The terrible beauty of freedom

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What’s happening in Iran in response to the fraudulent election is nothing short of awe-inspiring. This may be the revolution, and if so, it indeed will not be televised (though the early phases were), but it will be tweeted. The Anchoress comments,

You can feel the pulse. It is a human force for freedom that is pressing, pressing against restraints; fully aware of the danger, it yearns, pressing forward, still. It is a terrible beauty.

Read her post; she has some great comments and, as usual, a terrific roundup of key links on the state of things in Iran. We can be proud of Twitter, and of the people who came up with it and maintain it; we can be grateful that they were willing to reschedule their maintenance to inconvenience Americans instead of the Iranians who are tweeting for their lives, their freedom, and their sacred honor. And we can pray (hard!) for those Iranians, that God would protect them and honor their prayers, that he would work a miracle through them and give them freedom.

Unfortunately, our president hasn’t covered himself with glory in this instance; he seems to think that to “stand strongly with [a] universal principle” is enough, that if he just does that, he doesn’t have to stand with the Iranian people. Don Surber put it well, I think, when he wrote,

As an American, I am embarrassed that a couple of computer geeks who came up with a social network have more brass than my holier-than-thou president. Words, deeds. Odd that Twitter does deeds while the commander-in-chief does words.

Just an observation.

Fortunately, as the Anchoress notes, a 27-year-old Condoleezza Rice appointee at the State Department, Jared Cohen, took up some of the president’s slack when he asked Twitter to postpone their scheduled maintenance. Cohen’s an interesting chap, having spent a fair bit of time wandering around the Islamic world before going to work at Foggy Bottom; in 2007 he told the New Yorker,

“They make alcohol in their bathtubs and their sinks,” Cohen said. “And the drug use—it’s really no different from a frat party. You have to pinch yourself and remind yourself that you’re in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iranian young people are one of the most pro-American populations in the Middle East. They just don’t know who to gravitate around, so young people gravitate around each other.”

Watch out for this guy—he has a very bright future—and be grateful that God put someone in his job at State who knows and cares about the people of Iran, especially since his new boss doesn’t know them and doesn’t seem to care very much. Never mind that, because Barack Obama’s not at the wheel here—he’s on the sidelines, a spectator, pretty much irrelevant; history’s happening somewhere else today. Pray for the people of Iran; pray that God brings the walls down. And pray that when that happens, and the reactions of our government start to matter again, that then they do the right thing.

Bogus ethics complaint of the day

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In her Evansville speech, Gov. Palin mentioned that

the people of Evansville sent her chocolates on her birthday (which she shared with reporters), some doughnuts (which she served at an Oil & Gas meeting), and a hockey stick autographed by the Evansville Youth Hockey Association.

Does that sound nefarious to you? Bear in mind that folks in Evansville also offered to host a fundraiser for SarahPAC, and the Governor turned them down. Didn’t matter—she got hit with an ethics complaint for the little things she did accept. The complaint was roundly dismissed, but that doesn’t make the legal bills go away.

We’re all Chicagoans now

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So, let’s see. The Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), which among other things runs AmeriCorps, starts investigating the mayor of Sacramento, Kevin Johnson, and his nonprofit foundation, St. HOPE Academy; the foundation had applied for AmeriCorps money for a project called the Hood Corps. When Gerald Walpin audited the program,

The IG audit found that the program misused virtually all its funds and did little of what was outlined in its grant proposal.

Specifically, the audit found that Johnson and other officials of Neighborhood Corps used AmeriCorps volunteers to recruit students for a charter school run by its parent program, improperly paid at two school employees with AmeriCorps funds for duties they did not perform, improperly used volunteers to perform personal errands for Johnson (including washing his car and driving him to personal appearances) and used the AmeriCorps volunteers to engage in political activities in connection with a board of education election.

Rooting out abuse of government funds—clearly he’s doing his job well; that deserves a raise, or at least a pat on the back, right? Nope—because you see, Johnson isn’t just a former NBA star or a mayor, he’s a friend and supporter of Barack Obama. As a result, Walpin didn’t get a commendation, he got a pink slip.

Of course, that’s not the only case IG Walpin has investigated; he also found significant problems in an AmeriCorps project at the City University of New York. Despite his findings, however, the CNCS decided it didn’t feel like doing anything about it.

