taxpayer dollars proves a commitment to his beliefs. The President can keep making unsupported assertions, but until he directly responds to the arguments I’ve made, I’m going to call him out too." - Sarah Palin, September 9, 2009

MANY MORE STICKER DESIGNS HERE

"...like that grizzly guards her cubs, as a mother naturally guards her own. I will keep that vow wherever the road may lead." - Sarah Palin, July 26, 2009

SARAH PALIN STANDING IN THE BREACH

[elizabethgrace]

She’s Citizen Sarah America. I love this column.

[goodnesswins]

NOT in MY world....and I believe VIRTUE will be what people are looking for REALLY soon....

[ak267]

Bamsters come and go. Virtue lasts.

[smoothsailing]

I truly hope you don’t actually believe that.

[smoothsailing]

Great Post. Heck, all your posts are Great!

[Jeff Head]

Thanks...here's another as regards Sarah:

Contrast these two photos:

SARAH PALIN HONORING AMERICA AT A 911 MEMORIAL CEREMONY

OBAMA DISHONORS AMERICA ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

Nuff said.

[TBP]

Sarah scares liberals to death the way nobody has since Reagan.

[jla]

Brilliant, yet humble and selfless

[smoothsailing]

There's a new sheriff comin' to town...

[Lexinom]

My own eyes tell me this. I do not want to believe it.

[Lexinom]

Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Bamsters do come and go. It will take a wake up call (hunger perhaps?) to the American people to shake some sense into them.

[Lexinom]

GW, I’ve always read you with a degree of filial affection - esp. when you were on our state board.

I want to believe this to, sister. I really do. I want to believe that most people voted for Bamster out a sense of Platonic idealism, that he fit their ideals for the perfect match for America. He would end - despite his support for - abortion. He would, by his mere being, bring to a close the grisly chapter of racial prejudice.

In fact, he’s just another ideologue - Marxist in his case. My hope rests in this: that people will see him for the cheap empty suit that he is, will see that he is not their Platonic ideal in spirit of John Lenin’s Imagine.

If the ultimate answer is indeed Sarah - I’m 100% behind you, Mrs. Palin. If it is, as I hope and am with increasing optimism expecting, removal of office of Bamster on constitutional grounds...

People are waking up. Thanks GW.

[neverdem]

LOL!

[The Wizard]

Every time I read something like this I am proud of Madame President.

[GBA]

I started paying attention in high school, mostly with regards to music, and noticed how each class had a strong motivation to outdo the previous ones, to move things farther, be more outrageous, more over the top.

And it's not just music, but all entertainment, especially moving against aspects of morality and decency toward shock and vile.

Soon what was over the top shocking becomes the norm and the process continues looking for the next outrageous.

Decades later, I keep thinking that sooner or later the pendulum will slow, stop and start to swing back and perhaps it is. Maybe the country will be ready for Sarah Palin in 2012 or 2016, should she decide to run.

[SolidWood]

Ping.

Also see: Sarah Palin, Joe Wilson Stood Up and Said “No”

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

Outstanding article!