For all of their resistance to the Palin phenomenon, members of the Brooks/Medved Axis rarely state explicitly why they so dread her.

The Republican Party has but one "star" today, and her name is Sarah Palin. There is no one, much less anyone whose name is being bandied about as a possible presidential nominee for 2012, who emanates a fraction of the energy, or generates a modicum of the excitement in voters, as the former governor of Alaska.

Of course, the celebrity status that she's achieved means neither that she could win the general election nor that she would necessarily govern well if she did. But in an exceedingly imagistic world where the distinction between perception and reality has all but collapsed, charisma in a political candidate on the national stage is no small consideration.

More enigmatic than the Palin phenomenon, though, is the negative responses that she has effortlessly succeeded in provoking from her critics, especially her critics who regard themselves, or who are so regarded by others, as being on the Right. Her leftist detractors, I am convinced, fear that between now and 2012, Palin will only strengthen the intense interest that so many Americans already have in her. Thus, they relentlessly denigrate her, hoping that if they decry her "stupidity" enough times, enough people will come to judge her similarly. They are behaving as we would expect for leftists terrified of losing the power for which they have been lusting for nearly a decade-and-a-half to behave, and so for now, at any rate, we can put them on one side. I would like to consider the criticisms of her right-leaning opponents.

New York Times' token "conservative" columnist, David Brooks, has recently referred to Palin as a "joke," and nationally syndicated radio talk show host and self-declared "conservative" Michael Medved, while admitting to liking Palin personally, expressed his wish that she not be considered as the Republican Party's presidential nominee in 2012.  He made his remarks during the hour of his show that he reserved for people to call in with reasons for their belief that Palin is "uniquely qualified" to be the next president of the United States.

Brooks and Medved are the only two of Palin's critics associated with the Right that I will here mention by name, but they represent a segment of the Republican Party and the so-called "conservative movement" that I will henceforth refer to as "the Brooks/Medved Axis" (BMA). Representatives of BMA ask Palin's supporters, "Why?" In response, the latter should find it sufficient it to say, "Why not?"

Let me say, I like Palin, and if she was running against President Obama today, it is without hesitation that I would vote for her — but it is hard for me to conceive of virtually any Republican candidate who I wouldn't support over Obama. My objective here is not to defend Palin, to specify reasons for why so many believe that she would be "uniquely qualified" (whatever that could mean) to run for the presidency; rather, I wish only to spin the tables around on her right-leaning critics by inquiring into their reasons for opposing her, and for doing so with the intensity that they unfailingly exhibit.        

The first curious fact that we must note is that for all of their resistance to the Palin phenomenon, members of the BMA rarely state explicitly why they so dread her. Thus, we are for the most part left to our own resources to piece together by abstracting from a variety of discussions the basic reasons, or what appear to be the basic reasons, for their contempt for the prospect of a Palin presidency.

It seems to me that there are essentially two standard objections typically raised against Palin of which all of the possible others are but variations. The first is that she "lacks experience." The other is that she is "stupid." 

Neither can be taken seriously.

If it wasn't already so, that Barack Obama, with his dearth of political experience, succeeded in becoming president renders the argument from inexperience, whether it is employed against Sarah Palin or anyone else, quite laughable. Short of being educated in the art of politics from within a family or social class that has spent multiple generations ruling, the next best way to acquire the experience necessary for the presidency is by being the president. Beyond these considerations, only in the way of faithfully discharging the obligations of an executive office of some kind can one approximate the sort of experience requisite for the presidency. 

Now, it can't really be said of hardly any of our contemporary politicians that they have the apprentice's knowledge of ruling of which the members of the aristocratic classes of yesteryear had the benefit. And with the exception of only those politicians who have actually held the office of the presidency, no others genuinely know what it is like to preside over a nation. As for the third means of experience, since Sarah Palin was both a mayor and a governor, not unlike the relatively small handful of former governors who eventually secured the office of the presidency, she does indeed partake of some of that knowledge without which a president is no president at all: the experience that she's accumulated vis-a-vis the fulfillment of her executive responsibilities at local and state levels is easily assimilated to that which ensues upon the fulfillment of such obligations at the federal level.

In short, and at the very least, there is no reason, and certainly none that has thus far been forthcoming, for assuming that Palin would be any worse as president than anyone else.

Before responding to the insinuation that she is "stupid," we must unpack the charge, for as far as I can determine, the "stupidity" that her opponents impute to her could refer to what they perceive to be a deficiency in either her native intelligence or her education. 

My late father used to have a sign on his cubicle which read: "Ignorance can be cured, but stupidity is terminal." While no doubt crassly stated, I'd be surprised if there is anyone in his heart of hearts who would think to deny the truth of this proposition. The ignorance of any human being vastly exceeds his knowledge, but with respect to any given topic, ignorance can be abated. Stupidity, though, is another matter. The truly stupid can never hope to make any but the most modest of gains in their knowledge.  Stupidity, understood as such, refers to native intelligence, or innate cognitive ability. 

When members of the BMA suggest that Palin is "stupid," are they asserting that her cognitive capacities are more limited in scope than the average person's? Or do they mean to imply that her wit is duller than that of the average politician's? Or is it that they judge Palin "stupid" because they don't believe she has even a portion of the raw, naked, intelligence that they believe they themselves possess?

It is far more likely than not that the answers to these questions, even if they were ever again raised, will go unanswered. In fact, from where I stand, they must proceed unanswered, for there is absolutely no reason for anyone to legitimately suspect that Palin suffers from any distinctive, much less unique, defect of intelligence. In other words, she is no less intelligent than anyone else in the world of contemporary American politics, whether politician or commentator. And this means that she is no less intelligent, and quite conceivably more so, than many of her critics of the BMA. 