Funding for the largest AmeriCorps program—the Teaching Fellows Program, run by the Research Foundation of the City University of New York—is in abeyance pending resolution of widespread problems identified in a recent audit. Although Walpin recommended that funding be curtailed and that previous funds (perhaps as much as $75 million) be repaid to the corporation, the corporation has said it will take no action on that matter.

Walpin concluded that nothing was being gained by the grants to CUNY and that the money was simply being used to subsidize an existing and funded program.

That’s not to say, of course, that the administration isn’t doing anything about this—they did, after all, remove the embarrassing IG who insisted on making an issue out of it. What’s more, to ensure that nothing so disturbing happens again, Michelle Obama is kindly donating the services of her chief of staff Jackie Norris, who was appointed as a senior advisor to the CNCS. In the absence of a CEO (the last appointee for that slot having withdrawn her name last month), Norris will have particularly great influence; and word is that Michelle Obama is taking the lead in the selection of a new CEO for CNCS as well. After all, we have to make sure that whoever runs this corporation is willing to toe the administration’s line.

Which isn’t how it’s supposed to be, especially when it comes to IGs; these folks are supposed to be insulated from executive pressure, as Byron York notes:

Last year Congress passed the Inspectors General Reform Act, which was designed to strengthen protections for IGs, who have the responsibility of investigating allegations of waste, fraud and abuse within federal agencies, against interference by political appointees or the White House. Part of the Act was a requirement that the president give Congress 30 days’ notice before dismissing an IG. One of the co-sponsors of the Act was then-Sen. Barack Obama.

The Act also requires the president to outline the cause for his decision to remove an IG. Beyond saying that he did not have the “fullest confidence” in Walpin, Obama gave no reason for his action.

There are two big questions about the president’s actions. One, why did he decide to fire Walpin? And two, did he abide by the law that he himself co-sponsored?

According to Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, a strong advocate of inspectors general, Walpin received a call from the White House Counsel’s office on Wednesday evening. Walpin was told that he had one hour to either resign or be fired. Senate sources say Walpin asked why he was being fired and, according to one source, “The answer that was given was that it’s just time to move on. The president would like to have someone else in that position.” Walpin declined to resign.

Grassley fired off a letter to the president on Thursday saying that, “I was troubled to learn that [Wednesday] night your staff reportedly issued an ultimatum to the AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin that he had one hour to resign or be terminated,” Grassley wrote. “As you know, Inspectors General were created by Congress as a means to combat waste, fraud, and abuse and to be independent watchdogs ensuring that federal agencies were held accountable for their actions. Inspectors General were designed to have a dual role reporting to both the President and Congress so that they would be free from undue political pressure. This independence is the hallmark of all Inspectors General and is essential so they may operate independently, without political pressure or interference from agencies attempting to keep their failings from public scrutiny.”

Ed Morrissey offers an interesting comment on this:

Congress gave IGs this level of protection precisely to avoid this kind of action by the White House. Obama doesn’t want IGs investigating his cronies and political allies, and the evidence for this is rather clear from the way the White House handled it. Instead of going to Congress, which the lawyers in the White House should have known was the correct procedure, they attempted to intimidate Walpin out of his job first. Apparently they didn’t have a good enough case for the proper procedure.

What we’re seeing here is a clear case of Chicago-style cronyism and machine politics on the national stage. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone; I certainly saw it coming, and I was far from the only one. After all, this is how Barack Obama learned to do politics; this is the system that formed him. How else is he going to govern? How else would he behave? This is a man who has repeatedly said that his formative experience as a young man was as a community organizer—with ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which includes among its activities political intimidation and massive voter-registration fraud for political and financial profit. ACORN doesn’t practice transparency and accountability—why would we expect Barack Obama to do so? Why would we expect him to govern with a high level of integrity when the people and environments that shaped him as a politician don’t reward integrity?

The bald truth is that we elected as president a Chicago machine politician and community organizer for a corrupt organization that considers fraud an appropriate tool for advancing its political agenda and filling its coffers, and we now have an administration run by people who are used to operating in those ways and on those principles; we should not expect any of them to be other than what they have been. Rather, we should expect national politics to look a lot like Chicago writ large—and so far, that’s what we’re seeing.

