The CNN story dives right in to Palin’s employ of the Reagan tactic of use of allegory, myth, revisionism and all around denial of reality:
Chapters with titles such as “America the Exceptional” and “Raising (small-r) Republicans” argues that Obama and liberal Democrats are threatening the freedom of individuals at home while harming America’s standing in the world.
American Exceptionalism is one of those phrases, like political correctness, was created by those who are left-of-center. The Left, considering all speech to be something in the public domain; and later, the right-wing taking it and making it a phrase of their own. The difference between American Exceptionalism and political correctness is that the former has gone from a negative to a positive, while the latter took about a decade to move the other way.
The odd thing about the Right Wing (and yes, I do mean all of the Right Wing — I’ll refer to Palin alone when you get Rush Limbaugh or Karl Rove to reject this phrase) and this use of American Exceptionalism is the overt, shameless denial. To suggest the USA is flawed, never mind that you’d like to improve the nation, to an American Exceptionalist is tantamount to uttering an insult when one suggests a man 75 pounds lose weight for his own well being. “You can’t see your own shoe laces” is an act of treason to this mind set. Some people see the violations of Sixth and Eighth Amendment principles to prosecute The War About Terror© damaging to our constitution, Exceptionalists don’t have time to contemplate that the existence of a prison to hold men identified as terrorists is contradictory to not just our constitutional principles, but one of the foundations of Common Law: habeas corpus. It all goes back to the poster I saw while the USA was getting sensible enough to get out of Vietnam when I was a small child that said fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity. There are some principles and norms which makes this society which we call the USA that make us unique and better than other from which our ancestors left; when we violate or make exceptions (sic) to those principles, we reduce our standing and our esteem.
Sarah Palin and her ideological cohorts, enamored with their slogans, myths and libels stubbornly refuse to discuss policies in a rational manner, considering evidence that they are wrong. Logic and fact do not make exceptions for them or America - we should all hope that these stubborn reactionaries don’t learn this at the nation’s expense.
