We Are All Victims Now

The little shop of horrors we call The Corner is obsessively discussing how Palin's abrupt quitting will benefit her in her future presidential run. These geniuses are utterly incapable of seeing the truth because the truth would reflect badly on them. They cheered and praised and supported a woman who was patently under qualified, and through sheer determination, they force the facts to support their prejudices and vanities.

Victor/Victoria Davis Hanson:

Conventional wisdom suggests that short-term the Palin decision was unwise— e.g., "quitter," unpredictable, sulking, etc.

[snip]

In other words, it doesn't matter that much what critics say, but — should she pursue politics — only what she does with her newfound time, especially if she travels widely, studies foreign policy, and helps galvanize the party base.

In the long run, she can lecture, earn a good income through speaking, develop a coterie of advisers and supporters, take care of her family, not have the constant political warring on all flanks, and invest time in reflecting and studying issues, visit the country, meet leaders, etc. She's not looking at 2012; but in eight years by 2016 she will be far more savvy, still young, and far more experienced. It matters not all that the Left writes her off as daffy, since they were going to do that whatever she did; the key is whether she convinces conservatives in eight year of travel and reflection that she's a charismatic Margaret Thatcher type heavyweight.

Kathryn "Prime of Miss Jean" Lopez:

Rather than just be a celebrity, this could be a real opportunity for her to show us her stuff — what's important to her, what she wants people to know about her, why we should pay attention to her, why we should consider her for the highest office in the land (after already gone with the cool dude with little national electoral experience — though in his case it was little experience, period). To get people to know her for something more than being Sarah!

I wouldn't be shocked though, if Palin on the National Scene, Act II, starts out low key, with some downtime. She needs to figure out what her voice is, where and how she can shine, and, most importantly, how she and her family can survive it and even flourish in the brutal world of politics. There's no question she has a gift. Now's the time to figure out how to be prudent with it.

Steve Hayward:

This could be, as Bill Kristol suggests, part of a risky but shrewd long game, not for a run in 2012, but way off in 2016 or 2020. Some folks have mentioned Nixon, rehabilitating himself in the 1960s, and skipping the 1964 election. She may have the self-awareness that she's taken big hits below the waterline, and that her best course is the patient rebuilding of her political life over a decade rather than the next two election cycles. Now she'll have the time to read and study and cultivate wider portfolio as Jonah and others have suggested. But even if she wants to run in 2012, it is certainly the case that it is hard to be a player on the national stage while being governor of Alaska since it is so remote, even in the jet age. (It take longer to get to Alaska than Europe from the east coast and midwest.) If so, she should say this openly. Make a virtue out of it.

Then, too, I wonder, and am slightly hopeful in fact, that she is indeed doing this for authentic family reasons. Political life is hell on decent family life. I have a hard time thinking of a single politician, at any level, who has a happy family life. Kids are usually a mess; non-messed up kids are the rare exception. Whenever I talk to someone about whether to run for any office, that's the first and last aspect I bring up. You shouldn't do it until your kids are grown or off to college is my opinion. This might really be a case of where she has reckoned the cost to her family of near-term political ambition, and chosen her family. Good for her if so.

Other members of the corner are less confident but still see Palin's move as advantageous to her eventually. They pay very little attention to rumors of ethics investigations and seem perfectly happy to accept any reason Palin gives them, no matter how illogical or rambling. Any leader will do for an authoritarian, and Palin can be easily replaced with somebody--anybody--else. Palin might be even more useful as a martyr than as an actual candidate. Mark Steyn:

Then suddenly you get the call from Washington. You know it'll mean Secret Service, and speechwriters, and minders vetting your wardrobe. But nobody said it would mean a mainstream network comedy host doing statutory rape gags about your 14-year old daughter. You've got a special-needs kid and a son in Iraq and a daughter who's given you your first grandchild in less than ideal circumstances. That would be enough for most of us. But the special-needs kid and the daughter and most everyone else you love are a national joke, and the PC enforcers are entirely cool with it.

Most of those who sneer at Sarah Palin have no desire to live her life. But why not try to - what's the word? - "empathize"? If you like Wasilla and hunting and snowmachining and moose stew and politics, is the last worth giving up everything else in the hopes that one day David Letterman and Maureen Dowd might decide Trig and Bristol and the rest are sufficiently non-risible to enable you to prosper in their world? And, putting aside the odds, would you really like to be the person you'd have to turn into under that scenario?

Poor, poor Palin, forced to parade her pregnant daughter and special-needs baby before the public as instant, photographic proof of her fundamentalist bona fides. How could the public do that to her? She's a victim, just as they are all victims, under constant attack by society. Helpless and weak, needing guns and police and armies to save them from the bad men who live in the shadows.

