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

Palinism: The Substance of Sarah Palin's World View

A recent New York Sun editorial makes the observation that the essence of Sarah Palin's world view — which the editor has dubbed "Palinism" — is emerging:

"...and it is far more substantive than her detractors suggest or than we gained a glimpse of during the campaign. She has been, in a straightforward way, stepping up on certain issues that her fellow Republicans would do well to emulate."

The 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate's statement on Israel is one example cited in the editorial:

"It provides a glimpse of a leader who would respect Israel’s right to establish, democratically, its own strategy in its own sphere and could restore the standing of America’s president in the eyes in the Israelis, among whom it has plunged since President Obama’s speech in Cairo and his out-reach to the non-democratic Arab leaders."

Sarah Palin is also doing her part to bring other issues to the forefront, including -- but not limited to -- energy security, cap and trade, the value of the dollar, jobs, taxes and runaway federal spending:

"That is not the riff of a lightweight but of someone who has thought about and studied the relationship between high tax rates and high unemployment."

The substance of Palinism grows out of seeds planted long ago by such conservative luminaries as Thatcher and Reagan:

"John O’Sullivan, who was part of the Thatcher brain trust and knows her well... compared Sarah Palin 'not with the Margaret Thatcher that we all have heard of, but with the emerging Margaret Thatcher' whose 'sophistication and ability to articulate issues' were still being honed."

[...]

"Aside from her display of a deeply held commitment to certain basic principles, [Sarah Palin] turns out to share with Ronald Reagan a quality that will stand her in good stead for years to come — people keep underestimating her."

This, the editorial concludes, puts former Governor 180 degrees away from President Obama:

"...who has been credited with a lot more savvy than he has, at least so far, displayed. It puts Mrs. Palin right where she wants to be as she positions herself for the sustantive debate that will be needed to bring our country back."

Read the NY Sun editorial in its entirety here.

- JP

Quote of the Day (May 9, 2009)

From CK MacLeod:

"An emergent American conservative libertarianism, Palinism with or without Palin, with or without "Palin," driven by crisis as much as by charisma, by economic and geo-political facts of life as much as by anyone's ideological hallucinations or social psychosexual fantasies, may represent an objective as well as subjective danger to creatures of superfluous privilege, and to the self-styled intellectual elites most of all."

- JP