SEVENTY-FIVE

"I drove down to a local café to have breakfast with the regulars..."

On p. 75 of GR, Sarah continues with her reminiscences of her days as Mayor of Wasilla. She writes, "Every Friday morning, I drove down to a local café called the Country Kitchen to have breakfast with the regulars….

"My kids still remember going there with me for an occasional treat before school. They'd have pancakes and I'd drink coffee, sitting with all these lovable old dudes who owned the plumbing store and the construction company and the septic pumpers, and younger blue-collar workers who were actually building the town. I would just listen to what they had to say about how the town's business was being handled.

"They loved to gripe about this and that and tell me how to do my job. I loved listening to their ideas and showing them that I cared. I usually agreed with their take on the world. I learned a lot from them, mostly that I wasn't off base in my thinking about what the people expected from their government. They just wanted it on their side.

"I finally slowed down on that Friday-morning routine when I was pregnant with Piper. Nearly every pregnant woman has something that can make her instantly ill, and the cigarette smoke inside the café kind of nauseated me. Instead of supporting a much-talked-about citywide smoking ban at the time, though, I just stopped going to that restaurant. It eventually went smoke-free on its own, which is the way things like that should work."

Wow: What a wealth and width and breadth of personal and political wisdom and sagacity are contained and comprised in these few deceptively brief and simple words!!

First, Sarah actually LISTENED to her fellow citizens. Don't you guys get the impression that, today, many people are so busy talking and opining and spouting off that they never take a short pause and a quiet moment to listen to and reflect upon what others are saying? BTW, this is one thing I love about C4P: The wonderful dialogues and exchanges of opinions, in a respectful way, that so often take place here!

Let us think about the EARS that the Lord has formed and shaped and created for humankind. Their design and architecture are indeed intricate, indeed so intricate that the ears of his little daughter excited the admiration of the great Whittaker Chambers and helped lead that great man and lofty soul and noble spirit away from the darkness of Communism and to the luminous Throne of the Lord God.

However, unlike many of the animals, we humans (with a few exceptions) cannot actually move our physical ears. I think that there may be a deep lesson and purpose behind this Divine Design. We do not require the keenness and fineness of mere auditory perception that so many of the beasts depend upon for survival.

However, this does not mean that we are not meant to MOVE our ears. IMHO, the Lord asks us to move our ears not physically, but mentally, but morally, but spiritually. He asks us to move, not our outer ears, not even our inner ears, but rather our INTERIOR ears. He asks us to be attuned to, to be open and receptive to, the wisdom that comes our way through our ears, and to MOVE those ears on the moral and mental plane through good, and fruitful and noble actions.

The animals hear sounds and move their ears; we human beings hear sounds but perceive IDEAS, and we then move, not our ears, but our hearts, our spirits, our souls.

This is just what we see Sarah doing here, as she LISTENS TO AND LEARNS FROM her fellow citizens.

Can you imagine the haughty and arrogant Leftist politicians or the pompous, stuffed-shirt "conservative" politicos ever deigning and stooping to learn anything from mere "peasants"!?! Never!!

These pseudo-"aristocrats," these all-knowing "nobles" are already omniscient. Indeed, if they were not born all-wise, they certainly became so the moment they accepted that diploma from Harvard or Yale or Brown!!

Sarah, however, is so very different. She treated and treats her compatriots as human beings who are worthy of respect; worthy of attention; worthy of--dare I say it?--LOVE!!

LOVE THY NEIGHBOR!!!

Let us also observe Sarah's reaction and conduct and behavior when she found that she could not tolerate the cigarette smoke of the Country Kitchen café. She simply stopped going to the place!!

She did not support a smoking ban; she did not try to interfere with the business of the owners of the establishment. She simply stayed away from the source of her nausea. Eventually, the café went smoke-free, but it did it on its own, at the choice of its proprietors…FREELY, not by government compulsion or edict or enactment!!

MAGNA ERAT MINIMIS IN REBUS;

MAGNA ERIT MAXIMIS IN REBUS
!!

Great was she in the least of things;

Great will she be in the greatest of things!!

Brothers and Sisters, let us pray and pray and pray for Sarah and for her family that, if it be the Lord's will, she may RECONSIDER her decision.

America needs this noble lady with a servant's heart, who will listen to her people; who will respect her people and their God-given Liberty; who will LOVE her people…always!!!


Read It For Yourself:

Other Great Sarah Books:

Palin Essentials:

Credits:

All sidebar photos are from Wikimedia. I have tried to post all royalty-free images or to get permission, but in a few cases I could not locate the original source of a photograph or find a way to ask permission.


Contact info: bbrianus@gmail.com.