Frightened children, who would do or say anything to keep lying their comfortable, soothing lies.

The Secret Lives Of Conservative Women

Maggie Gallagher is worried that women are not getting married when they have babies. Kathryn Jean Lopez is worried that the drive for equality is making women victims of physical violence. Mona Charen is worried that college students are having sex. Being so very much worry about what is going on between other women's legs is not prurience, however, it is desire to help women in these troubling times of sexual liberation. Thanks to concepts such as freedom and equality, which all people long for as long as they are not women people, women will lose what they once had, the protection of a man and marriage. Lopez explains:

It’s natural for us to expect men to protect women, and for women to expect some
level of physical protection....The women interviewed in the article appear to
want someone to take charge a bit — there is an attraction to, if not a need
for, some hierarchy. And in a culture in which masculinity — well, at least in
men — is so often suspect, some women seem to be looking to reinvent the
masculine themselves.

Women want society to be divided between male and female roles because it's our nature to want to be subordinate to men, in exchange for their protection. We want to submit. It's a convenient lie, imposed on women by their parents first and society later, to force them to submit to parental authority.

Maggie Gallagher has been writing a long series of posts on why divorce should not be legal. She appears to believe that women, since they insist on having sex outside of marriage, will inevitably end up pregnant and without anyone to take care of them. Married women are vulnerable too, since men can leave them. They need and must have protection, as child-bearing vessels.

Moreover, I came to understand in an immediate, personal way that the happy talk of the cultural elites around the visible decline in marriage was not (as
they liked to tell themselves) rooted in science; it amounted to a new sexual
taboo — a polite way of avoiding big, obvious truths by covering them up with
pretty-sounding words. A society in which marriage was weakened was not simply a
society where women had more freedom. It was a society in which women were more vulnerable and millions of babies are less protected.

Mona Charen is worried that college campuses do not discourage sexual activity. Young adults having sex is a recipe for disaster, since sexual activity outside of marriage is promiscuity, and hurts one's self-worth.

Our liberal universities are officious about warning kids of the dangers of STDs, pregnancy, and date rape. But sadly, those are the only dangers they perceive in sexual license. If they cannot imagine that “sex workers” are degraded by their work, how can they begin to understand that promiscuity compromises self-worth? Many college campuses today seem bent on satisfying nearly every imaginable sexual appetite in a “non-judgmental” environment. In fact, the only people who today feel judged are those — and there are many — who reject the casual “hook-up” culture in favor of modesty, old-fashioned dating, and even (gasp) chastity. George and Londregan suggest that colleges have a duty to fund student centers for those students just as they fund centers for gay and lesbian students. It’s a good idea. But it’s sad that sexual restraint has become an alternative lifestyle.

The Faustian bargain here is pretty clear. A woman must marry for male protection during child-rearing. If she has sex she'll have a baby, and if she has a baby she'll need a man to take care of her. In return she'll receive special status as something too weak to protect itself, softer and weaker and more moral than men, treated with special consideration. She gets to feel special--just as long as she is fertile.

Our ladies never get into the rest of the story. Women age. The ideal of young, fertile womanhood needing support and protection is less appealing in an older woman. The lure of beauty is gone, the emotional tug of small children has become the insolent voice of the rebellious adolescent. Hence the need to eliminate divorce. The gender roles are not kind to older women, who must trade on their status of mothers for the rest of their lives, an eternal nightmare of reminders of dependence and need to compensate for the loss of physical attractiveness. After all, reproduction is all conservative women have. They admit they are inferior in mind and mettle; what is is left? A few superior Galtian women might transcend their limitations, but most conservative women aren't wealthy, and they feel and think that they have nothing to offer.

When your desire to be special and wanted, the same desire we all have, male and female, is subverted to control you, the advantages can be fleeting and the disadvantages galling. The discarded wife is too large a part of social myth to be ignored, no matter how hard the conservative women try. They gave up a tremendous amount of personal freedom to submit to gender roles, and their fear that it might be for nothing can be overwhelming. So we are bombarded with messages that liberal sexual freedom is bad, when the simple truth is that conservative authoritarian sexual roles and rules are subverting women's feelings of self-worth and driving them mad with insecurity and fear of abandonment. Which is where we came in.

Fantasy Is Such a Comfort

Too funny. They make their own reality, you know.