We’re seeing an administration that admits that the $800 billion it demanded be spent as “stimulus” is already being misappropriated, misused, and even flat-out stolen—Joe Biden went so far as to say, “Some people are being scammed already”—and can’t seem to be bothered to do anything about it. After all, the money is going to liberals, isn’t it? And we’re seeing an administration whose preferred response to the voter-registration fraud investigations going on against ACORN in numerous states is not to launch a federal investigation, but rather to give them billions of dollars. That’s why Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has introduced the Taxpayer Protection and Anti-Fraud Act,

which would restrict access to taxpayer dollars available through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for groups that have been indicted for violations of state or federal laws.

“No one has a right to federal funds,” she said. “We have a fiduciary responsibility as members of Congress to establish criteria by which groups can gain access to federal dollars. I believe we should be able to raise the bar above indictment and not be restricted solely to convictions. This in no way denies someone their due process rights in court.”

Under her new bill a determination would be made on a “case by case” basis to determine whether or not a particular organization should be eligible for federal support, despite indictments.

The White House, predictably, is opposed; but it seems clear to me that the government needs to be careful about giving out money, and that if there’s enough reason to issue an indictment against an organization, the government should at least be required to take notice of that indictment and evaluate it carefully before giving that organization so much as one red cent. (If you agree, sign the petition.) To the current administration, giving money to groups like ACORN is just business as usual; to my way of thinking, that’s precisely the sort of usual business we need to do away with. The Chicago machine is bad enough in Chicago; there’s nothing we can do now to keep it out of D. C., so we need to do everything we can to keep it from putting down roots and taking over. We’re all Chicagoans now; let’s do our best to make sure we don’t stay that way.

 

Sarah Palin: Worth fighting for

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Why? Dan Calabrese of the North Star Writers Group has part of the answer:

So, Republicans, you’re looking for people who can serve as faces of a party on the upswing. What qualities would we want to see in such people?

Maybe these:

  • They’ve served in public office and have actually governed effectively.
  • Rather than just talking about fiscal responsibility, they’ve made it happen under their watch.
  • When possible, they’ve made sure the private sector would take the lead in crucial initiatives.
  • They’ve taken on corrupt, entrenched interests to make government more responsive to the people it serves, even when those interests were fellow Republicans.
  • They pull no punches in criticizing Democrats, but they do so with a positive outlook and a pleasant demeanor.
  • They’re not intimidated by the inevitable crap they will catch from the media, celebrities and whomever else.
  • They have an enthusiastic following upon which to build.
  • Finally, if you’ve got all of the above, it can’t hurt if you also look fantastic.

As he notes, there’s one person who fits all eight of those criteria: Sarah Palin.

Calabrese understands that it’s stupid to judge the Governor by the mockery she gets from those trying to take her down. He poses the GOP the key questions:

If you read substance-challenged media like Politico, you think it’s all about unnamed GOP operatives grumbling about the way her scheduler works, or GOP senators (who refuse to put their names on the record) finding her annoying.

Have you ever listened to Palin talk about policy? Have you examined her record in Alaska? Do you know the political courage she has demonstrated achieving crucial goals there?It’s especially important to listen to Palin’s discussion of policy matters now, as compared with during the presidential campaign, because then she was hamstrung by the need to tout the McCain campaign’s discombobulated message. Now that she is free to craft her own message, and can base it on her own record, she is exponentially more compelling.

Those of us who’ve followed her career without prejudging her know that Gov. Palin is strong across a wide range of policy issues; we know she’s an effective, innovative governor who consistently puts principle first, even at the cost of fierce opposition from many in her own party (to say nothing of the folks who are supposed to be the opposition). Still, it’s refreshing to see that Calabrese gets it:

The way she governs Alaska represents a principled, serious approach that is missing in the conduct of far too many Republican officeholders. What’s more, the way she talks about the excesses of the Obama Administration shows that she not only sees the problems we are creating for ourselves, but understands the alternatives we should be championing. . . .

Palin knows her stuff, backs it up with action and expresses herself with the perfect mix of substance and agreeable style.

