"Conservatives" like nothing better than to bask in a fond self-image of themselves as Distinguished Intellectuals, driven solely by the disinterested pursuit of the True and the Good. The intensity with which they lavish such flattery upon themselves is directly proportional to the intensity with which they habitually direct vicious, incoherent, halfwit nonsense at and about The Left. In their bullshit bestiaries "The Left" alternatively appears as gangs of fascists, or communists (or both!); latte-sipping elitists or 40s-swilling homeboys; radical homosexual-agenda pushers or fifth-column Islamofascists. Why, we’re dangerous, unpatriotic kooks bent on subverting the Original Will of the Founding Fathers who just don’t get why we need to gut habeas corpus! If the moment’s exigency requires a smear or a sneer, wingnuts always have one to hand, and coherence be damned. "We Hate Hippies." That’s what "conservatism" boils down to as an "intellectual movement." Full stop.

So with that in mind, let’s explore why we, The Left, "hate" Sarah Palin. Because, you see, we do. I myself had no idea I had anything against her personally. I thought the fact that she lied flat-out in her Teh Awesomes speech about the Bridge to Nowhere made her look like, uh, a liar, a class of person whom I tend not to particularly admire. I also am not pleased about her ridiculous global warming position, and yeah, her position on gay marriage makes her look like a bigot. A foreign policy that is more pragmatic and less messianic and ill-informed might also be nice to see, given how unhappily the last eight years have gone, foreign policy-wise.

But apparently nooooo, is deeper and darker than that. Here. Did you know we hate babies with Down’s Syndrome? Trig Palin’s Down’s Syndrome is a challenge to their ideas about what represents worthwhile life.

The fact that this Down’s baby was carried to term and not aborted is statement that his life has the same value as all life.


Now that he’s born, yes, his life is worth the same as anyone else’s. Or, the same moment his mother chose to bring him to term, to be more precise. Frankly I don’t like judging any woman out in that position: that’s not in my pay grade, to coin a term. But as for the accusation that The Left hates kids with Down’s Syndrome — with backup in the form of a link to Ruth Marcus of the WaPo (!) — and take it to Michael Berube. Moving on:

Palin’s family is a double-rebuke to the culture of abortion. First, there’s Palin’s decision not to kill Trig because he has Trisomy 21. Then there is seventeen-year-old Bristol Palin’s decision to not to kill her baby.

Um. What…? She had a "decision." We’re "pro-choice." This is another way of saying we are "pro-decision," because "decision" and "choice" are what we on The Left call "synonyms."

Contrast this with Barack Obama’s statement that he would keep abortion legal so that if one of his daughters were to “make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.” This statement is freighted with meaning

It’s also freighted with a wingnut either lying about or being ignorant of the context of Obama’s remark. Neither option tends to make me more sympathetic to the finger-wagging moralizing that follows.

Then there are Palin’s religious views. She is a lifelong Christian who belongs to an evangelical church. No further explanations should be needed about the provocations which emanate there from.

She is against full equality for homosexuals and against choice on religious grounds. I am for these things on ideological grounds. Egad. But here’s where it gets fun:

Finally, there’s the fertility. The Palin family’s five children would have been unexceptional forty years ago, but today constitute something of a fertility freak show. They’re the type of people for whom the epithet “breeder” was invented….

Why the worry about this? First, there’s the fact that few of Palin’s tormenters can understand the fact of her large, traditional family. That is certainly not the way in which they have structured their lives.

My wife & I have 4 kids. I admit it. Somehow, I don’t think anyone here at FDL thinks any the less of me for this admission. Frankly, I’ve been a liberal for a while, and I pay attention to a lot of what liberals say, and I really do have yet to hear anyone say anything at all about families with lots of kids (within reason, of course).

For months, Greater Wingnuttia has been whining that any criticism of Obama is met with cries of "racism." Even the racist stuff! And now we discover that The Left "hates" Sarah Palin because she has babies and God, and we shouldn’t criticize her when it comes to either, and who cares whether or not she has it coming. Huh.

Well, I’m not buying it, even if the very liberal partisan Democrat New York Times is.


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