Sarah Palin begins Chapter One of America by Heart with a charming reminscence about the movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". While I share her affection for the film, and for Jimmy Stewart's great portrayal of an American "Everyman" standing up to the corruptions of power, I would think that Ms. Palin would have been distraught to recount that, in the film, "Smith is trying to get a loan from the federal government". Sure, it's for a good cause--"to build a boys' camp"--but still: "a loan from the federal government"! That sounds like an earmark to me, and it tastes suspiciously like pork. Moreover, Stewart's character resorts to the very anti-democratic tactic of filibuster, the legislative equivalent of holding your breath until you get your way; I would think Ms. Palin would at least discuss the uses and abuses of that tactic (which isn't sanctioned at all in the Constitution).
Film criticism aside, Sarah reminds us that the Constitution's preamble begins with the words "We the people"; bolstered by quotations from Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich, she triumphantly reminds us that "our Constitution doesn't give us rights--it...describes a government that protects our God-given rights. It puts us in charge." She is of course correct.* One interpretation of "We the people" is that our government is us: that is, it's not a foreign power imposed upon us or an adversarial entity with designs upon our lives and liberties. That is not Sarah's interpretation. In her mind, "We the people" are distinct from the government, which ought to be our servant, not our master. Remember, "Governments Don't Give Rights. Governments Take Rights Away," a slogan Ms. Palin approvingly quotes. The truth is a bit more complex--governments recognize, establish, secure and protect rights, and threaten them, diminish them, and sometimes revoke them, fairly or not--but I suspect America by Heart is not, by design, going to be a complex book.
In the remainder of Chapter One, Ms. Palin excoriates "Progressives,"^Obamacare, and unjustified charges of "racism," while defending the Founders (in part by a long excerpt from a 2008 speech by, of all people, Barack Obama) against accusations of having "compromise[d] on the issue of slavery for the sake of creating the Union and keeping it together...In the end, the profound moral challenge of slavery was put off for future generations to resolve." Ms. Palin's defense is slightly undercut by the fact that "compromise" is precisely what the Founders did, on slavery as on other issues, and by the fact that quite a few of them openly acknowledged (and some even regretted) that fact over the years. While Sarah writes "To our great and everlasting shame, slavery continued in the United States for almost a century," I don't get the sense that she feels much "shame" about it at all (note: I'm not saying she's racist), at least not on behalf of the esteemed gentlemen who failed to deal with it in 1787. In any case, I hope she's not in any way apologizing for America when she talks about slavery; that would be wrong.
One caveat: I'd suggest that if an author wants to write such things as "Too many voices in America sound the wrongheaded belief that these truths [of the Declaration] are no longer so self-evident" and that "These skeptics think we have outgrown our founding principles," she (in this case) ought to back those assertions up with quotations or documentation of some kind.** I'd like to know just who the "they" are to whom Ms. Palin refers when she writes, "They pay lip service to revered American figures such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson^^ at the same time that they bad-mouth the principles they stood for. They think Americans such as James Madison and Alexander Hamilton are museum pieces, interesting historical figures with no relevance to our lives today." And I'd want at least some attribution for the claim that "progressives view the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as obstacles to be mowed down or maneuvered around to create bigger government." I know all of that is the typical right-wing view of "progressives," but I'd just like to know Sarah's sources.
I won't, however, bother asking her to explain how "their name itself, progressives, implies that there is something defective or at least inadequate about America." She quotes Calvin Coolidge*** to bolster her point that any deviation from the Founders is, by definition, "to go backward to the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people." When you're already in Eden, any change can only be change for the worse. By Sarah's reasoning, then, the word "conservatives" implies that America is completely perfect (slavery having ended) and that nothing about it need be changed at all--other than ridding itself of those pesky progressives. For all I know, that's what Ms. Palin actually believes.
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*Sort of. Just as she's sort of correct when she writes, "We are free as a consequence of being made in the image of God--even if you don't believe in God."
^Which brought about, for me at least, Hillsdale College deja vu...
**America by Heart contains no footnotes, end notes, or documentations at all. Sarah Palin knows her audience.
^^I applaud Ms. Palin's restraint in not adding Paul Revere to her list of "revered figures". I would have.
***Silent Cal apparently spoke out now and then.

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