Calabrese’s column is explicitly not intended to champion Gov. Palin for the GOP presidential nomination; instead, he’s trying to do something much more basic and, I think, more important. His thesis is that the Republican Party needs to embrace, and support, and promote—and lean on—every significant Republican whose track record shows intelligent, successful application of conservative principles to the real issues that face America, not in Washington, but in actual executive roles around this country.

As he says, there’s no need to take sides, because conservatives are really all on the sameside, and the more people we have like Bobby Jindal and Mitch Daniels, the better; but it does mean recognizing that on substance, Gov. Palin belongs at the head of that list (and that those who don’t see that have been “focused on nonsense instead of what really matters”). Calabrese’s advice here is absolutely spot-on, and something the GOP mandarins badly need to take to heart; though he doesn’t quote Ben Franklin here, what he’s saying reminds me of the old sage’s words, which are squarely on point for today’s Republican Party:

“We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

Calabrese’s column is absolutely vintage. Read the whole thing, and pass it on; and if you can, join the webathon and donate.

(Cross-posted, edited, from “Dan Calabrese: ‘Nail, Meet Hammer. BANG!’” at Conservatives4Palin)

Is Iran about to blow?

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There’s a very good chance of it—check out Michael J. Totten’s excellent roundup for the details. I know a few folks over there, and I can testify to the truth of what he and others are saying: among people 40 and under (which is to say, those who’ve spent at least their whole adult life under the Khomeinist regime) there is no trust of the government whatsoever, only pent-up rage and frustration. Indeed, so great is the disenchantment with their Islamist rulers that there’s a widely-held sentiment that “Islam is not the solution, it is the problem.” It really is entirely possible that in stealing this election for Ahmadinejad, Ali Khamenei and the mullahs have taken that one step too far that will blow the entire country open, and themselves clean out of power (and quite possibly out of other things as well, like breathing).

Which is why our government’s reaction—essentially, “The election was stolen, but we’ll work with the Ahmadinejad government anyway”—was so mind-numbingly stupid. You’ll notice I said “our government,” not “the Obama administration,” and there’s good reason for that; I think Barack Obama’s instincts on Iran are atrocious, and I’m sure he’s not helping matters, but I have no real faith that anyone else would be doing any better. . . . Well, John McCain mightbe if he had the chance, because he’s stubborn enough that he might actually be able to make foreign policy independent of the bureaucrats in the State Department, but I’m not at all sure of that; and the folks at State have a deeply-entrenched mindset that says “work with the government that’s in place, no matter what.” I’m not sure if it’s a reaction against US involvement in the Ngo assassination and the Allende coup or what, but our government is ridiculously good at ignoring potentially pro-US opposition movements in favor of continuing to deal with anti-US tyrants. (And don’t give me Iraq—it took us three presidents, a decade and a half, two invasions, a major terrorist attack and a minor-league cold war to decide we really couldn’t live with Saddam Hussein after all.) I truly hope we wise up this time; there’s an oppressed nation out there that could really use our help, and a government we’d be far better off without.

God’s Grace, Our Counterfeit

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(Psalm 103:8-18; 1 Timothy 1:12-20)

“Conscience” is a problematic word. That might seem like a strange thing to say, but it’s true. It’s not the word’s fault, mind you—what the word is supposed to mean is plenty clear. In the New Testament, “conscience” means the awareness God has placed within us of his character and will, and thus of right and wrong; literally the word means “to know together with,” and it refers to the things we know together with God about the way the world is supposed to be and the way we’re supposed to live. We might even call it a sixth sense of sorts, as it gives us the ability to perceive reality in its moral aspect.

The problem, rather, is in us. Our sinful nature resists this—this isn’t what we want the word “conscience” to mean. We don’t want our conscience to be something that pokes at us and makes us face the fact when we’re doing something wrong; we tend to want to do what we want to do, and we want to believe that if we can convince ourselves we feel good about doing what we want to do, then it must be OK. And so what a lot of folks in this world end up doing is essentially turning their conscience off—refusing to pay attention to its promptings, finding ways to dismiss it, teaching themselves to feel good (at least on the surface) about doing what they want to do, and then calling that good feeling their conscience. That way, they can tell themselves (and whoever else might happen to come around) that their conscience is clear about their actions.

