Friday, June 12, 2009

Obama's Recipe for America or Palin Americana: To Serve Man.

I think fairly often about Sarah Palin as president, usually when I read or hear about some latest antic by Obama. I don't catch the Obama word on tv, like some recent piece from David Letterman. That guy has some audience left, and it's strange to me that we can have a country in which he's a success of any sort. He'd only be possible in a nation that elected Obama. Letterman attacked Sarah Palin's 14 year old daughter on his tv show. That sort of thing doesn't surprise me anymore. It comes from a nation I don't recognize, and that nation used to be home. I remember America as hometown Palin. Television is a foreign country. Obamaland is The Twilight Zone. I remember my home. It was a nice place.

J. Robert Smith, "Still Open Season on Sarah Palin," American Thinker. June 12, 2009

[....]

East and left coast elites have a beau ideal, and that's President Barack Obama, the elegant, cosmopolitan, smooth apologist for America's foibles and mortal sins. The Big Spender and soon-to-be Debaser of the Dollar. The Savior of Detroit who's Amtraking automakers. The compassionate fellow who wants to ration healthcare. And the man who claimed he'd deny Miranda rights to terrorists, only to, well...

President Obama cleans up nicely, as they say. He talks the left's talk, and knows what fork to pick up at a five-star restaurant. He's an African-American JFK, which almost makes him the left's ultimate fantasy. The only thing he's not is gay. But even fantasies have limits.

Note that today's liberals -- or progressives, as they prefer -- never rhapsodize about the late Harry Truman, a gruff, unpolished Democratic pol who didn't give a damn about which fork he used at hoity-toity eateries -- if he ever entered any.

Truman regarded Uncle Joe Stalin as a windbag and mass murderer; he considered communism a sham and a great danger. And he initiated the long, hard Cold War that defeated the communists.

That's not what today's liberal admires in a leader: Resolve in defeating the nation's enemies. For liberals, like Pogo, the enemy is us. These descendants of Adlai Stevenson II see life as complicated -- a vast gray zone -- where truth is relative but most everything about America is absolutely wrong.

Palin is too much like Truman for liberal tastes, less the gruffness. She's a Main Streeter who's very comfortable in her skin. She doesn't put on airs, and doesn't aspire to do so. Her husband is a workingman whom she loves and is proud of; not an inconvenient truth, to steal a phrase. Ditto her son, Trig, born with Down Syndrome rather than aborted. Ditto her daughter, Bristol, who gave birth to an out-of-wedlock son.

Bristol has come out for abstinence among young people. Her honesty and courage is met with rolled eyes and sneers from jaded elites, reporters and liberal commentators. And bad jokes by a ratings-loser talk show host.

Surely, Bristol can't really want to help young people avoid her mistake. Her public stand is all about damage control and pre-emption. She's standing up to inoculate her mother from charges that the Palins talk the good talk about family values but walk a very different walk.

Imperfect creatures that we are, we are all bound to stray. Learning from, and making amends, for our mistakes are large parts of redemption. Bristol is admirably seeking redemption. Had she only chosen to condemn Gitmo and stump for same-sex marriage, then she'd have won plaudits from liberals.

Out-of-wedlock births are a Hollywood norm, and win the seal of approval from convention-hating lefties. Yet another reason to ridicule Bristol.

Governor Palin's conservatism is the sort that connects with the natural conservatism of a majority of Americans. Hers comes with no frills, no eloquent turns of phrase, no Shakespearian grandeur.

Hers is a hotdogs and hamburgers and cold beer conservatism. It's upbeat, reality-tested, everyday commonsense. Americans live it every day. They recognize it in Palin, and are attracted to her accordingly. Hence, liberals' fear.

Bless Palin's moose-shooting, hockey mom's heart. She wasted no time unloading both barrels at the hoary Letterman for his lurid jabs. The time has come for conservatives to start fighting back. Governor Palin is showing the way.

The saying goes that the best revenge is served cold. In this case, Sarah Palin needs to always bypass the elites and the mainstream media. She needs to take her case directly to hardworking Americans, whether in Auburn, New York, Joplin, Missouri or Macon, Georgia.

And in those towns and cities and suburbs across the nation, she needs to deliver this powerful, game-changing message: Americans don't have to be ashamed of, or apologize for, being Americans. Our traditional values, morals and beliefs are the nation's backbone and have made us great.

We have been a force for great good and freedom in a world often lacking in both. We may stumble and fall at times, but we pick ourselves up and move forward with hope and optimism and an unshakeable belief that, as Ronald Reagan was fond of saying, our best days are ahead of us.

Take this message to Americans and it won't be cynical comics or cynical elites who have the last laugh.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/06/still_open_season_on_sarah_pal.html

America will return.

3 comments:

Dag said...

If you missed the Twilight Zone link, it refers to an episode in which space monsters come to Earth promising to take normal Americans to a Utopia in outer space. Some think it's the best deal on offer, and they board the ship. Meanwhile, a girl has been translating "The Book," and as her boyfriend is boarding she yells out to him: "It's a cookbook."

So maybe I watched too much tv as a kid and that's the only reason on Earth I don't trust Obama.

John Lofton, Recovering Republican said...

Forget, please, "conservatism." It has been, operationally, de facto, Godless and therefore irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God both are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson's Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:

"[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt bath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth."

Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).

John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com

PS – And “Mr. Worldly Wiseman” Rush Limbaugh never made a bigger ass of himself than at CPAC where he told that blasphemous “joke” about himself and God.

Dag said...

We've had some fairly heated debates here over the years about who is and who is not "X." I grant that this is not a simple matter of clear opinion. I find myself in some degree of sympathy for your position regarding "conservatives," but I must raise the issue of Walter Ruschenbusch and his claim that St. Paul is not a legitimate Christian: that Paul has vitiated the Primitive Church message of socialism and its vow of poverty. Rauschenbusch, writing in 1907, claims authority for his Social Gospel on the grounds of authentic Christianity predating Pauline individualist "propaganda." Who is right? How do we prove it? Not so simple as ones say-so. Who is the true Christian? Knox or Wesley? Luther or Calvin? Tynedale or Moore? And beyond personality, how does one decide? Would any of them today grant "Christian" status to the Archbishop of Canterbury?

Who is the conservative in the eyes of Burke or Bonald? Who the Frenchman in the opinion of Racine or Richelieu? How can we know well enough to say we know?