How is the outsider doing? Throughout the campaign, Sarah Palin has
remained poised and articulate. As far as I am aware, she has committed not a
single gaffe. Speaking with Charles Gibson of ABC during the first of the two
major interviews she has so far given, she sometimes appeared tense. Even then,
she made no mistakes. (Her much-discussed reply to Gibson when he asked if she
agreed with the Bush doctrine--"In what respect, Charlie?"--proved perfectly
legitimate. The Bush doctrine can be defined a half-dozen ways.) Speaking with
Sean Hannity of Fox News six days later, in her second major interview, Palin
proved completely at ease. In just under a week, she had mastered the interview
format.

In The Corner, the author Peter Robinson says he wrote the article before the Palin/Couric interview, and he has no desire to see it now. Why bother with reality when you can just make up reassuring lies?

Guess Who?

[Mystery Date] is an American Renaissance man. Not only are his interests broad and deep, his expertise on myriad subjects legendary, his character is relentless — and most importantly — comprehensively and quintessentially American. He teaches us, reminds us, inspires us with his pitch-perfect, gut-level understanding and articulation of freedom and America's unique role in leveraging it for the greatest progress in the history of the world. He epitomizes what we all aspire to be, both as citizens and individuals.

...

Through the ups and downs of two decades, his message — always delivered with optimism, civility, and good humor — has been faithful to two core convictions: the power of freedom and the power of American exceptionalism.

...

He is talented, witty, creative, informed, and smart as hell. People look up to him, and love him — and they’re quite right.

...

In the Great Man's own words:

"Feminism was established so that unattractive women could have easier access to the mainstream of society. Just look at the history of feminism if you doubt the truth."

"We must tax the poor. This is not hardhearted and mean. It is axiomatic that if you subsidize an activity or condition you get more of it; if you tax it you get less of it. Obviously, we want to eliminate poverty, and there is the one method that has never been tried: tax it."

"Why should Blacks be heard? They're 12% of the population. Who the hell cares."

"Take that bone out of your nose and call me back."

"Citizen service is a repudiation of the principles upon which our country was based. We are all here for ourselves."

"One of the things I want to do before I die is conduct the homeless olympics...the 10-metre shopping cart relay, the dumpster dig, and the hop, skip, and trip."

"If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people--I'm serious, let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do--let the stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work."


Gracious, witty, creative, humanitarian, Great Man Rush Limbaugh. Rich beyond avarice and popular with millions. This is America's Hero.

Rush quotes from here and here. Quotes on Rush from the NRO Symposium on Limbaugh.

The Corner is stupid.

At the Corner:

Re: Ah, Fr. Greeley [Jim Manzi]

Ramesh,

It's kind of hard to be asked:

How many of the male readers of this column who are habitues of bars, locker rooms, commuter train bull sessions, pool rooms and men's clubs have not heard the indigenous racial slurs of such environments applied to Obama?

without bursting out laughing. Pool rooms? And Men's clubs? I almost dropped my fedora. Who's reading his column?

Maybe him, from the post immediately preceding Manzi's?

Dog Lovers' Corner [John Derbyshire]

... I had dinner last night at the Leash Club in midtown Manhattan.
Never been in there before. Lovely place, quiet & inconspicuous, with liquor
lockers for members' bottles, a private-club custom left over from
Prohibition. The Leash is so classy they have no website — that's as classy as you can get nowadays. A google turned up only this.

I think I've been inside most of the New York private clubs at one time or
other, but the Leash is now top of my favorites list.

I say, Derbyshire, it must be a tip-top club, wot?

One of the funniest parts of the Corner is watching everyone pretend to be minor characters in a P. G. Wodehouse novel. Alas, there is no Jeeves to make things work out in the end.

Sir John Bull----

John Derbyshire ticks off his readers by dissing Expelled. To explain, he extols the virtues of the scientific method, that crowning achievement of Western Civilization. Take it away, Derb. We don't want to miss a single word.

In any case, I am not reviewing the movie. What I am doing is, heaping
well-justified abuse on the heads of people who, for "sentimental qualms" and
from a position of ignorance, trash scientific method, the greatest achievement
of our civilization.
And uniquely of our civilization. A mature scientific
theory is as much a glory of our civilization as is a cathedral or a university;
and it is uniquely of ours. Other civilizations had temples, universities,
systems of government, literature, philosophy; but only we of the West came up
with scientific method, and the whole world owes the innumerable fruits of that
method to us.
I am a huge fan of Western civilization. Thus, when
people — well-educated people, who ought to set an example for the
general — sneer at and spit on these majestic creations of the human
intellect, I get mad. They are taking sides with barbarism. They ought to be
ashamed of themselves.

Say, Derb, didn't an Arab, Ibn al-Haytham, invent the scientific method?

And he's the smart one.