That, I suspect, is what Hymenaeus and Alexander had done. If you’d asked them, I’m sure they would have said their consciences were clear, but Paul says no; they are, he says later on, “liars whose consciences are seared with a hot iron”—so damaged by the lies they’ve told and believed that just like a badly-burned hand, the nerves no longer work and they’re no longer capable of feeling. Their consciences aren’t clear, they’re dead. Determined to do what they want to do and believe what they want to believe, they have closed themselves off to the voice of the Spirit of God speaking within them to tell them they’re doing wrong; they’ve rejected conscience in favor of their own counterfeit, and therefore have shipwrecked themselves, and Paul is writing this letter to help Timothy stop them before they do the same to the whole congregation.

Unfortunately, we see this sort of thing a lot; and it can be hard to distinguish from true acts of conscience. Martin Luther launched the Reformation, in part, with an appeal to conscience, refusing to bow to the power of the Roman church because “to go against conscience is neither right nor safe”; these days, there are a lot of folks running around who want to be little Luthers, condemning the church for its teachings and declaring, “Here I stand.” Some are very convincing. What too many people lack, though, is the central point of Luther’s statement: “My conscience is captive to the word of God”; this is the foundation for everything else. If your conscience is captive to the word of God, if your focus is on obeying God even when it’s the last thing you want to do, if you’ve been training and strengthening your conscience in faithful study of the Scriptures and in prayer—as Luther had—then yes, to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. If not, then you may very well be going against conscience and not even know it.

The issue here is that at some level, we don’t want the conscience God gave us because we really don’t want what God is offering—we don’t want his solution because we don’t want to believe what he’s telling us about the problem. The word of God tells us we are sinners, rotten at the core, who need to accept the mercy of God, to be saved by his grace, through none of our own doing and none of our own merit, and we just don’t want to hear that. Paul pours out gratitude for the great mercy God showed him, giving thanks that “the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus”—and too often, we look at that and we want no part of it. We want to believe we’re basically OK—and if we run up against something we can’t get around, that everyone agrees is bad behavior, we want to redefine it as a disease; that way, we’re not bad, we’re just sick. We don’t need to repent, we just need treatment.

The Bible tells us we’re sinners, that we do bad things just because we like to do bad things, that the purpose of our conscience is to convict us of our sin, not to justify our behavior—and we don’t want to hear that. We don’t want to hear the good news Paul preached, that we’re sinners saved despite the fact that we do not and will not ever deserve it, solely by the loving grace of God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ; we don’t want to hear that because we just don’t want to believe that anything’s all that seriously wrong with us. That kind of thinking is for losers, and we all want to think we’re winners; we want to believe that God saved us because we’re such all-fired wonderful people that we just had it coming. And the truth is, we aren’t, and we didn’t, and he didn’t. The truth is, Christianity is for losers—and that means us. Even the best of us.

The apostle Paul understood this, because he understood far more clearly than we do the depth and significance of his own sin. This was a man who, by worldly standards, was a clear winner, a powerful and accomplished person; he was a highly-trained and successful intellectual—in our day, he’d be a tenured full professor at a major university or graduate school, with a list of publications as long as your arm—who’d had an amazing record as a church planter, starting more churches in his career than most denominations can manage in a year, or three, or even five. He was an unrelenting and indomitable voice for truth whose authority was felt across the Roman world. No one in the church today has anything even close to the sort of wide and deep influence Paul had. And yet, when he looked at himself, what did he see? Anything God should be impressed with? No, he gave all the credit for all his success to the power of God. For himself, he said this: “It is a true statement and worthy of acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost.” Now, was Paul really the worst sinner who had ever lived to that point? Not likely, no; but his sense of his own sinfulness and his need for God’s mercy was so great that it drove him to make that statement—as it would for any of us who saw ourselves as clearly as Paul did.

This is important, because this last statement is not just Paul’s personal testimony: it’s the point where he broke with the false teachers who were plaguing the church in Ephesus, and where he called the church to do the same. We don’t know the details, but it’s clear that the likes of Hymenaeus and Alexander were preaching a religion of “you can be good enough”; if you just obeyed their particular version of the law of God, if you believed the myths they spun out of the Old Testament and lived according to the rules they laid down, then you didn’t need this “mercy” stuff—you could be good enough to please God on your own. You could earn your salvation.

