Hendrickson: Sarah Palin's common sense vs liberal utopianism

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Grove City College economics professor Mark Hendrickson draws insights into Sarah Palin's significance from Ronald Reagan, Ludwig von Mises, and King Herod in his commentary "Palin and the Leftist Elites" published Tuesday at American Thinker:

The connection between Sarah Palin and Ronald Reagan is fairly simple and straightforward. They share conservative convictions and a special gift of communication. Palin is reminiscent of Reagan in the way she resonates, inspires, and energizes conservatives.

Less apparent are the links that may be drawn between Palin and the long-departed Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises -- and Palin and the much-longer-ago-departed King Herod.

The connection between Palin and Mises occurred to me while rereading Mises' 1944 book Bureaucracy. Mises wrote, "...the educated strata are more gullible than the less educated. The most enthusiastic supporters of Marxism, Nazism, and Fascism were the intellectuals, not the boors." Indeed, Marx, Lenin, et al., were intellectuals, and the leaders of socialism have been relatively well-to-do educated folks like Bill Ayers, not salt-of-the-earth blue-collar folks.

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And what is the antidote to the grim utopian schemes of leftist intellectuals and politicians? According to Mises, "Just common sense is needed to prevent man from falling prey to illusory fantasies and empty catchwords." In other words, people as down-to-earth and common-sensical as Ronald Reagan and Sarah Palin.

Indeed, the fury directed against Palin by leftists is so overwrought, and at times maniacal, precisely because her innate common sense is so powerful and effective when she dares to declare that the emperor of government economic planning has no clothes. Like Mises and Reagan, Palin understands with utter (and to leftists, frightening) clarity that leftist utopias have no practicality or viability, but are, in Mises' words, "illusory fantasies."

What does King Herod from the Gospel of Matthew have to do with Sarah Palin, you may ask? The answer is not to be found in these excerpts, but rather in Prof. Hendrickson's full opinion piece at American Thinker.

- JP