Why Won't Palin Ask Obama Why He Hates Everything That's Good and Loves Everything That's Bad?

Like a washed-up boxer who forgets to punch his opponent in the testicles or a figure skater who misses a chance to bludgeon her rival's kneecap, there's something so disillusioning about Sarah Palin's failure to accuse Barack Obama of hating the U.S. Constitution.

I still think it will happen. Maybe it's happening right now as I type these words. But with the old Sarah it would have happened yesterday. She's slow. Slower than when we met her. This is why I don't clothe my own pit bulls in finery from Neiman Marcus. Silky, tailored garments make them contented, complacent, docile, slow to maul.

I'm talking about yesterday's tizzy -- the unearthing of a 2001 radio interview during which Obama uttered the phrase "redistributive change." Naturally, the Axis of Drivel -- Fox News, Drudge, and the McCain-Palin campaign -- pounced on Obama's 2001 phrase, pointing out that those two words mean Obama is a commie who will take your life savings and dole it out to winos and welfare queens. But somehow the GOP's hair-trigger demagogue of a vice presidential nominee glossed over the phrase that's really most ripe for demagoguery.

Obama, sounding very much like the constitutional law teacher he was at the time of the 2001 radio appearance, described the U.S. Constitution as a "charter of negative liberties." Negative?! Our liberties are negative?!!!

Now, don't bother me -- or Palin when she gets around to this -- with the fact that negative liberty is a philosophical term to describe rights that keep the government from doing things to us: establishing a national religion and forcing us to worship according to its edicts, abridging our freedom of speech, subjecting us to cruel and unusual punishment, infringing on our right to keep and bear arms, etc.

Whatever the facts may be, the phrase "charter of negative liberties" just sounds weird. Take it from a comment on a recent blog post:

"It is very convenient for Obama that the term 'negative liberties' is an accurate one. But his choice of words, taken in the entire context, is very telling. For most people, including those listening to that broadcast, the word NEGATIVE is synonymous with BAD. Obama knows this."

Damn right!!! And while he's at it, Obama should stop using the word "constitution" because a few people might think he means "prostitution" or "constipation."

Why is Barack Obama comparing our sacred inheritance from our founding fathers with whoring and intestinal blockages? Why does Barack Obama hate the U.S. Constitution? And why oh why isn't Gov. Palin asking these phony, baseless, demagogic questions?

She needs to lay a trap. She needs to bait the Obama campaign into explaining "negative liberties." Because when they do that, they'll talk about the work of the philosopher Isaiah Berlin and his lecture "Two Concepts of Liberty." The man's name was Berlin. Berlin was the capital of Hitler's Nazi empire. Berlin is where Hitler's communist archenemies later built the Berlin Wall.

Why does Barack Obama love Hitler? Why does Barack Obama wish the Berlin Wall was still standing and oppressing millions of people under communist dictatorship? And why oh why isn't Gov. Palin asking these phony, baseless, demagogic questions?

We've come to count on her for this sort of thing. When Republican Senator Chuck Hagel describes Palin as being "arguably the thinnest-resume candidate for Vice-President in the history of America," she's supposed to be the sort of politician who can bat her lashes and make us think Hagel was just complimenting her svelte, girlish figure.

Could it be that she needs some lessons from her running mate? After all, McCain is performing admirably on the demagogue front. He's calling Obama a "socialist" and going around the country peddling a socialist plan to spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars buying up bad home mortgages.

Now, that's "redistributive change" we can believe in. Especially if we don't have access to a dictionary. Or a library. Or even a TV.

Comments

[Vkness]

Why does she hate education and the educated so much? Please help me with this one....

[Oregon Ivy]

Obama in NC rally today: "Next they'll be accusing me of being a communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten."

Then he laughed, and it made all the attacks seem so ridiculous. Made me laugh, too.

[all4peace]

Imagine if he was hiding his medical records and being a socialist?
Do her records mirror her winking tax, travel, troopergate records and document a terminal case of fibbing mouth disease? Treatment for a rash of lies and rebellion against the facts? A serious eye issue that causes her to wink when she's lacking accuracy!

[douseewhatisee]

If I had a loaf of bread and fish to eat, and there were let's say 5 starving people asking for something to eat, and I just told them "No, it's my bread and fish, and you don't deserve any of it. I don't want to share the wealth", what kind of person would that make me? What if Jesus had done that? Now I am totally not a religious person, but those who do believe in the bible had Jesus had done that? That story would a have a completely different feel to it, no? Now social services like welfare and medi care need a total overhaul because the corruption is so bad, but if we could make a reform and make it work, we all would be better people for it. But we need rerform, and the one sin humans in position can take is corruption, is ridden of, we might be able to do something to really help people with all that tax money.

[MajorKong]

Because the Bush administration has shown soooooo much respect for the Constitution.

[flyteeskee]

there's something so disillusioning about Sarah Palin's failure to accuse Barack Obama of hating the U.S. Constitution

Sarah Palin doesn't know the U.S. Constitution so how can she accuse Sen Obama or anybody else of anything remotely related to it. If she knew the U.S. Constitution, wouldn't she know the roles and responsibilities for the job she is seeking? Get real.

[solarbear]

David, I really appreciate your article. It mirrors my frustrations. Her litany of comments and statements throughout this campaign season demonstrate quite clearly to most of us that this woman has absolutely zero familiarity with our constitution. But in all fairness, she probably can't see our constitution from her back yard.

[pgoody]

Thanks for this. When I read the quote, I thought, great now we have to listen to SP misuse the term "negative liberties." Maybe her advisers have wised up and given her a copy of "The US Constitution for Dummies."