The proper term for this, of course, is legalism; and though a lot of folks would be surprised to hear it, legalism is just as much a problem now as it was then. The difference is, most of our legalists take sin far less seriously, and so they tend to offer a lot of warmed-over self-help principles combined with a counterfeit version of grace—one that doesn’t actually require things like repentance, and mercy, and being agonized by our own sin. Instead of understanding that the grace of God to us is his free gift of salvation despite our unworthiness, they see God’s grace as saying to us, “No, no, it’s really not that bad—if it makes you happy, you go right ahead.” They fail to understand that God’s grace isn’t about what we deserve—that’s justice. God’s grace is all about what he gives us that we have not earned and could never even begin to hope to earn. Confusing the two is a major theological error, a fundamental misunderstanding of who God is and who we are (and pretty much everything in between).

And yet this idea that we deserve grace, that we deserve to be forgiven, pops up all over the place. We seem to think that if we don’t think something’s all that big a deal, God shouldn’t either; that if we have an excuse or some kind of justification for our actions, he should be happy to accept it; and that if it happens that there is something that needs to be forgiven, that God should just say, “That’s OK, no big deal,” and let it go, no cost to us or anybody else. It’s the idea that God just wants us to be happy and fulfilled on our own terms, and that he’s good with anything we think will get us there. It’s an idea which is appealing, and widespread—and straight from the pit of Hell.

There are all too many people who want to believe, as the great Christian thinker H. Richard Niebuhr put it, that “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through a Christ without a cross”; but that isn’t the truth. Our sin is real, whether we want to believe it or not, and so is God’s inability to tolerate it; and Christ didn’t come to tell us all we’re OK, he came to save us from the fact that we’re not. The good news of the gospel isn’t “I’m OK, you’re OK”; it isn’t that if you really want to do something, and you feel good about doing it, God will tell you to go ahead; it isn’t that we’re good enough for God, or that we can make ourselves good enough for God, or even that God’s too good to let such wonderful people as us go. The good news of the gospel is that yes, we are sinners, yes, there really is a problem with us, and that God has fixed that problem, because Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. The good news of the gospel has nothing to do with lessening our sin and our guilt; it has everything to do with the marvelous, infinite, matchless grace of God, this spectacular gift we have been given, which overwhelms our sin and guilt, washing it all away through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the power of his Holy Spirit.

Support citizen government; support Sarah Palin

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It’s no secret, of course, that I’m a supporter of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Even if I weren’t, though—even if I were one of the Beltway types pulling for Mitt Romney or Jeb Bush, let’s say—I would be angry at the way in which Gov. Palin’s opponents in Alaska have chosen to use an onslaught of ludicrous, frivolous “ethics complaints” to try to bring her down by bankrupting her with legal fees. (It’s not just me calling these complaints frivolous; the head of the committee responsible for addressing them, a Murkowski appointee who owes the governor nothing, has dismissed them all with that judgment, and has been musing in recent weeks about ways to make complainants pay for their complaints.) So far, not one of these complaints has passed even the first smell test, yet her enemies will stop at nothing to try to grind her down and bury her with legal debt defending herself for such actions as wearing a warm coat when she showed up for the start of the Iron Dog snowmobile race.

Unlike so many of our professional politicians, Gov. Palin is not a rich member of our nation’s elite class, and she doesn’t have a trust fund or a private fortune to use to pay her lawyer; she’s a blue-collar woman with a blue-collar husband. As such, she started a legal defense fund to cover her legal bills, but her ankle-biting opponents have driven her bills up over a half-million dollars, so she has a long way to go. As such, my colleagues over atConservatives4Palin have launched a webathon, running through June 22, to help retire as much of her legal debt as possible.

I understand that these are tough economic times, and in general, I tend to be one who’s skeptical of donating money to politicians or parties, so I understand that point of view; but if you’re in a position to help, I encourage you to do so—whether you’re a supporter of Gov. Palin or not.

