Reloading: The American Spectator reviews 'Rogue'

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Daniel Oliver reviews Going Rogue in the February issue of The American Spectator. Here are a few choice excerpts:

Gov. Palin believes in God. So did the Founding Fathers, though not necessarily in precisely the way Gov. Palin does. Thomas Jefferson wrote: “God who gave us life gave us liberty.” And also: “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?” The U.S. has strayed far from that belief, or at least from the ability to express that belief in public, in no small part because of Supreme Court rulings so beloved by the liberal United Nations-hugging big-government socialist fascist gangster capitalist atheist God-hating running dogs. Gov. Palin’s belief in God is palpable—palpable being the operative word because periodically she holds her children’s hands and prays.

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Why is a belief in God important? Because, as Chesterton is said to have expressed it, ”When men stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.” Including progress (by which they mean the perfectibility of man), the wisdom of the state, and the need for big government (as the means by which the wise state, guided by a multiplicity of advisers who went to Harvard and Yale, can bring about the perfection of man). Palin: “The role of government is not to perfect us, but to protect us.”

Protecting us is important for obvious reasons. And providing for the common defense is in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, along with establishing justice and ensuring domestic tranquility. Having a strong defense does not necessarily mean supporting the war in either Iraq or Afghanistan. But it does mean having a defense budget large enough to make our enemies quake. Palin: “America must remain the strongest nation in the world in order to remain free.” At the peak of the Reagan rearming in 1986 our expenditures on defense were 6.2 percent of GDP. They are now 4.8 percent, and are projected to go down to 3 percent by 2019. Where is Gov. Palin (the proud mother of a son who went off to serve his country in Iraq) when we need her?

The answer, of course, is that she's reloading...

- JP