A response to an assessment of Sarah Palin.
Fact 1: Sarah Palin is anti-authoritarian. This one is kind of tricky, because she and I may well have less and more complicated definitions of authoritarian, respectively, but I will try and rebut. Her focus on personal leadership, and personal loyalty to that leader by his followers, marks her thinking as authoritarian. (ref.: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94258995) Hitler called it the Leader Principle, although it wasn't his idea; it was Hegel's. Hitler wasn't much of a philosopher, but then neither is Sarah Palin, and nor am I, so that's beside the point. “Character” as definition of the essential quality one needs as a commander-in-chief is a lot too broad for my taste; being a nerd, I like drawing finer distinctions than that. It's not that a CinC doesn't need character; it's that the first quality of Presidency she mentions in her VP speech (and the two other stump speeches I read) is that John McCain would have been commander-in-chief. That is in my opinion, about the third-least important duty of the Presidency; we created Joint Chiefs of Staff to take care of military administration and warmaking duties, under declarations of war by the Congress: that is to say, that the authority to make war comes not from the office of the Presidency but is delegated to it temporarily by the Congress.
The President has to be diplomat-in-chief, advocate-in-chief for every constituency that has no lobby with Congress, and administrator-in-chief of the vast operation of governmental services, probably in reverse order. His (or in a future case, her) responsibilities, like those of a governor, are administrative, then “domestic,” which is to say domestic politics, then foreign affairs, and if a President serves with any other order in mind, his philosophy of government is misguided. If he believes that his primary responsibilities are security and international conflict, then his philosophy may focus too hard on security matters, both within and without, and we may wind up domestically with a police state, ensuring security at the expense of people's sacred right to be left the hell alone by their government so that the President can worry more about security and power outside the borders while he knows the people are quiet, because he monitors their every word. I'm not saying that's what the last President wanted, much less did, but with USA PATRIOT and a few other post-September laws, we got closer. That kind of thinking is authoritarianism: the tendency to rule with one's focus on the “outside” because the inside is quiescent, closely watched, and thoroughly policed, eventually to the extent that police power becomes effectively without limit, because putting limits on one's ability to enforce laws reduces the ability to focus on the important stuff, which is commanding, from the top down, not responsibilities to serve anyone below the Leader. Is her focus on serving? Maybe. But her philosophy seems to be focused on commanding, and that is not consonant with focusing one's thoughts on service.
Fact 2: Sarah Palin promotes reduction of government. Not even sure what this means, but if it means less legislation, or fewer services, or fewer regulations on personal liberties, none of the above are true, as substantiated by her bio page at http://gov.state.ak.us/bio.php where she lists her achievements as increasing legislation, providing more services, more regulation, more interstate and international cooperation, more distribution of public funds to private citizens (“wealth redistribution” is what economic conservatives like to call it) and her last act as governor may be to sign into law a parental-consent statute requiring parental oversight of abortions for minor children under 18. None of these are ills for Alaska, in my opinion, but they by no means “reduce” government either. She did, by her own and others' assessment, reduce waste and corruption, which is good, but accepting bribes and spending revenues in unproductive ways are not governing.