That might seem to be a strange thing to say, but hear me out. I firmly believe that one of the reasons why the political elite has tried so hard to marginalize and destroy this woman—elitists on the Right as well as on the Left—is that she’s not one of them; she’s not from the elite class, she didn’t rise through any of our political machines, and so she’s not beholden to them and they have no leverage on her. Our monoclonal political class likes its grip on power; sure, they have their ideological differences that reflect the differences in beliefs that exist in the rest of the country, but their deepest loyalty is to their class, their deepest commitment to business as usual. They are not truly representative in any meaningful sense.

If we want to change that, we need to elect people—liberals as well as conservatives—from outside that class, people who truly are a part of we, the people rather than “we, the Beltway.” Gov. Palin isn’t just a conservative politician, she’s a complete outsider to the Beltway, someone who came from a normal (if somewhat uncommon) American family, upbringing, and life. As such, she’s a test case for this: can any politician who is truly of the people, by the people, for the people long endure?

I don’t expect many liberals to support her, much less vote for her, because like anyone else, in general, liberals should vote for people who share their political principles, and she doesn’t; but I do think that liberals should be pulling for her to succeed, to thrive, to win re-election in 2010 and the GOP nomination in 2012, even if they then want her to lose in November. Why? Because if she succeeds, if she triumphs, she will show other potential citizen candidates that it can be done, and it can be endured, and it’s worth doing; if she succeeds, she will be followed, she will be emulated, and we will see others—in both parties—walking the trail she blazed. If Republican and Democratic voters are going to reclaim our parties for the principles in which they’re supposed to believe, it’s going to require candidates who are beholden to us rather than to the structures of those parties—and if that’s going to happen in our generation, it has to begin here, with Sarah Palin. We cannot let her be snuffed out if we want to see anyone else who isn’t machine-approved (and machine-stamped) run for anything much above dogcatcher.

As such, I’ll say it again: liberals who would like to see the Democratic Party break free of the corruptocrats who run it have just as much vested in Gov. Palin as conservatives who would like to see the GOP break free of the domination of its own trough-swilling pigs, and just as much reason to help her overcome this challenge. If you can, please give, so that this abuse of Alaska’s ethics laws will cease, and Gov. Palin can be on about the business for which she was elected.

 

Memo to the President: the British are a proud people, too

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and you might want to start treating them like it; which means stop dissing them by doing things like transferring Islamic militants to Bermuda without discussing it with the British government when Great Britain is responsible for Bermuda’s security and foreign relations. Needless to say, the British Foreign Office is furious at our government—again. These are potentially dangerous folks (which is why the Obama administration barred them from re-entering the US) who trained in Tora Bora; they aren’t the kind of folks you just dump on your neighbor’s lawn without bothering to consult them (at least if you care at all what your neighbor thinks of you).

When Barack Obama promised to make America popular around the world, he should have added a phrase: “except with our allies—they can go hang.”

Sarah Palin talks policy

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Two good interviews for Gov. Palin today, with Matt Lauer this morning and Wolf Blitzer this evening; they did want to talk about David Letterman’s vile behavior as well (Blitzer only briefly, Lauer at greater length), but beyond that she got substantial time to talk about the progress on the Alaskan natural-gas pipeline, the state of American politics, and the political future. Both Lauer and Blitzer did their jobs very well, I think, conducting interviews that were respectful without merely being puffballs, and Gov. Palin did well in answering their questions and making her points.

 

Keep the pressure on CBS/Letterman

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It appears that CBS and David Letterman have been feeling some heat for the latter’s vile comments about Willow Palin, since he felt the need to offer a mealy-mouthed half-baked pseudo-“apology” that amounted to “Oops, I meant to make vile comments about Bristol Palin.” Sorry, not buying it, and not buying that that makes it all OK even if I believed him. I think R. A. Mansour summed up my thoughts well in her updates on this post:

We are fighting this because if we let this slide then we are saying that the Palins are fair game for everything. If their 14-year-old daughter is not off limits, then nothing is. If this heartless jerk can get away with this, then what next? Can we expect jokes about little Piper? When is enough enough?

I would be disgusted by this if it were anyone’s daughter.

Are you upset by this? Then make your voices heard. . . .

Call CBS at 212-975-3247. Melt their phones.

