Just One Sarah Palin Issue

My head is spinning.  Contemplating where to begin about Sarah Palin’s nomination by John McCain as his running mate, it’s enough to make anyone grab for the nearest wall. 

I’m going to make myself stick to just one of her utterances, one I heard often from Phyllis Schlafly, on the issue of job discrimination.  She and John McCain oppose legislation enforcing equal pay for equal work, and conservatives in general oppose action against discrimination against women.  Palin’s rationale went this way:  instead of we women “whining” about discrimination—dismissing us as weak and sniveling if we insist that discrimination cease—she urges us to “go the extra mile” (I’m paraphrasing).  She tells us we should just strive to achieve even greater excellence.  She says we should be willing to have to show much greater merit than men working alongside us to achieve close to the same pay.  She—and conservatives—claim that all it takes is for women to become qualified and to prove ourselves for discrimination to cease.

If that were true, discrimination would have ceased at the latest, in the 19th Century.

I can’t wrap my brain around this—an enlightened people actively, vigilantly watches for injustice, and when finding it, seeks to end it.  An enlightened people doesn’t tolerate injustice or make excuses for it. 

We’re supposed to vote for people whose ideology holds them to standards this low?  Palin holds herself and her Republican peers to standards of decency and honor this low while she preaches to women to fight discrimination with high standards of job performance? 

How anyone affords people of this persuasion any credibility boggles my mind.

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