One of Us

Thomas Sowell is pretty dull reading most of the time; he is more of an intellectual than most of his fellow conservative Pundits and he tends to stay at his strengths. This week's article though, calls out for comment. In it he spends some time talking about Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. He provides his analysis of why certain people like Barack Obama and don't like Sarah Palin; they are elitist.

Perhaps the best way to try to understand these reactions is to recall what Eleanor Roosevelt said when she first saw Whittaker Chambers, who had accused Alger Hiss of being a spy for the Soviet Union. Upon seeing the slouching, overweight and disheveled Chambers, she said, "He's not one of us."

The trim, erect and impeccably dressed Alger Hiss, with his Ivy League and New Deal pedigree, clearly was "one of us." As it turned out, he was also a liar and a spy for the Soviet Union.

For the record, Hiss was actually a traitor. Which I suppose is Sowell's point. We intellectuals, both Conservative and Liberal, who thought that Sarah Palin was staggeringly unprepared are likely to prefer well dressed traitors to rough-around-the-edges heroes.

So is he calling Obama a possible traitor? Hmmmmm. Surely he wouldn't go that far.

But there are conservative Republicans who voted for Barack Obama, and other conservatives who may not have voted for him, but who are quick to see in various pragmatic moves of his since taking office an indication that he is not an extremist.

Anyone familiar with history knows that Hitler and Stalin were pragmatic. After years of denouncing each other, they signed the Nazi-Soviet pact under which they became allies for a couple of years before going to war against one another.

Pragmatism tells you nothing about extremism.

See Obama isn't like Alger Hiss; he's like Hitler and Stalin. Totally different.