Random Thoughts on the Toughtlessness of our Politics

A lot of people are getting all exorcised about Sarah Palin's take on Paul Revere, making fun of her for her obvious ignorance. This is as it should be. But it should be recognized that her ignorance, her "willful ignorance," as it is called in a book entitled, "Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West," is merely more obvious than other examples. For example, President Bush I, in his inaugural address, said the following: "We know what works. Freedom works. We know what's right: Freedom is right. We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for man on earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections." As John Ralston Saul says, "No one laughed at his absurd ordering of these three freedoms...[when] Bush could give primacy to free markets over free men, as if to say that the right to speculate in junk bonds is more important than the removal of slavery." [pp. 237-38] Bush's ignorance is just as great and just as willful as Palin's as he implies that free markets have as much importance as the abolition of slavery in the U.S. And, of course, to refer to "free speech" here is positively absurd as Bush and a host of other politicians have shown themselves willing to compromise our free speech on numerous occasions. As Saul says in the same place, there is a "void...in responsible leadership [that] has allowed an hysterical brand of simplistic politics to rise and take power on the back of truisms, cliches, and chauvinism, all of which fall below the intellectual level of Jenkins' Ear jingoism." [p. 237]