Thanks for the insight. I know you make a good point. I am trying to understand how folks take seriously that Palin “appeals to legitimate concerns?” I am not arguing the point. But, I am baffled by the fact that there are folks who sincerely believe both Palin and her “appeal.”

Here is an example of what I am talking about:

Bill O’Reilly Interviews Sarah Palin Re: Couric Interview Question On Reading The News
http://crooksandliars.com/

……
O’Reilly: Why did you boot it? I mean, if somebody asks what do you read, I say I read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, I could reel them off in my sleep, you couldn’t do it.

Palin: Well, of course I could. Of course I could.

O’Reilly: Well, why didn’t you?

Palin: It’s ridiculous to suggest that or say I couldn’t tell people what I read. Because by that point already, although it was relatively early in that multi-segmented interview with Katie Couric — it was, it was quite obvious that it was going to be a bit of an annoying interview with a badgering of the questions. It seemed to me that she didn’t know anything about Alaska, about my job as governor, about my accomplishments as mayor or governor, my record. And a question like that, though, yeah, I booted it, I screwed up, I should have been more patient and more gracious in my answer, it seemed to me the question was more along the lines of — Do you read? How do you stay in touch with the real world?

O’Reilly: See, that was your inexperience.

Palin: It was my inexperience with having to deal with a condescending, badgering line of questioning. No — no reflection at all on my inexperience in terms of administrative record or accomplishments or vision for America.

[Comment: What makes a question like "what newspapers do you read?" a badgering line of questioning? In the video, Palin is not bridling at Couric's arrogance -- she's drawing a blank, reaching for straws and, in the interview above, prevaricating. She looks and sounds stupid and covers up for it with "word-salad." To what "legitimate concerns" does this appeal?]

We must resist the all too human tendency to go the fringes of everything good and find exagerations and even dark motives.

Given the record of the past fourteen months, I wouldn’t be so sure of that.

Prior to being afflicted by atheist-materialist Marxism, and its mirror image, atheist-materialist hyper Capitalism (Corporatism), Western (Christian) civilization never had a problem with political correctness, and the chaos those other two have wrought. By deconstructing their authoritarian, pseudo-secular Big Government enabler and abettor, and allowing Christianity to again take root, it need not be troubled by those three sowers of chaos, greed, hatred and murder ever again.

The problem is that we no longer seem able to separate the farcical from the fabulous. It’s just as if the nutty babblings of the town crank is as entitled to just as much respect as the research of our most learned college professor. What’s the difference? Who can tell us?

So long as the celebrity appears to be someone we’d like to have a beer with we’ll even vote for him. Some day we may even elect a woman President solely on the basis that she says she can shoot moose from a slow moving airplane. What other qualifications are there?

Pierce tells us that in the old days, townsfolk viewed the village idiot with a sense of civic pride: “he may be an idiot but at least he is our idiot - pay him no mind.” Today, the idiots are indistinguishable from the rest of us. We all lust after our own 15 minutes of fame, a book deal and a chance at immortality. While those lofty goals are beyond the reach of most of us, we celebrate those who, like Sarah Palin, sacrifice so much so that we can live out our dreams vicariously withhout ever noticing that somewhere there is a village that has lost its idiot.

That is, even accepting he is correct regarding the roots of PC (which seems reasonable), he doesn’t mention why in the first place it has found such fertile ground in the West, or even in the U.S. in particular. Surely, one would think, if it were such a totally foreign, repulsive thing it would not have been so quickly and thoroughly clasped to the Western/American breast to the amazing extent it has, especially if one counts a belief in “diversity” as a PC phenomenon. (Which again seems reasonable.)

Seems to me at least answering this “why” question involves to a very great degree a recognition of how amenable Christianity is to PC: It has of course been the Christian West that has most deeply imbibed the tenets of PC, and the reason I think is simply because to a goodly degree PC is the secular, political, temporal analog to Christianity. After all what at its very core does PC say? In a universalist, post-nationalistic way, that we are all equal, brothers under the skin, nobody can be said to be innocent of some original sin, and that it has been a failure to recognize that which has led to terrible historical crimes and to terrible modern consequences of same. And I don’t see how, in general, this is all that different from the idea of … realized Christianity to put it one way.