Call every women’s organization you can think of. Call every sexual assault victims organization you can think of. Call every child protection advocacy group you can think of. Call every teen pregnancy organization you can think. Get a comment from all of them. Ask them if they have anything to say about David Letterman’s jokes about the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl. Ask them if they think it was alright that David Letterman declared that his joke was really about Gov. Palin’s 18-year-old daughter. Does it make it alright that he was mocking an 18-year-old mother? And if they have no comment, ask them why. Ask them what makes the Palins any different from any other family.

Don’t stand for this. Do you want ordinary citizen politicians? Well, the Palins are ordinary people. They got into politics for the right reasons. They wanted to serve. And this is how they are treated. If you want more people to get into politics for the right reasons, then you had better defend this family—otherwise what other family would put themselves out there when this is how they know they will be treated?

As she goes on to note, it’s also a good idea to put pressure on CBS’ advertisers, and Sebastian Gray at HillBuzz has excellent advice on how to do so productively.

Update: HillBuzz suggests M&M Mars, Olive Garden, and Kellogg’s, with specific strategies for each as well as another general strategy post; and here’s another good list of advertisers to target, courtesy of Judy Silver at The New Agenda:

Aveeno (owned by Johnson & Johnson)
Canon
Charmin (owned by Proctor & Gamble)
Citibank
Downy (also owned by P&G)
Hellman’s
Lexus (owned by Toyota)
Nissan
Rogaine

Is it worth pushing these companies? Gray says yes, that if we’re persistent, we will see results:

CBS is in real trouble right now. Katie Couric just clocked the lowest ratings for a news broadcast on American television in HISTORY. Ad revenues are down everywhere, and once a month when Dr. Utopia gets on the TV and commandeers primetime for one of his ego trip national addresses, the networks lose tens of millions of dollars.

CBS cannot afford to lose M&M Mars or any two other large advertisers. If you direct all of your firepower at three big players like this, all selling products to families, and you heed my advice above, SOMETHING will happen before a month is out. You just have to put a little Al Sharpton in your life, be persistent, and write, write, write.

I would also add that it’s worth calling out CBS President and CEO Leslie Moonves on this one. By way of comparison, here’s his statement on Don Imus after Imus called the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos”:

From the outset, I believe all of us have been deeply upset and revulsed by the statements that were made on our air about the young women who represented Rutgers University in the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship with such class, energy and talent. While we have already made our disappointment and outrage clear, I would like to take the opportunity to offer my personal apologies to the Rutgers team, its impressive Coach, and the entire Athletic Department and Administration of Rutgers University. CBS has nothing but the highest regard for that establishment and its students, and we are sorry that offense was given in such a brutal and insensitive manner.

I would also like to extend an apology to everyone beyond Rutgers. Those who have spoken with us the last few days represent people of goodwill from all segments of our society—all races, economic groups, men and women alike. In our meetings with concerned groups, there has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society. That consideration has weighed most heavily on our minds as we made our decision, as have the many emails, phone calls and personal discussions we have had with our colleagues across the CBS Corporation and our many other constituencies.

And here’s what Moonves has had to say about Letterman’s significantly more vile attack on the Palin family:

*sound of crickets chirping*

Apparently, the head of CBS doesn’t care when “offense [is] given in such a brutal and insensitive manner” to conservative women, or worry about “the effect language like this has on our young people” when the purpose of that language is to hurt a Republican. This sort of hypocrisy is simply not tolerable; call him on it. Contact his office, but also do everything you can to make it clear that Moonves is a hypocrite and a chauvinist fraud.

On this one, we know where the real feminists are standing: liberal or not, they’re standing with the Palins; they understand that “sexism isn’t selective, and misogyny isn’t something that only applies to certain women.” May all of us rise up and say “Enough!”—whether you care about the Palins or not, for your own sake, and the sake of your daughters. For the sake of my daughters. Enough is enough.

Update: Kudos to NOW, which issued a great statement on this. They’re clearly trying to use this as a lever on conservatives, but more power to them:

NOW hopes that all the conservatives who are fired up about sexism in the media lately will join us in calling out sexism when it is directed at women who aren’t professed conservatives.

I’ll second that, and give them credit for putting principle over party, and for being smart enough to do so in a way that really advances that principle. What NOW has done here is the sort of move that could really make a positive difference in political conversation in this country, as I think the response at Hot Air from Allahpundit and Ed Morrissey shows, and they deserve applause for that.