SARAH PALIN

Poor Peggy Noonan! How long has it been since she wandered off the conservative reservation? Riding the range outside of rationality, whatever she now says ( as a closet elitist ), the opposite must be true. In "a Farewell to Harms" on July 11, she thinks Sarah Palin made the Republican Party look "stupid’ and "not thoughtful," and from her highbrow, sophisticated, New York-based elitist pedestal, any common rube ( like Sarah and myself) won’t do to represent America to the world. Sarah reminds me of Harry Truman, a man with populist intuitions and safe instincts, patriotic to the core. According to Peggy, however, neither Sarah nor Harry would qualify to "go national" because each is not "self-reflective" enough. It’s not what’s wrong, but what’s right with an education from a small college (mine having been in Chicago in the early 60's) that we should applaud. Such schools produce doers instead of glory seekers. Noonan says we can teach Sarah to "memorize" but "she is not going to be able to know how to think..." She fails to recognize that common sense, the virtue of the Heartland, beats sophistication as a qualification for President. Peggy’s call for conservative leaders that "know how to think," ignores the ironic fact that our current President doesn’t need to think; he already has internalized his devotion to a clear agenda of wealth redistribution from achievers to non-achievers. Obama’s high brow, double-speak prose masks his message, his agenda of surrender of our freedoms. The appeal of socialism’s euphemism, fairness, has gripped half of this nation. Its message is wrong. News flash to Peggy. A candidate for President need not "learn how the other sides think, or why." I say "Give ‘em Hell, Sarah." I would.