Granted, granted, one can quibble on innumerable fronts with the differences between PC and “real” Christianity, but we are talking generally here, on the level of why so many Christians or people coming from Christian backgrounds are not only not offended by PC, but indeed seem to believe they essentially espouse the same thing.

In the second place then Mr. Lind then also just assumes that we accept that the damage done by PC has outweighed whatever good it might have delivered. And I think this might be a very subtle question given that we tend to think of such things on an “individualistic” basis in a way and not in terms of the less clear overall effects on our system.

For example, we see stuff like reverse discrimination and esp. its specific working in this or that specific situaton and we (rightfully) howl. But, for instance, in the long run might not the … “diversification” of our society made it more stable and thus stronger? And I for one have no quarrel whatsoever with the cost of PC when it comes to homosexuality: To the extent that “conservatism” means the government has the power to interfere with consensual adult behavior, I’m off that bus for sure. And indeed when one thinks about it, a very great deal of PC *is* indeed hostile to big intrusive government and *does* celebrate individual rights; so what’s so wrong with that?

On the other hand I suspect that some aspects of PC have been very very deleterious, with the major one to my mind (and in my experience) being the damage it has done to our educational system. Now there’s an example, in our public schools, where PC seems to me to have just run crazy, with the kind of results one would expect from a fundamentally anti-intellectual phenomenon. (Which I’d agree PC is.)

One also might cite some if not all of our problems in the Mideast too as being caused by PC since it seems to me that “conservatism” too hasn’t entirely been free of its lure to see issues in hyper emotional, hyper romantic and hyper moral terms. Go and start talking to what passes for “conservatives” today about how the U.S.’s Mideast policies ought to be based on an intellectually grounded basis, whether realist or idealist, and not on some supreme, quasi-religious obligation to support Israel and just see how quickly Rush Limbaugh and indeed the entire Republican Party structure is going to be writing you off. (If not indeed calling you “anti-American,” or a “terrorist supporter” or etc.) Why isn’t that PC too?

I dunno; PC being such an … idealist-type movement it seems to me a confusing thing to assess whether, in the long run, it will be more harmful than good. I for one am glad that it seems to be running into lots of trouble trying to incorporate the idea that the U.S. has to allow unlimited immigration. But if it succeeds, then I also have no doubt that the scorecard in the end will rate PC as terribly bad if not cataclysmic.

On the other hand as even the most rock-ribbed realists will admit, realism too has to have a goal, ideals and etc. So maybe in the end those goals and ideals of PC that are accepted by the great mass of society and thus have some effect will beneficially furnish same.

I do know one thing; while I abundantly (if not over-abundantly) share a conservative regard for the past and stability and for, well, conserving things, no one can really hold back change. Like it or not all that we know or have ever known will one day be washed away, it’s just a matter of time.

I’ll give Mr. Lind the benefit of the doubt and assume that by “Islamics” he means Islamists, and not Muslims. After all, most pious Christians probably have more in common with pious Muslims than they do with the largely Jewish Frankfurter school intellectuals and their cultural Marxist-pushing acolytes.

I’ve never quite understood why American conservatives aren’t willing to form an alliance with American Muslims in defense of family and traditional values and against “secular” Big Government and its anti-Christian string pullers. After all, Communists have viciously attacked both, and would happily cut both THEIR throats as well, as they did to Christians in the Soviet Union, and in Soviet wars and intrigue against Muslim countries.

Perhaps one reason is that the post-Christian American corporatists stand to make a lot of money in wars against Islam. But then, that’s all the more reason for Christians and Muslims to stand together against these exceptionally depraved people. It’s not like Christians and conservatives in American have been particularly well served by accommodating warmed over Marxists and Wall Street money worshippers. In fact, quite the opposite.