Sarah Palin's World View

"Palin's worldview takes shape in Hong Kong," an article posted on foreign Policy magazine's The Cable blog, remarked that the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate's Asian speech...

"...included some of the most critical statements about the Chinese Communist Party by an American political leader in years."

The FP post also included several excerpts from Palin's speech. One which we found significant seems to put some distance between her and the neoconservative world view of the George W. Bush administration:

"I am not talking about some U.S.-led "democracy crusade." We cannot impose our values on other counties. Nor should we seek to. But the ideas of freedom, liberty and respect for human rights are not U.S. ideas, they are much more than that."

When the Democrat-Media Complex isn't obsessing over the fact that it hasn't been made privy to Palin's specific geographic location at any specific point in time, some news manages to emerge from their reports, provided one bothers to wade through the mostly gratuitous criticism of the former governor. From the AP, which since the closing days of August, 2008, has become an acronym for "Anti-Palin":

Her 90-minute speech Wednesday at an investment conference touched on issues from financial markets to health care, Afghanistan and U.S-China relations. It was generally considered more moderate in tone than those Palin delivered during her 2008 campaign for vice president as Republican John McCain's running mate.

Considering that a vice-presidential candidate's traditional role is to act as an attack dog so the presidential candidate can take a "higher road" it should not be earth-shaking news that Palin's Asian speech was more moderate in tone than her stump speeches during campaign season. Really, AP.

While it is becoming apparent to all but those with their hands over their eyes that Barack Obama is in way over his head, Sarah Palin is bolstering her credentials. It seems to us not so much that she is redefining herself, as the title to a new op-ed by American Thinker's James Lewis would indicate, but rather that she is finally free to refine and discuss her own world view. This was not possible when she was cast in the subservient role as McCain's understudy, nor as governor of Alaska was she free to talk about foreign policy matters.

Lewis defines Palin's Hong Kong address as "well-crafted":

It's well worth reading the whole thing. Palin showed Reagan's classic simplicity and directness, and like the Gipper's best talks, she went straight to the heart of today's political battle. Unlike Mitt Romney, who is extremely sharp but much too stiff and patrician, Palin is an American conservative in the classic mold, a populist in her natural style, but extremely bright, thoughtful, and increasingly sophisticated. Foreign policy speeches should have careful phrasing and nuances, and then hit a few big ones out of the ballpark. This one was a winner.

Palin spoke in Hong Kong, the most cosmopolitan city in China. By addressing China in both a fair and a tough-minded way she is likely to make a favorable impression. I would think that the Chinese and Japanese are more impressed by clarity and honesty than by flattery and evasions. So you can be sure it is being read all over Asia.

Since the election campaign, it seems that Sarah Palin recruited a top-notch team of advisors and political talent. The Hong Kong speech goes straight to her alleged weakness in foreign affairs, and it is a very good first step toward re-making her media image to be more substantive. The truth is that most of our media heads would not recognize foreign policy substance if it hit them right between the eyes. But they know the image of substance, and the Hong Kong speech was good on both appearance and reality. She demonstrated "gravitas" -- in the pop slogan of the early Bush years. We need more of the same, but she has now shown convincingly that she can do it.

Sarah Palin's world view is already being measured against those of other world leaders. Lenny Cacchio at Morning Companion was struck by "the stark contrast" between Palin's view of the world and that of Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez:

"The opposite of a common-sense conservative is a liberalism that holds that there is no human problem that government can't fix if only the right people are put in charge. Unfortunately, history and common sense are not on its side. We don't trust utopian promises; we deal with human nature as it is."

– Sarah Palin

“Those who want to go directly to hell, they can follow capitalism. And those of us who want to build heaven on earth, we will follow socialism.” 

-- Hugo Chavez.

[...]

The problem with the modern secular humanist’s take on perfectibility is the danger it poses in practice. If one is in government and views human nature as intrinsically good, or at least perfectible without God, that person will have a different approach to such characters as Mahmoud Achmanidijad or other lesser terrorists. They become “misunderstood”, people who can be talked to, even appeased into peace.

[...]

On the other hand, if you view human nature as inherently flawed and self-centered, and not perfectible by human means, you must set up a system of checks and balances, limiting the chance that any single, flawed individual will gain too much control.

[...]

Interestingly enough, this is one of the basic differences between classical conservatism and neo-conservatism, which itself has a messianic belief that establishing democracy around the world is all that is needed to bring peace. Think of the Bush Doctrine and its inspiration found in Natan Sharansky’s book The Case for Democracy, which heavily influenced President Bush’s thinking on the subject.

Libertarians must fight this tendency as well, some of whom believe that the more liberty people have, the better society will be. I love liberty, but there can be no such liberty without the rule of law. Ideally, that law would be the perfect law of liberty that James mentions in his epistle. Or, as John Adams says, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

The political pendulum is always in motion, though its movement can be so slight as to be difficult to perceive at times. It has proscribed an arc away from Ronald Reagan's world view which brought America economic recover and growth while, along with the compatible world views of Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, brought the fall of the Soviet Union and the blessings of liberty to millions of Eastern Europeans. The pendulum has been out of balance now for two decades.

Sarah Palin's world view is consistent with those of Reagan, Thatcher and the late Holy Father. She has been praised for possessing exceptional political skills. She will need them if she intends to bear the standard of the Republican Party as the first true conservative candidate for the presidency since Ronald Reagan. If she can accomplish that formidable task, voters will be able to choose between her world view and that of Barack Obama, one that seems to reward our enemies and punish our traditional allies while dropping our defensive guard at the same time. In that time of choosing, the fate of the free world may hang in the balance.

- JP