Rex Murphy on Sarah Palin . . . and Those Who Hate Her

Rex Murphy writes about Sarah Palin in today's National Post, but not really about Sarah Palin per se, but about her vociferous critics - especially those cocktail party going, abortion loving, silk stocking socialist, trendy nihilists who dominate the Democratic Party, and the "lamestream" media. Here is how it begins:

Among the many delightful characteristics of Sarah Palin is her seemingly unfailing capacity to capture Barack Obama's angry attention. This week, she criticized his new nuclear policy. Obama responded by saying "I really have no response to that," which was, I think we'll all agree, an awkward prelude to his ... response. He went on with: "The last I checked, Sarah Palin is not much of an expert on nuclear issues." Well, colour me huffy.

The reason she gets under Barack Obama's skin is that he is terrified of her. He knows - even if many Republicans don't - where the true danger to his potential second term lies. Murphy puts his finger on what separates her from her deranged haters (I almost said "detractors" but that just doesn't do them justice).

I side with those who venture that the nerves Palin hits have more to do with class -- where she's from, how she speaks, where she was educated, what she likes (the moose-hunting), than her politics or her gender. She's rural, she came into national politics from (ugh) Alaska. She and her husband have the unerasable stigmata of the modern working class. She would not be embarrassed to be seen walking into Wal-Mart.

It is most definitely a class thing. And the danger to the Democrats lies in the fact that Lincoln (whom Murphy quotes) pointed to when he quipped that "God must love the common man since he made so many of them." This is the fear elitists of every century and nation always have to deal with: there are more of them than there are of us.

Murphy points out the nature of the danger she poses to the leftist goal of making the US into a European style social democracy:

Palin is simply not supposed to be a player. She's not only from the wrong side of the tracks, she's so far over on the wrong side she can't see the railway station.

But there she is, in all her roughness and candour, and her spiky wit and ability to irritate her self-nominated betters. She also happens to be the most naturally charismatic politician at the moment in the United States. She is the one major figure who can claim authenticity without morally choking on the word. That makes her the populist rallying point of a nascent rejection of the fervid partisanship and Washington insiderism that is eroding the consent on which American politics is founded.

America has always despised inherited privilege and viewed its success as a nation as having been built on the ability of a poor person with innate ability to rise to the top. This is why the majority of Americans simply won't listen to their betters and join in despising Sarah Palin.

And this is why she must be destroyed.

It is either her or Obama: American politics isn't big enough for both of them and there can be no permanent compromise between the ideals they represent.

Anthropogenic Global Warming: Separating Scientific Fact from Political Ideology

One of the best and most balanced articles I have read on the issue of Anthropogenic Global Warming recently is in the National Review Online by Kevin Williamson.

He proposes the following propositions, in “ascending order of unlikeliness”:

1. The planet is getting warmer.
2. The planet is getting warmer, and human activity is the reason.
3. The planet is getting warmer, human activity is a main factor, and the consequences will be catastrophic.
4. The planet is getting warmer, human activity is a main factor, the consequences will be catastrophic, and some U.N.-style climate policeman is going to be able to manage a mitigating response.
5. The planet is getting warmer, human activity is a main factor, the consequences will be catastrophic, and some U.N.-style climate policeman is going to be able to manage a mitigating response — in an economically efficient manner.
6. The planet is getting warmer, human activity is a main factor, the consequences will be catastrophic, and some U.N.-style climate policeman is going to be able to manage a mitigating response — in an economically efficient manner that also is consistent with our political liberties and national sovereignties

There is the most agreement on the first proposition, less on the second and so on. The sixth proposition is embraced only by people with a certain left-wing and globalist ideological bias. A great many people, even those who embrace the first three propositions are highly skeptical about the last three propositions.

What needs debate now is the feasibility of action that could prevent AGW being taken in an efficient enough manner to prevent disaster without causing a deep and damaging world-wide depression. What if the cure is worse than the disease?

People who just get impatient at this point and demand that talk cease and action begin just don't have any credibility and what credibility they may have possessed in the past has been shredded by Climategate. Where does this leave us? It may leave us in deep trouble and the disaster man indeed be caused by man - but not in the sense the true believers think.

The CBC has refused to cover the Climategate story. "Our Mother" has decided that us little people would only be upset by talk about fraudalent science and related skullduggery. But Rex Murphy somehow slips through the blackout and has, as usual, a few caustic comments to make in his own inimitable style:



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UPDATE: I meant to say when I originally posted this list that I find it frustrating when someone objects to one or more of the last three propositions and is accused by the "Warmists" of denying #1. There is a lot more good, scientific evidence for #1 than for #4-6, which are not really about science at all, but rather politics. It seems to me that for many people politics drives the whole thing with the science as a convenient excuse - and that needs rational discussion instead of hysteria and ad hominum attacks on anyone who raises warning flags as "Deniers" and "Anti-Science." They may not be denying the science at all and they may not be anti-science at all. They may just be afraid that the UN might just make the problem worse instead of better and the hard scientific evidence for worrying about that is quite overwhelming.
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