You, ma’am, are no Reagan.
JD
3662
Guardian … ‘live-blog’ on the released emails.
7.30pm ET / 12.30pm BST: Sarah Palin sought guidance from God – over Alaska’s state budget, the Guardian’s Ewen MacAskill reports from his latest find from the Palin-mail:
[quote] The email was written in March 2008 just five months before she was chosen by John McCain as his vice-presidential candidate.
Although the former Alaskan governor's deep religious beliefs have long been known, rarely has such a direct connection between her faith and policy-making been disclosed.
"I have been praying for wisdom on this ...... God will have to show me what to do on the people's budget because I don't yet know the right path ...... He will show me though," she says.
I’m no biblical scholar but wouldn’t state budgets come under the category of “the things that are Caesar’s” [Mark 12:17]?[/quote]
Dejin
3663
I’m no Sarah Palin fan, but that’s clearly written by someone with an axe to grind and not even basic understanding of the context in which the Bible quote comes from. Yeah, he’s not a Biblical Scholar, he’s not even a reporter that did his basic homework before spouting off.
The quote means that you’re supposed to pay your taxes. It doesn’t mean that some parts of your life are supposed to be compartmentalize so that your religious values don’t apply to them.
That’s true, but the biblical passage has mutated into an everyday saying whose meaning is a lot closer to exactly that. I doubt anyone was reading the Guardian for scriptural interpretation.
Dejin
3665
So what is the meaning of this “everyday saying?” I’ve never heard of any use of this phrase other than in reference to the Bible verse.
It seems to me that the clear (and only) possible interpretation of the Guardian article is that Sarah Palin should be dinged for seeking guidance from God for the state budget. We have a name for people who apply one morale standard to one part of their lives and not to other parts, they’re called hypocrites. In this case, Palin provides a clear example where she is actually living by the standard that she claims she lives by. There are plenty of cases to the contrary, this isn’t one of them.
If the implication is that one should never bring one’s morale values into a job situation, I can’t say I’m too impressed by that one either. That’s the Nazi “I was just doing my job” defense, I was just doing what I was ordered, I divorced my morale judgment from my job.
Pogo
3666
Uhhh… yes?
Because guidance should be sought from people who are educated in economy, not The Bible. While Palin was rubbing her thumbs and herp-duh-derping some prayers, she was wasting time that she could have spent finding actual solutions to problems instead of hoping that God would drop them on her fucking lap.
Dejin
3667
One hopes that that’s not the only place where she found guidance on the budget. But yes, I expect people to apply their morale judgment to issues, whether that means consulting with “religious” leaders or with friends’ whose judgment you trust or spending time in prayer and/or meditation contemplating tough decisions.
This pisses me off, because there’s lots of reasons to ding Sarah Palin, and this isn’t one of them. What this is, is an unfortunate example that supports Palin’s narrative that the mainstream media is out to get her. That it lacks objectivity and is simply out to attack her.
What’s a dumb shit like Palin supposed to do, think? Praying is her best chance at solving pretty much anything.
Give her some credit for using what skills she has.
It’s taken to mean, variously, “obey temporal rules about temporal matters and spiritual rules about spiritual matters,” and more liberally, “live your temporal life according to temporal rules and your spiritual life according to spiritual rules.” IE, close to the interpretation you objected to.
Frankly, if someone says “render unto Caesar” in the discussion of anything but taxes specifically, I assume they’re referring to the “temporal vs. spiritual obligations/behavior” meaning of the expression.
It seems to me that the clear (and only) possible interpretation of the Guardian article is that Sarah Palin should be dinged for seeking guidance from God for the state budget. We have a name for people who apply one morale standard to one part of their lives and not to other parts, they’re called hypocrites.
There’s another saying: people who talk to god are religious, people to whom god talks back are nutcases.
If the implication is that one should never bring one’s morale values into a job situation, I can’t say I’m too impressed by that one either. That’s the Nazi “I was just doing my job” defense, I was just doing what I was ordered, I divorced my morale judgment from my job.