Fact 3: Present government is fascism. I will base my categorical argument on the definition of fascism, as from the mouth of Mussolini: fascism is about external struggle and internal union, union under authoritarian, single-party rule. It is a truly extreme version of nationalism, subordinating every private interest to those of the state, except for the Leader of the state, who determines what those state interests are, and whose personal interests perforce become conflated with the interests of all. Law and constitutionalism are, if present, merely a veneer for rule by policy and police alone. Authority is absolute, and solely top-down, embodied fully within the Leader and emanating only from that sole source. Security of the Leader becomes the paramount consideration of the entire enterprise of state, and thus becomes the sole interest of the entire nation; conquest, struggle, and violent expansion of the powers of the state both within and without its borders are the immediate and ultimate goals of national existence. (ref: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html)
Our present republican form of government is different from that in practically every respect, but I will focus on the most important aspect: the locus of power. The US constitution mandates, and we the People demand, that our names are signed to it, and should our government feel the need to appoint a Leader whose personal power and security are the sole interests of the state, that government would surely be de-constituted and a new one raised up in the old image, that of representative government, responsible via regular and rigorously open elections, to the electorate which changes its mind on a somewhat predictable basis. It is not as “efficient” a means of conveying authority as authoritarian single-man, single-party rule, with a layer of "law" as grape leaf over the penis of state, but it does have the advantage that it ensures at least some of the people, rather than only one of them, have their interests taken into account when their government acts. It also almost goes without saying, but is important to emphasize in contrast with fascism, that our federal (which means multi-level) system of laws is a great deal more than a veneer for the rule of the Leader, that its changes affect our lives and reflect changes in our society, often from the bottom or middle socioeconomic classes.
Fact 4: Sarah Palin has not suggested religious government at any level. Not as such, no. But nor is she in any significant way favorable toward separation of church and state. She believes, on the face of her statements anyway, that it is God's will that her political will be carried out in the interest of God's constituents, which is not strictly the same thing as not believing that her will should be carried out in the name of her constitutional constituency, but it isn't exactly the same either. She doesn't believe that government should be by or for God; she believes that government should carry out divine will in the name of the people. That is not the same as government by God, or even in the name of God, but to believe that it is the role of government to fulfill the will of God, rather than the will of the people, to serve the interests of the people as defined by God, rather than as defined by the reason of those same people, entangles government with religion in a different, but too similar way. Counter-example: would we the People accept the will of a God who believed it was in our best interest to give away all of our things, construct scaffoldings for executions, and leave our homes behind, carrying those same constructions about with us as symbols of the divine will we serve? If not, our government shouldn't be leading by that example. (ref: http://www.yuricareport.com/Campaign2008/TextTranscriptOfSarahPalinChurchSpeech.html)
Fact 5: Alaska has not become Utah. Obviously true. Nor has California become Zimbabwe, or Moscow, Ohio become Moscow, Russia. If by that you mean, it has not become dominated by a religiously-defined power bloc, I would have to say there is little evidence either way, so likely you are correct, but it is a weak analogy. There are few homologues between Alaskan state politics and Utah politics, other than that they are both republican forms of government.
Fact 6: Alaska has prospered during Sarah Palin's (brief) term as governor. True, and some of the credit must go to Governor Palin, but every time she answers a question, rather than delivering a prepared speech, it is evident she cannot understand why that would have to be the case.
The President has to be diplomat-in-chief, advocate-in-chief for every constituency that has no lobby with Congress, and administrator-in-chief of the vast operation of governmental services, probably in reverse order. His (or in a future case, her) responsibilities, like those of a governor, are administrative, then “domestic,” which is to say domestic politics, then foreign affairs, and if a President serves with any other order in mind, his philosophy of government is misguided. If he believes that his primary responsibilities are security and international conflict, then his philosophy may focus too hard on security matters, both within and without, and we may wind up domestically with a police state, ensuring security at the expense of people's sacred right to be left the hell alone by their government so that the President can worry more about security and power outside the borders while he knows the people are quiet, because he monitors their every word. I'm not saying that's what the last President wanted, much less did, but with USA PATRIOT and a few other post-September laws, we got closer. That kind of thinking is authoritarianism: the tendency to rule with one's focus on the “outside” because the inside is quiescent, closely watched, and thoroughly policed, eventually to the extent that police power becomes effectively without limit, because putting limits on one's ability to enforce laws reduces the ability to focus on the important stuff, which is commanding, from the top down, not responsibilities to serve anyone below the Leader. Is her focus on serving? Maybe. But her philosophy seems to be focused on commanding, and that is not consonant with focusing one's thoughts on service.
