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Thoughts on Sarah Palin
by American Phoenix | September 7, 2008
I was out of town for my tenth wedding anniversary when Sarah Palin was nominated as Vice-President for the Republican ticket. So I didn’t immediately have a chance to read much about her. I’m glad I didn’t. The left-leaning lunatic legacy media and many left-wing blogs came out with an unusual ration of hate-mongering, even for them. I’m still not interested in reading any of it, but the Anchoress has done a great job of assembling much of the press coverage - both negative and postive - on the Palin nomination. Read at your peril! (I wonder if my friend Stormwarning will also comment on the media circus surrounding Palin’s nomination?)
I was mildly, but not completely, surprised at the left’s reaction. I was more surprised at the vehemence of the reaction than the reaction itself. In Sarah Palin, we have a pro-life, reform-minded, successful, beautiful, brainy woman. She’s been a high school basketball athlete, a commercial fisherman, a beauty pageant queen, a mayor, and now a governor. She’s married to her high school sweetheart and is the mother of five children, including their youngest, Trig, who has Down’s Syndrome. She’s everything most feminists have ever wanted women to be - except wives, mothers, and conservatives.
This gives the lie to the feminist mantra of being “pro-women” and “pro-choice.” Many of them have proven by their own words over the last week that they are only pro-women-who-agree-with-them, i.e., pro-abortion, etc., ad nauseum. I’ve never forgotten my mother’s comments when we were discussing feminism years ago and, more recently, Sarah Palin’s nomination. My mother’s generation came of age during the 1960s when a more radical feminism was being born. Her choice to stay at home and be a mother to four children, one of them with special needs, was devalued and denigrated by many women in the radical feminist mold who went to college and had careers. Some of them haven’t been shy about informing her that her choice was unimportant or that she was, somehow, a lesser person for having made such a choice. Nevertheless, like Sarah Palin, motherhood hasn’t stopped her from being involved in many activities outside the home.
As for myself, I am not of the impression that many feminists are looking out for our best interests. The advancement of women’s issues always seems to come at a cost that is more than I would want my son to bear, and because it generally involves injustice by one group towards another. I do not think that the ends (equality for women) justifies the means (oppressing men, unborn babies, and anyone else not agreeing with radical feminist ideology). It leaves me with a very bad taste in my mouth. All women are equal, but some women are more equal than others.
In my view, Amy Simpson, over at Christianity Today, is asking the right questions.
I’m tired of hearing people speak “for women,” making claims about who we are and what we want. I hear constant references to “women voters” as if we were a voting bloc or a powerless group who needs special representation. We’re not powerless; we’re not exceptions to the norm; we’re not even a minority group. We’re slightly more than half the population, and the only thing we all have in common is a small piece of our genetic code. We don’t all think alike and care about the same things. Would anyone ever be so ridiculous as to think of men in the same way? If a handful of powerful woman can speak on behalf of all women, why do we need so many powerful men? Who are they speaking for?
Believe me: I’m not bashing men. In fact, the real offenders here are women who claim to speak for all of us, and women who let them. Why do so many of us want every other women to think, act, behave, live, speak, and believe as we do? Why do we feel the need to exercise this kind of control? Do we believe it legitimizes us? Is it a symptom of loneliness or insecurity? Do we still believe women are second-class citizens?
Simpson, Amy, Why I’m Glad Sarah Palin Didn’t Speak for Women, Christianity Today, September 4, 2008.
Of course, we’ve seen all of this before during Clarence Thomas nomination to the United States Supreme Court. I made this observation early on after hearing some of the ridiculous comments about Sarah Palin that have poured forth. Feminists are now doing to Sarah Palin, what black activists did to Clarence Thomas. They considered him a traitor to his race. Palin is considered by radical feminists to be a traitor to her gender. It’s all eerily familiar. Clarence Thomas explains it best.
My new friends and I also made an effort to develop relationships with black staffers on the Democratic side of the aisle, many of whom viewed us with a mixture of curiosity and disapproval. Since nearly all of us were political moderates or outright liberals, I couldn’t see why they should be so disapproving, but they were, not because of our political views but simply because we were willing to work for Republicans. When Coretta Scott King visited Senator Danforth to ask for his assistance with a fund-raiser for the Martin Luther King Foundation, Alex Netchvolodoff asked me to accompany her to the Capitol to meet with the senator. After the visit was over, I walked Mrs. King to her waiting car, mentioning on the way that the senator was a good man who cared deeply about the plight of blacks in America. (He had a long, close relationship with Morehouse College, a historically black college, and had been a member of its board of trustees.) I lamented that so few blacks had voted for him. “Well, he is a Republican,” Mrs. King replied. I knew at once that I just learned something very important about the way most blacks felt towards the Republican Party
It didn’t surprise me, for I, too, had reflexively disliked most Republicans (John Bolton had been an exception) prior to going to work for Senator Danforth in Jefferson City. Still I found it hard to accept. “Black is a state of mind,” one black Democratic staffer told me, by which I assumed he meant being a liberal Democrat. That kind of all-us-black-folks-think-alike nonsense wasn’t part of my upbringing, and I saw it as nothing more than another way to herd blacks into a political camp.
Thomas, Clarence, My Grandfather’s Son, Harper Collins, 2007, pp. 124-25.
Simpson and I are both glad that Palin isn’t claiming to speak for all women. I will not be herded. But I, for one, am grateful that Sarah Palin speaks for me. I would venture to say that many other women, who have been woefully unrepresented by the radical-feminists-in-charge, will feel the same way.
Update (9/11/08): Wendy Doniger proves my case.
Topics: Abortion, Christianity, Contraception, Family, Politics |
September 7th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
You go girl!
Love, Mama