Another socialist blog

When Sarah Palin accepted the Republican nomination for Vice President, she said:

A writer observed:  “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity.”  I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman.  I grew up with those people.

Now we know which writer she was talking about:  fascist writer Westbrook Pegler.  And when Pegler was talking about “those people,” he meant people who weren’t homosexuals, blacks or Jews.  Pegler believed that Jews could not be the victims of persecution because persecution “connotes injustice.… They are, instead, enduring retaliation, or punishment.”

Now don’t tell me you’re surprised.  Well…I’m a little surprised that her handlers didn’t vett the speech a little more carefully, checking, you know, for overtly fascist references, but I’m not surprised that she counts fascists among her intellectual forbears.  This is the Republican Party we’re talking about here, the party of Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms, the party in charge of dealing with Hurricane Katrina, the party whose 1984 ticket was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.  And lest you think 1984 was just too long ago, this is the party whose 2008 nominee for President uses racial slurs, not just in private conversations with his racist buddies, but while talking directly to the press.

They may have repackaged themselves a few times since the 1960s, but it’s the same product inside the box.