Other Great Going Rogue Reviews:

Jedediah Bila:

"Palin’s inviting first-person narration that is sometimes whimsical, often confident, and always patriotic...Going Rogue is truly one of those reads in which you put the book down after your eyes graze the final lines and you somehow feel like the writer is someone you’ve known all your life."
John Ziegler:

"I was simply blown away by Going Rogue on almost every level. For many reasons, this is by far the best book and greatest literary achievement by a political figure in my lifetime..."
Brigadier General Anthony J. Tata:
"Her book washes away all doubts that any reader might have had about her readiness to be president. She comes across as exceptionally bright, dedicated, and passionate about public service. Her moral compass is strong, pointing true North in this case. And she has a wicked sense of humor."
Don Surber:
"Conservatives know why Palin is still standing — and standing taller today than those who tried to bring her down. What does not kill you makes you stronger. Thank you, Tina Fey."

Sarah Palin is Coming to Town

Review by Stanley Fish:

When I walked into the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan last week, I headed straight for the bright young thing who wore an “Ask Me” button, and asked her to point me to the section of the store where I might find Sarah Palin’s memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.” She looked at me as if I had requested a copy of “Mein Kampf” signed in blood by the author....


A few days later...I had begun reading Palin’s book, and while I wouldn’t count myself a fan in the sense of being a supporter, I found it compelling and very well done....

First, the art. The book has an architectonic structure that is built around a single moment, the moment when Palin receives a call from John McCain inviting her to be the vice-presidential candidate of the Republican party. When we first hear about the call it is as much a surprise to us as it was (at least as reported) to her, because for six pages she has been recounting a wonderful family outing at the Alaska State Fair. When her phone rings, she hopes it might be a call from her son Track, a soldier soon to deploy to Iraq, but “it was Senator John McCain asking if I wanted to help him change history.”

And that’s the last we hear of it for 200 pages. In between we hear a lot about Wasilla, high school, basketball, college, marriage, children, Down syndrome, Alaska politics, the environment, a daughter’s pregnancy. The re-entry of John McCain into the narrative on page 208 introduces Palin’s account of the presidential campaign and its aftermath, especially her decision to resign the governorship before the end of her term....


Paradoxically, the effect of the neatly spaced references to the call is to de-emphasize it as a dramatic moment. It is presented not as a climax, but as an interruption of matters more central to Palin’s abiding concerns — her family, Alaska’s prosperity, energy policy. (She loves to rehearse the kind of wonkish details we associate with Hillary Clinton, whom she admires.)

Indeed, it is a feature of this narrative that events we might have expected to be foregrounded are elided or passed over. Palin introduced herself to the nation with a powerful, electrifying speech accepting McCain’s invitation to join the ticket. It gets half a sentence (“I gave my speech”)....


The only event that receives an extended discussion is her resignation. It is important to her because as an act it reflects on her integrity, and she has to be sure (as she eventually was) that she was doing it for the right reasons.

Resigning was a moral act for which she was responsible. The vice-presidential candidacy just happened to her; her account of it reads like an extended “what-I-did-on-my summer-and fall-vacation” essay.


For many politicians, family life is sandwiched in between long hours in public service. Palin wants us to know that for her it is the reverse. Political success is an accident that says nothing about you. Success as a wife, mother and citizen says everything...

I find the voice undeniably authentic...It is the voice of small-town America, with its folk wisdom, regional pride, common sense, distrust of rhetoric (itself a rhetorical trope), love of country and instinctive (not doctrinal) piety.

It says, here are some of the great things that have happened to me, but they are not what makes my life great and American. (“An American life is an extraordinary life.”) It says, don’t you agree with me that family, freedom and the beauties of nature are what sustain us?


And it also says, vote for me next time. For it is the voice of a politician, of the little girl who thought she could fly, tried it, scraped her knees, dusted herself off and “kept walking.”

In the end, perseverance, the ability to absorb defeat without falling into defeatism, is the key to Palin’s character. It’s what makes her run in both senses of the word and it is no accident that the physical act of running is throughout the book the metaphor for joy and real life. Her handlers in the McCain campaign wouldn’t let her run (a mistake, I think, even at the level of photo-op), no doubt because they feared another opportunity to go “off script,” to “go rogue.”

But run she does (and falls, but so what?), and when it is all over and she has lost the vice presidency and resigned the governorship, she goes on a long run and rehearses in her mind the eventful year she has chronicled. And as she runs, she achieves equilibrium and hope: “We’ve been through amazing days, and really, there wasn’t one thing to complain about. I feel such freedom, such hope, such thankfulness for our country, a place where nothing is hopeless.”

The message is clear. America can’t be stopped. I can’t be stopped. I’ve stumbled and fallen, but I always get up and run again. Her political opponents, especially those who dismissed Ronald Reagan before he was elected, should take note. Wherever you are, you better watch out. Sarah Palin is coming to town.

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