Fact 2: Sarah Palin promotes reduction of government. Not even sure what this means, but if it means less legislation, or fewer services, or fewer regulations on personal liberties, none of the above are true, as substantiated by her bio page at http://gov.state.ak.us/bio.php where she lists her achievements as increasing legislation, providing more services, more regulation, more interstate and international cooperation, more distribution of public funds to private citizens (“wealth redistribution” is what economic conservatives like to call it) and her last act as governor may be to sign into law a parental-consent statute requiring parental oversight of abortions for minor children under 18. None of these are ills for Alaska, in my opinion, but they by no means “reduce” government either. She did, by her own and others' assessment, reduce waste and corruption, which is good, but accepting bribes and spending revenues in unproductive ways are not governing.
Fact 3: Present government is fascism. I will base my categorical argument on the definition of fascism, as from the mouth of Mussolini: fascism is about external struggle and internal union, union under authoritarian, single-party rule. It is a truly extreme version of nationalism, subordinating every private interest to those of the state, except for the Leader of the state, who determines what those state interests are, and whose personal interests perforce become conflated with the interests of all. Law and constitutionalism are, if present, merely a veneer for rule by policy and police alone. Authority is absolute, and solely top-down, embodied fully within the Leader and emanating only from that sole source. Security of the Leader becomes the paramount consideration of the entire enterprise of state, and thus becomes the sole interest of the entire nation; conquest, struggle, and violent expansion of the powers of the state both within and without its borders are the immediate and ultimate goals of national existence. (ref: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html)
Our present republican form of government is different from that in practically every respect, but I will focus on the most important aspect: the locus of power. The US constitution mandates, and we the People demand, that our names are signed to it, and should our government feel the need to appoint a Leader whose personal power and security are the sole interests of the state, that government would surely be de-constituted and a new one raised up in the old image, that of representative government, responsible via regular and rigorously open elections, to the electorate which changes its mind on a somewhat predictable basis. It is not as “efficient” a means of conveying authority as authoritarian single-man, single-party rule, with a layer of "law" as grape leaf over the penis of state, but it does have the advantage that it ensures at least some of the people, rather than only one of them, have their interests taken into account when their government acts. It also almost goes without saying, but is important to emphasize in contrast with fascism, that our federal (which means multi-level) system of laws is a great deal more than a veneer for the rule of the Leader, that its changes affect our lives and reflect changes in our society, often from the bottom or middle socioeconomic classes.
Fact 4: Sarah Palin has not suggested religious government at any level. Not as such, no. But nor is she in any significant way favorable toward separation of church and state. She believes, on the face of her statements anyway, that it is God's will that her political will be carried out in the interest of God's constituents, which is not strictly the same thing as not believing that her will should be carried out in the name of her constitutional constituency, but it isn't exactly the same either. She doesn't believe that government should be by or for God; she believes that government should carry out divine will in the name of the people. That is not the same as government by God, or even in the name of God, but to believe that it is the role of government to fulfill the will of God, rather than the will of the people, to serve the interests of the people as defined by God, rather than as defined by the reason of those same people, entangles government with religion in a different, but too similar way. Counter-example: would we the People accept the will of a God who believed it was in our best interest to give away all of our things, construct scaffoldings for executions, and leave our homes behind, carrying those same constructions about with us as symbols of the divine will we serve? If not, our government shouldn't be leading by that example. (ref: http://www.yuricareport.com/Campaign2008/TextTranscriptOfSarahPalinChurchSpeech.html)
Fact 5: Alaska has not become Utah. Obviously true. Nor has California become Zimbabwe, or Moscow, Ohio become Moscow, Russia. If by that you mean, it has not become dominated by a religiously-defined power bloc, I would have to say there is little evidence either way, so likely you are correct, but it is a weak analogy. There are few homologues between Alaskan state politics and Utah politics, other than that they are both republican forms of government.
Fact 6: Alaska has prospered during Sarah Palin's (brief) term as governor. True, and some of the credit must go to Governor Palin, but every time she answers a question, rather than delivering a prepared speech, it is evident she cannot understand why that would have to be the case.