After posting my thoughts on the VP speeches [1], with my personal reaction to Gov. Palin’s “Read’em their Rights” remark at the end of my post, I came to realize that the contradiction in her speech was deeper than I had originally appreciated. When a friend of mine e-mailed me this morning to let me know that she, too, was struck by the very same line from Gov. Palin’s speech, I decided I should write this down.
In 2000, then Gov. Bush spoke of “Compassionate Conservatism”, a phrase that made a great sound bite but which was never quite swallowed by him, his administration, or its most die-hard followers. In her speech, Gov. Palin painted again the broad strokes of “Conpassion”, right at the end as she spoke of the horrors from which McCain escaped when the U.S. withdrew from the war in Vietnam.
If you recall, earlier in the speech [2] she had this attack on the Democrats and their nominee, Sen. Obama:
“Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America … he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights?”
Right at the end of her speech, she speaks about Sen. McCain’s ordeal, a fact I neglected to really absorb in my post from last night:
“It’s a long way from the fear and pain and squalor of a six-by-four cell in Hanoi to the Oval Office . . . To the most powerful office on earth, he would bring the compassion that comes from having once been powerless … the wisdom that comes even to the captives, by the grace of God … the special confidence of those who have seen evil, and seen how evil is overcome . . . ‘When McCain shuffled back from torturous interrogations, he would turn toward Moe’s door and flash a grin and thumbs up” – as if to say, ‘We’re going to pull through this.'”
“He would bring the compassion,” she says, “that comes from having once been powerless.” I would ask a single question to Gov. Palin, based on her own criticism of giving rights to our prisoners of war while both decrying McCain having been stripped of his and saying that he has turned that terror to good.
What brand of compassion comes from having been made powerless by having your rights and dignity stripped away, which itself cannot guarantee those same rights and dignity to those you have rendered powerless through imprisonment?
[1] http://www.cooleysekula.net/blogs/steve/taomph/2008/09/04/the-substance-quotient-vp-speech-analysis/
[2] http://portal.gopconvention2008.com/speech/details.aspx?id=38
