J.T. Young: The Left's problem with Palin

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In a Washington Times op-ed, J.T. Young ponders the Left's fixation on Sarah Palin:

The left's cultivation of victims makes it a grouping of extremes - a Marx and Engels phenomenon. On one hand, its victimizing message appeals to those who see themselves as disenfranchised from mainstream society - like the impoverished and embittered Marx. On the other, it resonates a guilt in those at the top - like the wealthy capitalist Engels. The latter condition is particularly common in those who themselves did not earn the wealth they enjoy. It is no coincidence that so many leaders of the left are in fact extraordinarily rich themselves.

Mrs. Palin is doubly menacing here. As a woman, her conservative stance is particularly threatening. Women rank high in the left's pantheon of victims. That Mrs. Palin has proved very successful without the left's embrace and its offer of special assistance endangers the resonance of its message.

Mrs. Palin is also solidly middle class, and the middle class has always terrified the left.The middle class is not disenfranchised from society, and it does not possess a guilt about the wealth they themselves have earned. This makes the middle class largely impenetrable to the left. For the left, Mrs. Palin inhabits the middle, not their two extremes, so to them she is truly "not one of us."

In sum, Sarah Palin, by who she is, where she comes from, the values she holds, and the life choices she has made, is a living rebuke of the left.

Young advises conservatives, no matter their opinions of her as a potential leader, to embrace who Sarah Palin is and what she stands for. Conservatives, he reminds us, still have plenty of time to make up their minds about her, should she pursue national office. And that, he says, she has every right to do, "not the least of which being the left's insistence that it be denied to her."

Read the full J.T. Young opinion piece here.

- JP