I can only laugh at the excitement among ‘conservatives’ over Sarah Palin, an unexceptional woman who needs to be at home holding her children when they cry, not in the White House holding John McCain when he bombs Iran and Russia.
Phyllis Schlafly once said: “The flight from the home is a flight from yourself, from responsibility, from the nature of woman, in pursuit of false hopes and fading illusions.” Today’s ‘conservatives’ not only don’t realize she was right, they don’t realize they’ve adopted the “pursuit of false hopes and fading illusions” as a central tenet.
I am of the mind that Calvinist Theologian Robert Dabney was right in the matters of Conservatism and Women's Rights.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I am pleased to see The Ambler back in action - I thought it had fallen into desuetude.
Excellent link. Can anyone even argue anynore Dabney was wrong when he said: "Political excitements will corrupt women tenfold more than men; and this, not because women are naturally inferior to men, but because they are naturally adapted to a wholly different sphere. When we point to the fact that they are naturally more emotional and less calculating, more impulsive and less self-contained, that they have a quicker tact but less logic, that their social nature makes them more liable to the contagion of epidemic passions, and that the duties of their sex make it physically impossible for them to acquire the knowledge in a foreign sphere necessary for political duties..."
ReplyDeleteI'm glad the Ambler is back too.
Jesus Christ, you guys are all over it! I just posted this over at Sailer a couple of hours ago. I'm pleased to see that I'm in good company.
ReplyDelete:-)
m
I was hoping that someone, somewhere, claiming to be conservative or even an independent-thinker would express some outrage at the awesome irony of McCain's pick for VP. Thankfully, out of the dozens of commentors at Isteve, a precious few do not disappoint.
Now I personally don't care for the politics or personalities (or even potential positions) of either presidential candidate or party. Nonetheless, I care for McCain's positions even less than I do for Obama's which is why, given this stinky dichotomy, I'm holding my nose and fully supporting Obama.
So I wouldn't be a Palin supporter in any case.
But why is it that so few (similarly nose-pinching) conservatives have the balls to honestly critique this choice rather than being all giddy about it? Yes it's delightfully, mischievously pleasurable that the Right is trying to beat the Left at their own game. It's funny, it's awesome and it brings a smile to one's face to think of the deflated disappointment in the Obama campaign as they were relishing having Obama incisor Rommel/Romney and they now cringe in terror at the fear of Biden being anything but absolutely deferring in his debate with his opposing candidate lest he look like an Evil White Male threateningly encroaching upon a young sexually-available woman.
But side in side with the giddiness, where is the Conservative sputtering outrage at McCain's flippantly violent anti-conservative first presidential decision? His SOLE presidential decision to date and the one that has a very good chance of being the MOST IMPORTANT one that he'll ever make (he's 72, constantly cancerous, and the proprietor of A ROOMFULL of serious files on his health history) is to appoint as very potential president-to-be someone whom:
- He met with only TWICE in his life before deciding to entrust THE FATE OF THE COUNTRY (and the world, and the future - to whatever degree Presidents influence those) to her. Does anyone think he would be similarly flippant about entrusting the fate of his children to her? or his wealth?!
- Has such an AMAZINGLY thin resume that WE HAVE NO REASON WHATSOEVER to assume that she'll be a remotely capable President of the United States of America.
- Is a wishy-washy beauty-queen sports-caster ALASKAN mother of five who, as Dennis Dale points out COULD ONLY possibly have been chosen as Vice President in a world where political actors are viewed no differently by the newsmedia and the masses than are movie actors.
- Is a woman.
Holy of Holies, did I just say that?! Blasphemy of Blasphemies! To the pillory at once!
Now, far be it from me to approximate at the political effectiveness of women in general or of particular types of women in particular (though I will comment that Golda Meir was largely responsible for the tragedy of the Yom Kippur war, Indira Gandhi doesn't seem to have done all too much good for India and Margaret Thatcher...well, fuck Margaret Thatcher. Britain still isn't out of the social hellhole that her stupid policies created).
But I'm serious about my ambiguity/ignorance. It may very VERY well be that humankind would be best served by having non-testosterone generated individuals in key positions of power. That's a worthy subject for investigation but it isn't my subject of interest in mentioning the fact of her being a female ("gender" is too slight a term here).
The question is one of simple, traditional, biologically preferable, Family Values.
My understanding is that family values are of some import to conservatives. Putting aside the question of female prowess in the steely halls of power, is there no Conservative corner remaining for questioning whether the world is best served by having them there in the first place? Whether Palin's family is best served by having her there is something best left to his doctors and her lawyers - but what of the country? What of the Role Model that she'll become? What of the awesome effect this will almost certainly have on the future of heterosexual relationships, marriages, families and birth-rates in this country? Good God, has nobody thought of this?!
As long as it was only "Those Liberals" who had their public sex-scandals, their tabloid triple marriages and their public-property women, most families could raise their children with the understanding that "those are the bad guys and we're not like them". But after wildly cheering-on and subsequently electing the hyper-promiscuous blouse-lifting Arnold Schwarzenegger, religiously bowing before the "golden microphone" of "El Rushbo" and - now - wildly cheering on AS REPRESENTING THE BEST OF CONSERVATIVE VALUES Ms. Sarah Palin... what Conservative future can there possibly be in this country?
Unless by "conservative" we mean nothing but Wall Street. Then we're doing just fine.
mnuez
P.S. For a high-definition, black and white snapshot of the turning point in the war on traditional family values that Conservatives have since lost (so much so their supposed spokesmen hurriedly trip over each other in their race to out-radical their radical adversaries) read Dabney.
Seriously, you'll thank me, read Dabney.
mnuez: Astute analysis. You said, "why is it that so few (similarly nose-pinching) conservatives have the balls to honestly critique this choice rather than being all giddy about it?"
ReplyDeleteThe reason is because there aren't really many conservatives left, or even people who know anything about conservatism, and the 'conservative movement' has failed.
McCain isn't a conservative, and he's obsessed with what the media thinks, so the pick makes perfect sense from his standpoint.
Re: Dabney: the Mild Colonial Boy linked to that, too. Good stuff