In last week's USA Today (hey, I was traveling) Michael Medved wrote an article titled "Judge the person, not the resume" about Sarah Palin's new book, Going Rogue. His message was this: If you judge Sarah Palin -- or anyone else for that matter -- solely by her education, youthful transgressions, or missteps with the media, you have misjudged and underestimated her.
Couldn't agree more.
I'm not a Palin devotee, but I certainly don't dislike her. But then I'm not one to judge a person by his or her resume, as Medved's article states. I don't care whether someone graduated from Yale or not. I don't care whether he or she is an orator like Obama or trips over his words like Bush. I don't care whether the person has an accent. I am many things (much of them not good, I admit) -- but a snob I am not.
The last conversation I had with someone (who happened to be a Democrat) about Sarah Palin, the only thing he could offer to say against her was the interview with Katie Couric. My response was that he has no idea what it's like to be on the receiving end of media bias. Democrats never have to prove themselves because 99% of the media is on their side. When the person interviewing you is on your side, it's like having coffee with a friend. When the person interviewing you thinks you're the devil (I'm using loose terms here), it's easy to get tripped up. The interviewer has the distinct advantage of poking and prodding to get a person to falter. I'd love to see the Katie Courics of the world have the microphone turned on them. Don't think for a moment they wouldn't get tripped up, too.
Moreover, where a person went to college -- or even if they went to college -- does not prove in any way, shape, or form whether or not a person is competent to lead. Being in a leadership position takes skills one can never acquire on a college campus. You either have it, or you don't. In addition, graduating from college is only one way to prove one is smart or capable. Some of the most successful people in America never graduated from college. "The public recently mourned the loss of three universally respected journalists -- Walter Cronkite, Rovert Novak, and William Safire," writes Medved. "No one questioned their brilliance, despite the fact that they all dropped out of college short of graduation. They don't boycott [Microsoft] because Bill Gates left Harvard without earning a degree."
And it isn't conservatives who are snobs. It's liberals. "The emphasis on intellectual elitism has become far more pronounced on the left than the right, despite the long-standing association of Democrats as "the party of the people." In 2008, Obama won the majority of those with post-graduate degrees -- not surprising for a candidate with credentials from Columbia and Harvard.
Because progressives attach greater significance to universities, it makes sense that they judge the educational backgrounds of candidates accordingly: In the past six presidential elections, every one of the Democratic nominees held degrees from Harvard or Yale."
The reason liberals depend on higher education to prove a candidate's worth is because they need something concrete to point to when they have no other recourse. Liberals don't appreciate that a person's ability does not depend on a piece of paper but on his character, passion, and work ethic. They believe a person's success depends upon whatever society doles out to him. A degree is something society doles out to you when you've done your homework. But doing your homework does not indicate whether a person will be successful later in life.
Sarah Palin's abilities have yet to be determined, and I have a feeling she may surprise you.
By the way, Palin will be on Oprah next Monday (Nov. 16).
TOMORROW: Why Feminists Hate Fellow Democrat Bart Stupak
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Addendum to Saddam Hussein Post
Opposing Views is a website with a similar goal as FOX: It's designed to bring Americans both sides of every issue so people can decide for themselves what they think. My blogs are sometimes posted on their site, and the last one they posted was the one about Saddam Hussein. The post wasn't very long, although it easily could have been, as the subject matter is complex. It was about a liberal's view of human nature vs. a conservative's. Here are two comments from OV readers:
"Suzanne Venker has clearly never met a liberal. She's too busy listening to the absurd parodies of other conservatives pundits who have never had any sort of intellectual conversation with anyone who self-identifies themselves as "liberal."
"How the whole liberal/conservative issue came about in this article was a stretch. No one is inherently good or evil but rather always capable of both. The concept of whether a person is inherently good or evil is somewhat irrelevant. We are inherently both."
The folks on OV are a lively bunch and often get their feathers ruffled. Rather than debate the issue constructively, they tend to throw daggers. Or worse, they completely misrepresent what I said.
Of course no one's inherently good or evil and we're all capable of both. My reason for discussing the concept of evil as a conservative/liberal issue wasn't to say one group is evil and the other isn't; that would be ridiculous. My point was to delineate between how a conservative and liberal each reacts to evil.
