Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Another take on Palinism

Earlier today we linked to a New York Sun editorial in which Seth Lipsky used "Palinism" to refer to Sarah Palin's world view. In a Big Hollywood opinion piece, Joseph Phillips offers a different definition of Palinism. For Phillips, Palinism is the antithesis of socialist statism. While Sarah Palin advocates the kind of American individualism that epitomizes the spirit of the Founders, Democrat Party Chairman Howard Dean speaks lovingly of socialism. His party and President Obama have embraced a corporatist strain of socialism which Sarah Palin eschews. It is very much the same notion of statism which Mark Levin warned us about in Liberty and Tyranny:
The problem for Dean and the rest of the new left is that Americans tend to have an independent streak that leads them to largely reject the idea of a centralized intelligentsia deciding how best they should live their lives. Palin represents the American individualist that says, “I know what is best for my family and what is in agreement with my faith. I would rather do things my way.” The administrative state is incompatible with such independence and can only thrive by stamping it out.

Palin and those that root for her may not have graduated from Harvard, but they are smart enough to know that Howard Dean is wrong and Ronald Reagan was correct when he said the question was one of moving “Up to man’s age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.” We are indeed bright enough to know that just as there was no moral good in slavery, there is nothing benevolent about socialism. The barbed wire around socialist utopias is there to keep people in – to force them (in the name of liberty) to do what the intellectuals say to do.

[...]

“Palinism” is not a rejection of intellect; it is however, to say in no uncertain terms that some of us regular folk might just know a bit more about how to run our lives and this country than a room filled with Ivy educated czars.
Phillips' full Big Hollywood op-ed is here.

- JP

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