But native intelligence is a tricky thing to determine. I believe that when her critics insinuate that she is "stupid," they really mean to imply that she is "uneducated."  Again, though, if I am correct, they must be more specific. Is she uneducated because she didn't attend an elite institution of higher learning? Is it because she hasn't any advanced degrees? Do they determine that she is "stupid" because they don't believe that she is sufficiently articulate? 

These questions have been asked neither of Palin's leftist opponents nor her BMA rivals, so I can't address the responses to them that they would have offered had they been.  However, if my conjectures are sound, they tell us nothing about the degree of Palin's education and nearly as much as we need to know about that of her critics, for only an uneducated person would think to equate "being educated" with the criteria of enrollment at a prestigious institution, the possession of an advanced degree, or having an impressive facility with words. It isn't that these characteristics lack any relationship to "being educated," but they are neither severally nor conjointly sufficient for it. In fact, with the possible exception of the last, neither severally nor conjointly are they even necessary.

It is a woeful commentary on our times that so many otherwise bright people fundamentally misconstrue the character of the truly educated mind. Far too often, we confuse the latter with a mind that has been well trained. This, no doubt, is due in no small measure to the tireless efforts over the decades of academicians in our institutions of "higher learning" to transform themselves from pursuers of knowledge for its own sake into activists for "Social Justice." But once the role of the university is cast against the backdrop of some external goal (like "Social Justice") from which it derives its identity and purpose, then it becomes an instrument only, a mere means to an end that exists independently and antecedently to it. And like any other instrument, its successful manipulation demands nothing more or less than a requisite training.

Take our current president, for example. President Obama, in spite of the hosannas that the Left and even many on the Right have sung to his brilliance, strikes me as being, first and foremost, a man whose years at Harvard were spent acquiring training in those methods deemed necessary to affect the kind of "social change" that he and his mentors find desirable. In his first memoir, Obama makes scattered references to the literary works that he engaged during his time at college. When these references are situated within the narrative that he weaves within his autobiography and, for that matter, within the context of his political career, it becomes clear that our President was never taught how an educated person is to read, for it is painfully clear that The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the post-colonial writings of Frantz Fanon, and the diet of feminist and postmodern literature that he was fed Obama treated, or was taught to treat, as both windows into the "oppressive" nature of Western civilization as well as devices to be used toward the end of defeating that oppression.

In short, Obama received training in how to combat all that was evil in the world that he inherited. Later, when he was a professor, he provided his students with training in the technique of how to do likewise (recall the photograph that circulated during the election of Obama teaching students about Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals). 

The knowledge of the trained mind is the kind of knowledge that is or could be gained in a correspondence school, a knowledge acquired, never for its own sake, but always for the sake of some other goal to which it is subservient: take away the goal, and the training with its knowledge becomes pointless.

The knowledge belonging to an educated mind, in contrast, is knowledge of the habits and traditions of the civilization to which it belongs. The genuinely educated person, as opposed to the well trained, is a person of discrimination, of familiarity with the contours and nuances of which the plurality of voices that compose his or her civilization consists. The educated person at a university, then, doesn't just read or teach to others to read those works that can be readily enlisted in serving a select set of narrowly circumscribed practical goals; rather, the educated person has been taught to read in a variety of idioms — philosophy, history, science, literature, etc. — because his or her goal, if it can be said to be a goal at all, is not to secure some substantive satisfaction or interest — "Social Justice" or (what amounts to the same thing) a more equal "distribution" of wealth — but to acquire those habits that will allow him or her to achieve greater intimacy with the civilization of ideas into which he or she is being educated. The habits into which the educated person is educated are those habits necessary for being, not an effective activist, or even a good debater, but a good conversationalist, and the conversation for participation in which he or she is being prepared is the conversation between, as Burke said, the past, the present, and the future.

Now, it is not possible for any Westerner who has spent more than a few years on this planet to avoid having acquired some measure of this kind of education, for it is not formal. However, the college or university, (ideally) devoted as it is to making students virtuous conversationalists by familiarizing them with the plurality of voices that compose Western civilization, has the potential to considerably further this type of education.

With perhaps a few rare exceptions, Sarah Palin is no less educated than any of her peers in the world of contemporary politics, whether professional politician or media pundit. 

In fact, that Palin, as far as I am aware, has never attempted to collapse all voices into one, making, for example, science, say, the tribunal by which all knowledge claims should be judged, or silencing its true voice so as to convey the false impression that it either proves or disproves theism, suggests that she is actually significantly more educated than such pseudo political commentators as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and the scores of politically compromised scientists who have conscripted science in the service of such moral goals as proving "Global Warming." Not for a second do I mean to imply that any of these activists aren't intelligent, but again, being intelligent is not synonymous with being educated. The point is that, unlike Palin, they are bad conversationalists.

I hope that it is clear that my objective here is not to persuade anyone to vote for Palin if and when she decides to run for the presidency (which, by the way, I am nearly positive she will in 2012); I like Palin, but frankly, I think the consensus among "movement conservatives" that Palin is the rock-ribbed conservative for whom they have been longing isn't erected upon the sturdiest of foundations, for we don't know all that much about her yet, and some of what we do know hints in the direction of a contrary verdict. But be that how it may, because she has indeed been treated most unjustly by leftist and self-styled rightist alike, and because I have a burning contempt for the purveyors of injustice — and no more so than when, as is the case, I fear, with members of the BMA, they are primarily motivated by an aching desire to be accepted by their leftist sparring partners — I felt the need to come to Palin's defense.