That’s a false dichotomy, and I think people who favour legally secular government would rather that a politician’s moral compass isn’t so explicitly bound up with fundamentalist christianity and unsettlingly literal dialogue with supernatural entities.
Praying for god to help you make the right decisions as a leader? Swell, more power to you. Telling people about it it, especially in personal/enthusiastic terms? A bit less cool, and it easily shades over to sounding like the person who asks god which blouse they should wear today.
Nothing says sound, rational, fiscal policy like hoping your deity makes it all better.
And then if He doesn’t, it’s because He’s angry at you for teaching evolution and approving of gay marriages.
Your line of reasoning is grotesquely broken, as if random appeals to supernatural authority were somehow an equivalent antidote to human cruelty. This is not the hill you want to die on just because the Guardian pushed your bible buttons. And for the love of christ it’s “moral”.
I remember learning in graduate macro theory courses that fiscal policy should be determined by throwing pig entrails onto the ground so that one may know the will of Yahweh from the pattern they form. It’s the morale thing to do.
Lorini
3675
So she prayed to her god while doing her duties. BFD. How she did her duties is far more important than what she was thinking/praying. For all we know, Obama prays 24 hours a day. Do I care? No. What I care about is what he says and does.
This is minutiae folks, move on. I think the LA Times is desperately trying to get its $725 back by featuring these emails on their front page. They’re boring and nothing juicy is in them.
That’s the point. Obama typically says he’s going to get smart folks with expertise to help him analyze the options and that’s what he does (with quibbling about whether he picked the right people).
Palin says she hopes God will figure it all out for her.
If they want to pray each day for the strength to get things done or the clarity of mind to make smart choices, fine. That’s a whole world of difference from handing over the responsibility with “God, please, do it for me.”
I hate threads like this because they Inevitably bring out the kind of lazy, knee-jerk reactionism on display right now. Sure, she prayed. She did so while doing what previous governors failed to do for decades, bringing her state to fiscal health in the face of institutionalized corruption:
As governor, Palin demonstrated many of the qualities we expect in our best leaders. She set aside private concerns for the greater good, forgoing a focus on social issues to confront the great problem plaguing Alaska, its corrupt oil-and-gas politics. She did this in a way that seems wildly out of character today—by cooperating with Democrats and moderate Republicans to raise taxes on Big Business. And she succeeded to a remarkable extent in settling, at least for a time, what had seemed insoluble problems, in the process putting Alaska on a trajectory to financial well-being. Since 2008, Sarah Palin has influenced her party, and the tenor of its politics, perhaps more than any other Republican, but in a way that is almost the antithesis of what she did in Alaska. Had she stayed true to her record, she might have pointed her party in a very different direction.
That she’s behaving like an idiot now is unquestionable, as is the hard shift to the extreme right she obviously feels is necessary to play ball on the national stage, to mix metaphors. But quoting an email saying she prayed while making hard choices doesn’t mean she’s the devil.
Eh, I think the discussion of it really just happened because the Guardian’s tone annoyed ydejin and didn’t annoy a few other people who then disagreed.
It’s not a substantive issue and I don’t think people have explicitly said it is, although I may be misreading ckessel. I kind of look sideways and tug my collar awkwardly when people mention how they’re chillin’ with Yahweh after lunch, but if god chit-chat seems to be coupled with competence, otherwise sane behavior, and respect for the legal demarcations of public religiosity, then govern on, crazy diamond.
I’ve heard the whole “she was actually a pretty decent governor” thing before and maybe that can be squared with her behavior afterwards and the few Alaska-based criticisms like the trooper business. At the end of the day though, substantive or superficial, this is all irrelevant. Everyone can (and has) judged Palin already on the basis of her astounding public persona and political program 2008-2011.
Yeah, she really balanced the budget up there! Paying for rape kits is expensive, better to let the victim do it.
Wait a minute. Are you suggesting she’s not a saint? Well, this changes my whole outlook. Now what am I going to do with all these Palin 2012 shirts I ordered?
