Maxwell on Palin

Ron Maxwell sent this e-mail to his list and it was forwarded to me:

Subject: tundra touched wisdom on immigration

Friends & colleagues,

Just in case anyone still harbored a forlorn hope that Sarah Palin was on our side of this issue, that was dispelled in her lame interview yesterday with Glenn Beck.

It was already cringingly unbearable to watch her response to Beck’s question “Who is your favorite Founder?” Her answer, echoing her response to Katie Couric’s inquiry about her favorite magazine: “All of them.” Beck insisted on a choice and after employing her now well known tactic of obfuscating chatter finally came up with George Washington. What a relief.

Anyway, according to Governor Palin the solution to our immigration problem is to streamline the rules and regulations, making it easier to enter the US legally. Beck added that Bill Gates provided an example of how to do it right. One can only assume he was referring to Gates’s push for expanded H1B Visas, though Beck wasn’t specific.

Palin then proudly held forth with the usual platitudes about the nation of immigrants who built this county insisting that the government shouldn’t make it so hard, shouldn’t be placing so many obstacles and red-tape and bureaucracy in the way of people who just want to become Americans.

Beck didn’t ask her if present levels of legal immigration were enough for her tastes but one gets the impression that she has about as much of a grasp of these facts as she does about the founding fathers.

Here’s an excerpt from a blog I posted at The Huffington Post on Nov 3, 2008:

Long after John McCain’s candidacy fades into a historical foot-note, his lingering gift to America will have been Sarah Palin … The Palin phenomenon seems to have mesmerized a hard core in the Republican Party, transforming a mere mortal into an article of faith. But upon closer scrutiny what is plain to see is nothing more than an eccentric variation of the cult of celebrity, unhinged from tradition and the accumulated wisdom of generations. It is precisely to guard against this kind of demagoguery that we need learning and books and teachers—that we need to study history, politics and literature. The abandonment of rigorous intellectual discernment, true merit and earned accomplishment is the antithesis of Conservatism.

This year, as we approach the great debates over amnesty and paths to citizenship we can be sure, now that Fox has given her a worldwide stage, that pronouncements from the national nitwit from Nome will only complicate and undermine our efforts.

[end of Maxwell e-mail]

LA writes:

“National nitwit from Nome” is unfair. Palin’s position on immigration, and her general intelligence, are no worse that scads of other mediocre politicians who don’t get called nitwits. And when Maxwell starts waxing about conservatism and the tradition, he sounds a tad too much like David Brooks, the non-conservative who in reaction against Palin suddenly began sounding like Edmund Burke looking for the Queen of France and finding a skullery maid. After all, what presidents and politicians in our life time have demonstrated the “accumulated wisdom of generations”? Has Maxwell dumped on them in similar terms? So why dump on Palin? I am not a Sarah Palin supporter, but when people treat her unfairly, there is a natural impulse of fairness to defend her.

So let’s sum her count:

She’s not a conservative. Check.

She’s not an immigration restrictionist. Check.

She’s not very smart. Check.

So let’s write her down as not a presidential prospect and move on. Let’s not get angry and bent out of shape about her.

- end of initial entry -

A. Zarkov writes:

Here is the “All of ‘Em” excerpt. Palin reminds me of a job applicant I interviewed years ago. I asked her which college course was her favorite. She responded with “All of ‘Em.” I kept trying to engage her on something specific, so that I could get an idea of her problem solving ability. No success. I recommended a “no hire,” as did someone else who cared about technical qualifications. She was hired anyway. I suspect she got hired because she was young, female and a lesbian, which today counts more than competence. I encountered the same thing with other applicants. “Which was your favorite textbook?” “I liked them all.”

It should be obvious that Palin is an ignoramus. Of course other politicians are just as stupid, and I call them ignoramuses too. But I have to say that few come across as obviously dumb as Palin. This horse stumbles right after leaving the gate. Have you ever visited Alaska? I was there in 1989, and it comes across a little like the characters in the movie Idiocracy. The construction of the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline changed everything. Large numbers of skilled, semi-skilled and no-skilled workers came in droves and many of the no-skilled stayed. The salaries were fantastic. One woman working as a cashier told me she earned $50,000 per year in 1977 as a radio operator. That about $177,000 in current dollars. The locals told me the pipeline project induced a permanent change in wage expectations, and as a result Alaska has a very high cost of living. I can see how Palin got elected governor.

We need to pay attention to Palin because she appeals to so many Republicans.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 14, 2010 08:35 PM | Send