The Sacrilegious Sarah Palin

The American Conservative ^ | 4-27-14 | Rod Dreher

[Flame Retardant]

Man, the 12 minute speech Sarah Palin gave to the NRA convention is awful. It's just witless, red-meat blathering, delivered in that nasal whine of hers that makes it sound like she's chewing wads of tinfoil. For people who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.

Fast-forward in the video to the 6:30 mark, though, and listen to what she says about terrorists. It's part of a long harangue about lily-livered liberals, delivered in such a way that makes Archie Bunker sound like Cicero. Money quote:

"Oh, but you can't offend them, can't make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen. Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists."

OK, stop. Not only is this woman, putatively a Christian, praising torture, but she is comparing it to a holy sacrament of the Christian faith. It's disgusting--but even more disgusting, those NRA members, many of whom are no doubt Christians, cheered wildly for her....

Palin and all those who cheered her sacrilegious jibe ought to be ashamed of themselves. For us Christians, baptism is the entry into new life. Palin invoked it to celebrate torture. Even if you don't believe that waterboarding is torture, surely you agree that it should not be compared to baptism, and that such a comparison should be laughed at. What does it say about the character of a person that they could make that joking comparison, and that so many people would cheer for it. Nothing good--and nothing that does honor to the cause of Jesus Christ.

If I thought that kind of hateful declaration and abuse of the Christian religion was what conservatism stood for, I wouldn't be able to call myself a conservative...

[ColdSteelTalon]

People can be waterboarded to death. When the body is under stress it can cause heart failure or strokes.

And it is torture. Its just the kind that that doesn't leave a mark.

[BlueDragon]

I was talking about the characters themselves, not the actors.

[PLMerite]

“Praise God and pass the armageddon.”

I’m stealing that one.

[PLMerite]

“torture is beneath us...”

When the dirty bomb is upwind of your family and the clock is ticking, you’ll be happy to have someone cutting off fingers to find out exactly where.

[Romulus]

Since waterboarding’s “not torture”, there must be other applications where you support its use.

Maybe domestic criminal investigation? IRS audits? Cross-examination of witnesses? Congressional testimony?

You may list them below.

I’ll wait.

[G Larry]

“can be”

Red Herring alert!

Examples and statistics please?

[G Larry]

Waterboarding is (or was) part of U.S. military Officer Training.

It is NOT TORTURE!

[ansel12]

Do you support it’s generations old use on American students in military training?

[Fledermaus]

Rod Dreher lost his sense of humor a long time ago when he became a “crunchy con”.

[mdmathis6]

Show me in the Bible that she committed sacrilege by using that term?

Legalize much?

[BlueDragon]

Who did I leave out?

Bourne. And that only works (or not as the case may be?) in the comparison.

But that's ok, he forget his name too.

I don't think she'll run.

I think you are likely correct. It could be best all things considered, even as I do think she could manage things well enough, as long as she could listen to the right people and make the right appointments. She does seem to have good natural instincts, as in enjoying within herself full enough expression of the "smells like bullshit to me" gene, which gene becomes sickeningly repressed among the political class much due to the media running-to-and-fro spreading the viruses which alter natural decency, and even rational thought beyond some Government nanny-business sticking more than it's nose in anything and everything unrestrainedly <--- [freedictionary.com].

Still, it could interesting if she did run, provided any and all potentially serious candidates seeking Republican nomination agreed they would be competing primarily for any one of them to win the Presidency, instead of knee-capping one another all along the way in their own individual attempts to win GOP nomination. She would be a lightening rod even as it was denied that she mattered. Which would allow other candidates to maneuver towards the conservative base while giving out non-answer answers in high political style for whatever was inconvienent, but showing the other side of the picture (the DemoRat picture) on issues that could stand to have comparative sides examined then weighed. Forcing this to occur could help drive the whole GOP field to the right, while helping the same field to redefine what they are, and where the political center may actually be. The location of that "thing", that center, has been so skewed in the consciousness of many...it will take many continual small battles to check the rush to the leaning-dangerously-over-the- edge Left (which is already happening among a silent majority as even the hard core leftys are seeing the far left brings a whole bunch of evil consequences along the road to imagined or intended "good"?). After the Left can be discredited enough that news columnists are embarrassed to any longer support it, there may be some hope left -- as long as we don't "step in it" (odious & odoriferous steaming piles) overseas, or are dragged into those we don't have boots high enough to keep from having the nations's toes swimming in the crap.

