91% of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin

I have not talked to a single Republican woman who has a favorable view of her. Not one. And the vast majority of my acquaintances are Republicans. I seriously challenge the validity of that statistic.

I'm extremely happy to hear that. I have a great fear that the Republican's will make her their leader (since it's up in the air who will be the leader of their party). I would like to see a shift in the Republican party for the better, not the worse.

I wouldn't say my opinion of her is unfavorable, and I'm still registered a repub, so in that survey, if 'no answer' was not an option, I would have said favorable just because she's a riot. Doesn't mean I'd vote for her...or anyone else.

This is hilarious. The disintegration of the Republican party is a beautiful thing to watch. If Caribou Barbie is really the future of the party, then things are looking up for those of us on the other side. Please, please, please run Palin as your candidate in 2012. We look forward to trouncing you once again.

Hahahaha!

tom you ripped my poo

I just started listening my "The Revolution: A Manifesto by Ron Paul" audiobook and Palin immediately came to mind when I heard,

"A substantial portion of the conservation movement has become a parody of its former self. Once home to distinguished intellectuals and men of letters, it now tolerates and even encourages anti-intellectualism..."

She believes the earth was created about 5,000 years ago by an invicible man in the sky. No more must be added.

This article sums up how I feel about Palin pretty accurately:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-20/how-john-mccai...

Thank you, Senator McCain, for clarifying (finally!) your reasons for your choice for vice president on Fox News Sunday:

Chris Wallace: As a cold political calculation, hasn’t Gov. Palin become a drag on your ticket?
Senator John McCain: As a cold political calculation, I could not be more pleased. … She is a direct counterpoint to the liberal feminist agenda for America.

How do you fit the feminist agenda, Jane? I thought all the feminists were from New York and California.

I believe in feminism in the original sense of the word: Striving for equality between both/all of the sexes. To a lot of people, as is evidenced by McCain transparently preying on the fear of the idea in that article, feminism conjures up images of women with shaved heads and jack boots running around forcing everyone to talk about their vulvas in mixed company.

To further quote the article:

Calamity Jane [Sarah Palin] notwithstanding, the implication that the gender wars are over—and won—has been called, depending on your source, “red state feminism,” “gridiron feminism” (Camille Paglia), “authentic” feminism (Dick Morris), or “real” feminism (as opposed to “counterfeit,” “blue state,” or—Senator McCain again—“liberal” feminism.

Mary Matalin defined feminism this way to David Gregory on MSNBC:

"There’s the kind of Wellesley, liberal, abortion-first women. And then there’s feminist women who care about jobs and juggling the whole thing, and lower taxes and security, and Wal-Mart moms, and all the rest of it. That’s who Sarah Palin connects with."

This idea of "real feminism" to me is a false idol--first of all, I was raised in a rural environment, much like Palin, and the ideas of what is proper for men and what is proper for women are extremely rigid. Hell, I was a member of a church that didn't believe that women should be pastors. Most, not some, MOST of my friend's mothers were homemakers. Some women claim to find a freedom in this lifestyle because they have a great influence over their home sphere, over the spiritual well-being of their families, etc. As my childhood best friend's mother once told me, "Men sit around and talk about the important things, like wars and poverty...women talk about the smaller things, like family and paying the bills." She meant this in a nudge-nudge wink-wink sort of way, expressing the idea that although her role as a mother of six and a homemaker was considered "lesser" by society, she felt in fact empowered by it, because ultimately, her roles as teacher to her children (she homeschooled), bill payer, disciplinarian, were ultimately just as important as a man's role in society, as orator, spokesperson, social leader, etc., albeit on a smaller scale.

In a way this makes sense to me, but at the same time I feel it's very limiting. I grew up in a very egalitarian household; both my mother and my father stayed home with the kids at different points. My mother is the breadwinner. My father and brother both identify themselves as feminists. My parents sent me to a women's college. Blah blah blah. More than anything, I've come away with the notion that feminism is about choice. My friend's mother is very lucky that she feels so fulfilled in her role, and that she is performing her life's calling. The flip side of that is, her oldest son (who is the same age as I am, 24) knocked up his high school girlfriend when we were 20 and was forced to marry her. That girlfriend-cum-wife is performing much the same role as her mother-in-law, yet I know for a fact she is far unhappier, because she never got the inherent choice in the matter. She became pregnant, and because of social pressure and feelings of obligation, was shoehorned into a situation that will ultimately leave her unhappy for the rest of her adult life. Her role as a wife and mother was devoid of choice.

That's the thing about Palin's notion of "real feminism"--it is ultimately limiting. One might learn to go out back and chop wood and hunt deer with the boys (and in my experience, this isn't true, anyway, those are men's jobs) but that's ALL you're ever going to be asked to do. You might be asked to provide for your family, but you'll never be asked to provide for anything larger than a family. You will never aspire to, nor find the time to, write a book, become a social leader, or become a ruthless bloodthirsty CEO, if that's your desire. I may want to become a housewife one day, but I want to make that choice. I don't want that to be my societally dictated role.

After learning what liberalism really means, I hate seeing it applied to things it doesn't mean at all.

liberalism in practice would mean we had democracy in practice. neither are applicable because all government systems are built on inequality. there is no democracy today based on the role the press and media is intended to play in delivering 'the watch-dog' persona, as well as an agenda objectivity; they're paid by advertisers to make the news.

palin is good for republicans in the same knit. her image could be easily manipulated to emphasize the parties doctrine, and portray to the media something that speaks to the marginalized 'country folk' of the nation. she's an excellent 'demographic grabber'. she's a different kind of propaganda-palin's status as a woman AND a 'nobody' can effect emotional states if combined with the right campaign writer.

