My Property professor, Helen Alvaré,
makes the case for Sarah Palin:Sarah Palin looks like what a lot of women aspire to be on their best day. She clearly takes real pleasure and real strength from her family. Communicates pride as a son deploys to a war zone. Stands publicly by a pregnant teenage daughter. Uncomplainingly accepts a disabled child. Successful in her profession. Funny. Supremely confident.
Governor Palin is also pro-life.
She is the walking, talking, one-liner-delivering embodiment of the worldview that pro-life feminist women have labored to communicate for the last 35 years.
This worldview includes the idea that it is not only generous, but wise, to see children as "gifts," not "threats." It holds that women are capable of strength, not only when they assume roles formerly restricted to men, but when they rise to the challenge of protecting life -- even to the point of suffering and sacrificing on behalf of others. In this way, pro-life feminism sharply distinguishes itself from "your mother's feminism" which for the last several decades has personified women as "victims," because of their capacity to bear children.
Women are too diverse today, too experienced both at home and at work, to buy the notion that happiness always takes the form of a full-time career alongside a minimalist domestic life. Today, as ever, the vast majority of women still marry, still hope for, and still eventually bear, children whom they love. Our mother's feminism made almost no room for these basic desires, for the cooperation with men they require, or for the questions about "ordering priorities" they provoke.
Palin, as a governor and as a mother, represents what a lot of people want to be on their best day. For this reason, whether or not Palin is on the winning ticket in November, her public presence has already won a deep and long-lasting victory for a new and pro-life feminism in the United States.
Read the whole thing.
My Property professor, Helen Alvaré, makes the case for Sarah Palin:
1 comment:
Palin is a setback for women because she is so unqualified and was so transparently selected because of her gender.
Notice how this case for Palin doesn't make one mention of a substantive argument of how Palin is qualified on competency.
It's all about how great a person she is...how great a mother, etc.
That's nice, but I know plenty of nice people who I wouldn't want to be one heartbeat away from the Presidency.
I wouldn't choose someone to be my doctor if they had not been to medical school simply because they were such a nice person.
For that matter, I wouldn't choose a mechanic or plumber if that person were not qualified.
As we've seen over the last 8 years, competency matters in government. It's nice if those in charge know something about the issues.
Palin is showing herself to be spectacularly unqualified. As such, I really don't care about how nice a person she may be in her personal life.
It should also be noted that in her political life, Palin has proven herself to be not so nice...to be a liar, and to take cheap shots at her opponent.
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