And since I can never top Dinesh D'Souza's analysis of this issue, I'll simply point to it instead:
"At root, conservatives and liberals see the world so differently because they have two different conceptions of human nature. Liberals tend to believe in Rousseau's proposition that human nature is intrinsically good. Therefore, they believe that people who fail or do bad things are not acting out of laziness or wickedness; rather, society put them in this unfortunate position. The liberal's high opinion of human nature leads to the view that if you give people autonomy they will use their freedom well.
Conservatives know better. Conservatives recognize that there are two principles in human nature -- good and evil -- and these are in constant conflict. Given the warped timber of humanity, conservatives seek a social structure that helps bring out the best in human nature and suppress man's lower or base impulses."
To offer a great example, consider the Fort Hood killings. Dr. Phil -- your typical PC psychologist -- is one of the many liberal-minded Americans who suggests we don't rush to judgment about Major Hasan's "motives" for his killing spree. In response, Dorothy Rabinowitz writes the following in today's Wall Street Journal.
"To kill your fellow Americans -- as many as possible, unarmed and in the most helpless of circumstances, while shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is great), requires, of course, only murderous hatred -- the sort of mindset that regularly eludes the Dr. Phils of our world as the motive for mass murder of this kind.
"With a bit of stretching, adherents of Maj. Hasan-as-war-victim theme found a substitute of sorts. The thesis: Maj. Hasan's mental stress, provoked by the suffering of Americans who had been in combat, caused him to go out and butcher as many of these soldiers as he could."
This is a perfect example of the difference between the conservative and liberal mindset.
TOMORROW: Judge the Person, Not the Resume
"Suzanne Venker has clearly never met a liberal. She's too busy listening to the absurd parodies of other conservatives pundits who have never had any sort of intellectual conversation with anyone who self-identifies themselves as "liberal."
"How the whole liberal/conservative issue came about in this article was a stretch. No one is inherently good or evil but rather always capable of both. The concept of whether a person is inherently good or evil is somewhat irrelevant. We are inherently both."
The folks on OV are a lively bunch and often get their feathers ruffled. Rather than debate the issue constructively, they tend to throw daggers. Or worse, they completely misrepresent what I said.
Of course no one's inherently good or evil and we're all capable of both. My reason for discussing the concept of evil as a conservative/liberal issue wasn't to say one group is evil and the other isn't; that would be ridiculous. My point was to delineate between how a conservative and liberal each reacts to evil.
And since I can never top Dinesh D'Souza's analysis of this issue, I'll simply point to it instead:
"At root, conservatives and liberals see the world so differently because they have two different conceptions of human nature. Liberals tend to believe in Rousseau's proposition that human nature is intrinsically good. Therefore, they believe that people who fail or do bad things are not acting out of laziness or wickedness; rather, society put them in this unfortunate position. The liberal's high opinion of human nature leads to the view that if you give people autonomy they will use their freedom well.
Conservatives know better. Conservatives recognize that there are two principles in human nature -- good and evil -- and these are in constant conflict. Given the warped timber of humanity, conservatives seek a social structure that helps bring out the best in human nature and suppress man's lower or base impulses."
To offer a great example, consider the Fort Hood killings. Dr. Phil -- your typical PC psychologist -- is one of the many liberal-minded Americans who suggests we don't rush to judgment about Major Hasan's "motives" for his killing spree. In response, Dorothy Rabinowitz writes the following in today's Wall Street Journal.
"To kill your fellow Americans -- as many as possible, unarmed and in the most helpless of circumstances, while shouting "Allahu Akbar" (God is great), requires, of course, only murderous hatred -- the sort of mindset that regularly eludes the Dr. Phils of our world as the motive for mass murder of this kind.
"With a bit of stretching, adherents of Maj. Hasan-as-war-victim theme found a substitute of sorts. The thesis: Maj. Hasan's mental stress, provoked by the suffering of Americans who had been in combat, caused him to go out and butcher as many of these soldiers as he could."
This is a perfect example of the difference between the conservative and liberal mindset.
TOMORROW: Judge the Person, Not the Resume
Monday, November 9, 2009
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"The charge that (Nidal Malik Hasan, of the Fort Hood massacre) was harassed and he broke – Good, God… He’s been a trouble maker and a sad sack for a long time but because he was part of a protected species, a protected minority, the Army let him slide. Just re-assign him… It’s time to get rid of the P.C. culture in the Army, in society and the media.”. -- Col. Ralph Peters
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