Which is something I find appalling, her manipulation of the marginalized country folk image, and by doing so, she's equating herself with this group of altruistic people who apparently have no other life goal than to provide food and factory-made goods for the rest of the country, and maybe go to church potlucks on the weekends. In effect, she's saying, "I'm just like you. No, not YOU. You're from Chicago. YOU." She reinforces this idea that people in rural environments are somewhat helpless but have a more highly developed sense of morality than all yall city folk. It's disgusting and I'm really sad to see that that's the way the GOP is playing its hand now.

Nicely said, Jane.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vob9vFvojN8

Liberalism =/= democracy by any means. Liberalism means freedom in the sense that individuals make their own decisions, democracy is majority rule.

Locke contested liberalism could justify establishment of limited government system to consensually protect rights, though I find this paradoxical.

Your version of liberalism (which is not all of what is generally designated as liberalism) is some kind of post-democratic ideal, where all established social connections are disrupted in the name of something called freedom. Then you hope that everyone will reestablish social connections based on the respect of what you call natural rights.

This is obviously a complete pipe dream, just as dangerous as the goal of a perfect communist society.

Here,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

Argument settled.

palin is a whore

Granted, the earliest liberal thinkers, or those who called themselves that (Locke, Adam Smith, Jefferson) were not anarchists, but they held the view that government was established to protect negative rights. However, social connections are not disrupted, they simply become voluntary as opposed to coercive.

The differences are so incredibly vast between communism and voluntaryism that I'd say its a bit of base rate fallacy to associate the two. Granted, there are legit critiques of the AC.

What the feck is the AC.

The parallel I establish between communism and your doctrine is based on their common belief in an End of History, a desirable and reachable state of equilibrium between social forces. Both ideologies also make a very significant mistake : selecting some human psychological characteristics (individualism for you, some selected social instincts in the case of communism) and defining them as essential, while rejecting others that don't fit their theorical purposes. The result is that in both cases, we are not talking about what human societies really are, but what they should be.

On a side note, I also reject the distinction between negative and positive rights. To me it is simply a game of semantics, not the description of a concrete reality.

We actually differ on the significance of terms like coercion, power, right, free will and freedom. Might be worth another 100 posts.

Anarcho-Capitalism. Sorry, Nathaniel's right, I gotta use my abbreviation's more sparingly. Anarcho-Capitalism is probably not the best way to describe such a system just because of the corporatist connotations of the word. Within an Anarcho-Capitalist society, systems of government can flourish, they just must be consented to by the governed. You can even have communism, an inherently authoritative governing structure, and it can 'work', so long as participation in such a system is voluntary.

The idea of the 'end goal' is interesting, and in that sense, voluntaryism is also a sort of Hegel inspired philosophy, that the dialectic engine rages towards freedom. Marx could be considered to believe absolute freedom as one which included positive rights, since he saw economic equality as the virtue of mankind, whereas I view maximum negative liberty as the ultimate virtue. Since negative liberty must be sacrificed to some extent to bring about positive liberty, and positive functions are required to sustain life (you need to work to make capital to acquire food, etc), it makes sense that negative liberty could only be held as absolute in theory, however I consider it actual so long as consent is granted for it to be violated. There is a distinct difference between the two, though both are incredibly necessary for human survival.

The very existence of government does show that man does not seem to want to be a voluntarily interacting animal, but rather a controlling animal to ensure its own survival, or in some cases, survival is transcended and man seeks wealth through control. It could be seen as utopian, since it is not plausible under the current system, but is it not equally a belief in an end of (governmental) history to have a government which can be altered by the whim of the people, through democratic voting or republican altercations, etc? One has a definite end and moral standing (for society), which is voluntaryism, and the other, any system of government, views the end as an ability to control and redefine social morality based upon the whim of whoever the structure puts in command. When you say an end history, I know what you mean, but others may understand that to be an end of historical progression...certainly that wouldn't be the case no matter what system or lack thereof man collectively choses for itelf. The means by which society organizes would just be altered, not the ends, unless the ends are collectively desired to change. So the historical end only applies to coercive means or organization, not the individual will to produce within a society as one chooses to do.

But yeah, back to negative and positive rights, while both are necessary to survive, rights (negative) are more a theoretical necessity of humans, whereas positive rights are a survival necessity, but to consider them 'rights' I feel is a social mental construction. Society collectively cherishes universal education, though one given the choice could sever this right. While I agree it is a need, there is a distinction, and being as how the distinction between the rights is the basis for liberal thought vs. collective thought, it's a little too easy to dismiss them as semantics. Also, if negative rights are undefined, or not absolute, to what extent does man have them? They then have potentially no value, and within any negative rights, man ceases to be man (no choices).

The New Hampshire Constitution as probably the most philosophical Constitution in the US, and one interesting article in it says (paraphrasing) 'Some rights are in their very nature inseverable in that no equivalent can be given of them. Among these are the right of conscience.' To have no negative rights is to have no conscience, no choice. To have no postive liberty, or no obtainable positive liberty, is to be unable to survive.

Though we may disagree in how we define certain concepts, thanks for the response. I'm glad you've put thought into it.