If otherwise the House can be retained (kept out of the Democrat Party's hands) and the Senate won and send Reid the Über-obstructionist packing, then it may not matter too overly much, as long as the Hildabeast selects a true moderate as her own VP running mate so that when her Cankliness has her brain aneurysm the nation can be led back more towards the center.

[Arthur McGowan]

I love Sarah.

I do have to agree about her voice, especially when she’s speaking to a large crowd.

Let the microphone do the work! Reagan knew that.

[BlueDragon]

I should have wrote more clearly — “showing what is wrong with” with the “other side of the picture”.

[EveningStar]

There have been people here who have made *serious* comparisons between Palin and Jesus.

After one such instance, I did add Jesus to the list.

However, I later removed him from the list after people started accusing *me* of being sacrilegious, even though I was not the one who made the comparison.

[Lazamataz]

Add Jesus or you are going to hell.

[Mrs. Don-o]

I'm with you. The deliberate (directly intended, planned, targeted) infliction of severe pain or fear on any creature, human or animal, as an end in itself or as a means to an end, is morally wrong, and to compare it even remotely or ironically to Baptism, is a sacrilege.

I voted McCain-Palin in 2008 because of Palin (couldn't stand McCain then, and cant stand him now). She gets off a few good lines --- at longer and longer intervals --- but for the most part, she offers us neither good policy nor good judgment.

She has been a huge disappointment.

[x]

Every conservative talks big about political correctness in speech gone awry, and then they go ape$hit over Sarah using the word baptism in the same sentence with waterboarding. The over reaction on this issue is so ridiculous that it’s insulting.

Compare: two or three articles by conservatives about this on the Internet versus wall-to-wall coverage of the Clippers owner. The criticism of Palin isn't any kind of overreaction now, and if it becomes such it won't be because a few little known conservative hangers-on dared to object.

There will be disagreement about whether Sarah was sacrilegious and about whether water-boarding is torture or not, but what I take away from this is that Sarah's become more of an entertainer than anything else. She tells people what they want to hear and what gets a laugh. That's fine, but it's certainly a let-down from what she could have become.

[EveningStar]

There are posters who've been here for YEARS who haven't created an about page.

And, if you're going to quote Reagan (your tagline), at least post the full quote in context... Libertopian is NOT Conservative.

This is the full quote:

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to insure that we don’t each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are travelling the same path.

Do you think you can fit it all into the tagline field?

[BlueDragon]

Add Jesus or you are going to hell.

I'll go in their place. Michigan is not so bad in the spring & summer.

Could you loan about $500 for gas money? It's a ways from where I'm at, there and back.

Besides...I would need to use my own funds to buy an out-of-state fishing license and possibly boat rentals. They have a lot of lakes up that way and the fishing can be good I hear, and doesn't require an ice-saw to get at during some times of the year.

[EveningStar]

Thank you for the update, BlueDragon. :)

Jason Bourne has been added to the list:

This is an ongoing list of historical, popular, and Biblical people, as well as fictional characters and animals that Sarah Palin™ has been compared to on FR:

• Alexander the Great
• Muhammad Ali
• The Beatles
• Boadicea
• Daniel Boone
• Jason Bourne
• Paul Bunyan
• Captain America
• Johnny Cash
• Churchill
• Cincinnatus
• Sarah Connor
• Davy Crockett
• Deborah
• Eliza Doolittle
• Jimmy Doolittle
• Clint Eastwood
• Queen Esther
• Nathan Bedford Forrest
• John Galt
• Gideon
• Godzilla
• Ulysses S. Grant
• Wayne Gretsky
• Nathan Hale
• Hannibal
• EF Hutton
• Ike
• Andrew Jackson
• Stonewall Jackson
• Thomas Jefferson
• Joan of Arc
• Joseph (son of Jacob)
• Obi-Wan Kenobi
• Jeane Kirkpatrick
• Victor Laszlo (Casablanca)
• Robert E. Lee
• Leonidas I
• Lincoln
• MacArthur
• Francis Marion (The Swamp Fox)
• Golda Meir
• Moray Eel
• Moses
• Mother Teresa
• Napoleon
• Admiral Nimitz
• Annie Oakley
• Thomas Paine
• Patton
• Reagan
• Howard Roark
• Teddy Roosevelt
• Rosie the Riveter
• Phyllis Schlafly
• Secretariat
• Shakespeare
• William Tecumseh Sherman
• Luke Skywalker
• Josey Wales
• Snow White
• Sun Tzu
• Thatcher
• William Barret Travis
• Truman
• Mark Twain
• Sir William Wallace
• Washington
• Wonder Woman
• Sergeant York
• Zapata