EIGHTY-FOUR
"I didn't think legislative experience constituted any greater preparation, particularly in a state legislature where the trading of favors seemed to run through the ventilation system as a substitute for air."
On p. 84 of GR, Sarah is discussing her run for Lieutenant Governor of Alaska. Of course, we may make the observation that, just as she failed in her run for Alaska's number-two spot, but later gained the Governor's mansion in Juneau, so now we ardently hope and pray that, although she failed in her candidacy to become Vice President of the United States, she will soon be our POTUS. This is an interesting line of reflection: Sarah does not seem suited and made to be a second-stringer; she was made to be Number One!!
However, intriguing though this course of thought may be, I would instead like to focus attention this morning on several passages from this page that hold and bear, IMHO, a profound weight of philosophical content, even though they are clothed in words and syllables of seeming simplicity.
Sarah writes, "… my opponents [for the Lieutenant-Governor spot] had no executive experience. And I didn't think legislative experience constituted any greater preparation, particularly in a state legislature where the trading of favors seemed to run through the ventilation system as a substitute for air.
"I told reporters what I still believe today: government experience doesn't necessarily count for much. A friend and campaign volunteer, Karen Rhoades, summed it up in a letter to the editor pointing out that all of my opponents agreed it was 'time for change.' Yet among them, they'd accumulated decades of government service during which to enact change, but they hadn't done so.
"The campaign was also my first opportunity to introduce my fiscal philosophy to all Alaskans. In national politics, some feel that Big Business is always opposed to the Little Guy. Some people seem to think a profit motive is inherently greedy and evil, and that what's good for business is bad for people. (That's what Karl Marx thought too.)
"But theories like that pretty much get run over on Main Street. Big Business starts as small business. Both are built by regular people using their skills, gifts, and resources to turn their passions into products or services, supplying demands and creating jobs in the process--like Todd's family, with its roots in the Alaska fishing industry. I had put a free-market, pragmatic philosophy to work in Wasilla, implementing conservative fiscal policies …"
Let us first observe the profound imagery of her initial paragraph, in which the "trading of favors" is a "substitute for air."
When we breathe, we exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. This EXCHANGE is a great physical good; indeed, it is essential for our survival. On the contrary, when favors are traded for favors by persons who should be public servants, an EXCHANGE goes on that is destructive to the souls of those involved in this iniquitous trafficking in the public trust.
OXYGEN sustains our physical life, and metaphorically, our spiritual life. Consider expressions like "the fresh air of Truth." Indeed, the very word "spiritual" is derived from "SPIRITUS," "breathing," "breath."
We witness here, in one neat and succinct paragraph, a juxtaposition of two types of exchange, one that is essential to life, the other which destroys life.
It gets better.
First, in the next paragraph, she censures individuals who have been in government service for decades, and yet have failed to enact change. We witness again a dearth and lack of LIFE-GIVING CHANGE AND EXCHANGE. When a devoted and veritable public servant fights for and effects real change, an exchange goes on too: Both parties, the public servant and his or her public, benefit in the civic order and in the spiritual order.
The heroic struggle to effect necessary reforms benefits both the official with the "servant's heart" and the citizens who receive this great good. A BOND in the public order is created between them, and this bond is eternal. As evidence of this verity, behold the bond that WE TODAY have with GEORGE WASHINGTON, even though he lived more than two centuries ago.
On the contrary, those who act not like Washington, but like the traitor Benedict Arnold, kill their own souls, and consign their fellow citizens to a fate that would lead to death if there did not exist the countervailing force of patriots like Washington.
Finally, she crowns this splendid page with observations about the natural economic order and the UNNATURAL theories of people like Karl Marx and his benighted disciples (we can include barack and michelle obama in their sordid ranks).
Marx attacked the natural and normal exchange of goods and services in a Free Economic Order. Far from being an evil distortion, this order is most in accordance with human nature: We all want to "get ahead," and provide for ourselves and our families. The natural and normal EXCHANGE of goods and services, both PHYSICAL and INTELLECTUAL, between FREE PEOPLE lifts up all of society. It leads to prosperity. This is what Sarah so clearly proclaims here, as she defends the Free Market against unrealistic and utopian ideas!!
And now here comes the most damning indictment of the Left and all it words and works.
This prosperity that flows from the Free Market makes possible that VOLUNTARY CHARITY that is and always has been America's generous Crown of Glory, and which is diametrically opposed to the forcible redistribution of wealth in the Communist order that persons like barack obama and his ilk long for!!!!
Guys, this VOLUNTARY CHARITY adorns the soul of him or her who gives, and brings to the receiver, not the sterile and anonymous dole of a Big-Government handout, but that eternal bond of charity created between a giver and a receiver!!
For example, if I give a little money to a disabled veteran, light floods my soul, light floods the grateful soul of the recipient …and some needed money goes into his or her wallet! The Left would replace this vital and living Order of Charity with the sterile regime of confiscation and selective redistribution by a corrupt, venal, and selfish bureaucracy.
The warped and perverted "philosophy" of the Left disrupts on all levels the natural give and take, the natural EXCHANGING of goods and services and ideas and acts of virtue. And yet, this ORDER OF EXCHANGE is nothing other than the very lifeblood and sinews of a free society. To hamper and disrupt this free flow condemns the Body of Society, the Body Politic, to death, just as surely and certainly as the disruption in the flow of gasses will sentence the physical body to the oblivion of the grave!
To sum up, Marxism and obamism overthrow the NATURAL and SUPERNATURAL order of the EXCHANGE OF GOODS, where the term "goods" is understood to embrace and include both material and spiritual things, both tangible and intangible goods.
Our Sarah labors on this page and on every page of her beautiful book to expound truths like this, and to unmask and expose Marxism and its chief promoter today in our society, barack hussein obama.
Our Sarah labors on this day and on every day of her beautiful life to present all Americans with a living and vibrant exemplar of the FREE AMERICAN CITIZEN and PATRIOT, who is the direct and diametrical opposite of the "ideal" of Marxists.
She is writing her ideals, by word and by deed, into the eternal memory and pages of our hearts.
Every brave and free act she makes constitutes another page in her life's book of "Going Rogue"!!!
