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My Thoughts on Palin
Now that we’ve had (just under) three weeks to get to know Governor Palin, I think it’s time I posted some of my thoughts on the whole thing.
I’ll start by saying that I was quite shocked when the Governor was announced, and was somewhat convinced that the whole thing was a joke. I assumed that the election was going to be quite over with after reading about her stances on the issues, but I have been quite surprised as to the outpouring of support that she has garnered John McCain. I had assumed that McCain was already going to receive the support of the conservative base (as he has sufficiently changed his stance that he does fall under the umbrella of conservatism now), while I may have been wrong (or perhaps not) it does appear that the final nail in the coffin (… not the best analogy) has been driven in, and the conservative base will indeed support John McCain quite willingly.
In the first few days after the announcement, websites like Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, and yes, even my beloved Huffington Post, engaged in some deep attacks against Palin (that was after they were able to find out something about her, other than she was a woman, which seemed to be all anyone knew the first few days). Looking back, these attacks are about as bad as I’ve seen against McCain (and on conservative sites such as Fox News Town Hall, Drudge Report, and the awful site World Net Daily against Obama), but seemed much worse because of the short amount of time in which they were perpetrated. Some of these attacks were laughable, but others were, I think, quite important to the office of the President of the United States.
Now, as far as Palin as a person/the Palin “worldview.”
One quick side note on worldview- I am getting tired of that term. It was cool at first, now it’s quite overplayed, yet I can’t really think of any simple world to use interchangeably, thus worldview stays (for now… your days are numbered overused phrase!).
One other side note- Proximity to Russia does not an experienced Foreign Policy resume make.
Ok, back on topic. Here is my reasoning for the lack of (my) support for Palin.
First, Palin does not believe Global Warming is man-made (link), or at least pre-VP pick she expressed doubt over the issue. This would coincide with her worldview (I may be off base right here, but she appears to fall in line with the Darby-ist end time escapist eschatology) that the world’s going to end anyways, so why bother doing anything about it? The environmental issue holds a big spot in my heart, so I want politicians in office who will work for environmental change. Sarah Palin seems to fall short here.
Palin on Iraq as God’s will (link) is another issue which she is severely at odds with me. I’m not of the opinion that the murder war on anyone is God’s will. Now, I know that she went was hit with this by Charlie Gibson, and responded by invoking Lincon (and politifact finds that these two phrases are similar), I would say that her statement doesn’t ring like Lincon to me. She does seem to be (in her speech) implying that Iraq is, in fact, God’s will. I can admit there is some room for budging here, but I’m calling like it appears to me.
On the issues Palin appears to be a lock-step conservative, both economically and socially, an idealogical viewpoint that I find myself more and more distanced from each day. John McCain, you could make the argument, is more of an independent (I say could, I feel like he’s moved more to the right whilst chasing the Presidency). Because of this staunch conservatism, I don’t think I’d ever bring myself to vote for Palin, nor encourage anyone else to do so.
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A note about the comments section, lets keep it clean in here, now vicious attacks against Candidates (or other commentors), if your family I’m gonna request you read over your comment BEFORE posting it. I’d prefer not to have to shut down a comment section on another one of my posts.
The Wall
Sometimes, it’s just so big. You look up, and it never seems to end in that direction, you look to your right, and see it fade in the distance, to your left the same depressing scene plays out. That wall, however, is stopping you from reaching your goal. That wall must come down.
And with a nod to the great poet Lewis Carroll, how do you eat a whale?
I was at work today and made an offhand joke about saving the environment to a co-worker of mine that is a prodigious right wing christian. Were she to read this blog I wouldn’t doubt her thinking I was the anti-christ himself, but that would be giving me too much credit, not enough people like me for that. (On a similar vein, if I hear one more reference that Barack Obama is the antichrist, I might snap). Back on track now, she had the retort “Only one person can fix the environment, and your not him.”
After my brief “What the f…” moment I lost my opportunity for any sort of retort, so I just let it ride. But let’s upack that statement, and it’s implications if we can.
The most obvious implication is that we fixing our world on our own, becuase it’s the destiny of the world to die. While I’m not denying the evidence of a New Earth written in the New Testament, I am questioning the veracity of this opinion that we should be doing nothing about it now, becuase it’s all going away later. To simplify my response to this as much as humanly possible lets throw this out…
You’re going to die. That is an optimal truth, an inescapable fact. You’re body has come down with a sickness, do you seek to cure it, or do you continue on your merry way knowning full well that you’re going to die eventually?
The next implication is that we are not capable of fixing what we’ve destroyed. While this may be true on more ethereal ideas such as sin, the state of the physical world, while no doubt stemming from a “sinful society,” is something that we can attempt to fix. Maybe the idea is that God wants us to stubbornly continue in the path we’re currently taking and wait for God to fix things, I’m not quite sure there is any Biblical support of this idea it does seem to be quite popular. While, undoubtedly, we are called to wait upon the Lord. Numerous Biblical references can be applied here) we are also called to action (as far as the earth goes the most poignant is in Leviticus 18:
24 ” ‘Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. 25 Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. 26 But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the aliens living among you must not do any of these detestable things, 27 for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled. 28 And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.
If anything we’re called to protect the Earth, and as Christians we should be at the forefront of Creation Care, instead of being swept up in the coat-tails.
oh politick
Well, I finally decided to submit myself to a senatorial campaign for the ‘08 election cycle. One of my senators, Saxby Chamblis, certainly does not stand for many of the thigns I stand for. He is a member of the now infamous Cobourn Seven, and it’s reprehensible to me to vote against AIDs releif. He has also scored a whopping 0 on environmental issues (wiki), which is another major issue to me. Then take into his voting record on the war (pro), gay rights (anti) and universal health care (anti), then it’s really a no-brainer that I’m voting against him.
So, where does that leave me in the area of who to vote for? Well, after a few hours of research (yes only hours, but you can’t do that much research on smaller campaigns with essentially grassroots challengers), I’m going with Rand Knight.
Pro-environment, pro-fair trade, pro-universal health care, so he’s got three wins there. Really a lot of his rhetoric is in line with where I stand, and I think we need a democrat from Georgia to help balance out these things.
I just got an e-mail from his staff asking if I can do phone bank calls. I’m not a huge fan of that, but we’ll see. I’m definitely gonna drive down to their office and pick up some literature to look over, but I’m going to assume that it won’t say much more than what’s on his site (which is a lot).
The only thing I’m worried about is his lack of name recognition, the CEO of the largest county in Georgia (who knew they had CEO’s of counties btw) is also running int he primaries, and if we’re going off name recognition (which happens all the freaking time) then the CEO has a better shot.
We shall see, I’ll keep you posted.