Quote:
Originally Posted by Arles
What possibly could a sitting president (or vice president in this case) do to cause birth control to be banned or burning books? Even supporting either (let alone convincing the congress to do some legislation on it) would be a quick ticket out of office.
These are scarecrow fears. Not only are they ridiculous (does anyone honestly think Palin would be favor of burning books as president?), but they are completely infeasible.
It would be like me saying I'm afraid that Obama would institute a Muslim wing of the government and hire an arab terrorist as Sec of Defense because he visited some Muslim countries and hung out with people of Muslim descent. Both claims are ridiculous and the left would pepper me (with good cause) if I stated that. Yet, acting as if Palin would be in favor of burning books is a "serious fear we need to be aware of".
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Your example isn't remotely the same. We know that Palin did in fact ask the Wasilla librarian about banning books. Her actions in the past have been in favor of banning books. Is it not acceptable to at least learn from her the reasoning for that and her thoughts on book banning?
The other stuff doesn't necessarily apply to Palin, but those are views held by various Bush appointees. Are you saying we shouldn't care what people profess as their beliefs and goals? We should just assume that no matter what people say and no matter what people do that when they run for office or are appointed we should just pretend it never happened?
You also want to set the bar at legislation when that's not the only way to effect policy. The various executive agencies have a whole lot of authority to change policies on thousands of items. Often these changes have much broader effects than were at first realized. Look at what HHS was doing to try to classify contraception as a form of abortion and hence allow health care workers to refuse to dispense.
Look, believe what you want and draw your line where you will. For me when religion starts to effect policy decisions, not in the abstract, but to push a narrow agenda, that's too much. People who have made decisions or stated goals that are in contrast to what most Americans consider personal freedoms, at a minimum should at least be expected to clarify their positions.