Why is Sarah Palin attacked so viciously for her faith in God?

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Francis W. Porretto answers that question beautifully at Eternity Road, and he does it without even mentioning Sarah Palin's name. Here's the Cliff Notes version:

American left-liberals are violently hostile toward Christianity. As Ann Coulter noted in Slander: Liberal Lies About The American Right, politics for the left-liberal is a religion substitute, and they can't abide competition from the real thing. Christians worship God; left-liberals worship power, most especially its instantiation in government.

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Yet 74% of Americans describe themselves as Christians of one denomination or another.

Granted that not all self-described Christians live in perfect fidelity to the Commandments. Yet the proscriptions of the Christian ethic... constitute a code of law that makes all other law unnecessary. Were it our secular law code, all our legislatures could permanently cease operation...which is why they who worship power cannot abide Christianity and the Christian ethic: It renders them superfluous, and reveals their aspirations as foolish and self-aggrandizing.

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Thomas Paine and Daniel Webster both wrote of government as a necessary evil: a thing made necessary by the failure of some among us to abide by the Christian ethic. The State's justification, in other words, arises from the evil that men do...which is why power-worshippers prefer that evil men predominate over good ones.

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There's a lot of loose talk about "rights" these days, almost all of it spewed by left-liberals anxious to promote a scheme of assertive rights: Smith's rights to things Jones must provide at his own expense, on pain of punishment. But if there exists even one assertive right, there can be no defensive rights, for one who chooses not to comply willingly must be coerced into submission by any means necessary. If he should be killed for resisting, what of it? He violated someone's assertive right to health care, or to a "free" education, or to be supported in indolence, or to the approval and acceptance of everyone despite his licentious or degenerate conduct. Off with his head!

The Founders understood this. Christ made it as explicit as He could. Which is all the explanation we need for left-liberal power-worshippers' deliberate obfuscation of the Founders' Constitution and their abjuration of Christ and His teachings.

This is what Sarah Palin meant when she sat down with Billy Graham and said that this nation should return to the humbleness of the founders, who sought God's blessing, protection and guidance for the new nation they had established.

- JP

Cillizza: Sarah Palin is still a powerful player in the game of politics

Washington Post political blogger/columnist Chris Cillizza writes in The Morning Fix that the the latest evidence of Sarah Palin's power is demonstrated by Congressman Mark Kirk's (R-IL) efforts to get the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate to endorse him in his Senate primary bid:

The rumor that Palin is considering weighing in on a race is enough to set a candidate on edge; witness the nervousness of Gov. Charlie Crist (R-Fla.) at simply the whisper that Palin was likely to endorsed (sic) former state House speaker Marco Rubio in the Florida Senate primary.

Relax, Charlie. According to Cillizza, Sarah's spokeswoman Meg Stapleton says it's way too early for the former governor to be making any primary endorsements. She is focused instead on promoting her memoir Going Rogue with a series of high profile media appearances and a whirlwind book tour. The former Alaska governor will also speak at an event hosted by Wisconsin Right to Life Friday, November 6.

- JP

Bearing Drift: Sarah Palin is crazy like a fox

From Virginia-based Bearing Drift, Steven Osborne has posted an interesting commentary on Sarah Palin that speaks to the former governor's political power:

Her supporters say that she is the leader of a revolution, her opponents say that she is crazy. It seems now, ever so clear that Sarah Palin is crazy; crazy like a fox. Consider these recent moves; her resignation, her farewell speech, and her facebook takedown of Obamacare. In all of these instances Sarah Palin has had the last laugh.

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She has a record as governor and as chairwoman of a major energy commission before that, and if one wants to be technical, our current President has been in public life since 1996, Sarah Palin has been in public life since 1992. Far from being politically irrelevant, Sarah Palin has proven that her resignation has not spelled the end to her relevancy in American politics.

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The public reacted positively when Sarah Palin led the charge against the end-of-life provision, and the politicians reacted accordingly. That demonstrates, more than any poll, the political reality.

With that last sentence, Osborne makes a great point. Too many polls have large margins of error, oversample certain demographics, design questions for a desired result, etc.

Sarah Palin campaigned one day in December for Saxby Chambliss and, by all accounts, drove his vote total up by 10 percent. Now in August, she posted a few op-eds on her Facebook Notes page, and the provision she called attention to in a proposed piece of major legislation was dropped. And she managed this without granting a single interview, calling a press conference or launching an ad campaign.

In the final analysis, Sarah Palin turned the tables on the same media which for a year has purposefully marginalized her. Last week she played them like Alison Krauss plays the fiddle:



- JP