Supporters of Palin say they're not using "rational theorizing"

Interesting comment in a post by a pro-Palin conservative:

I think Sarah Palin is indeed a Rorschach test for Conservatives...it’s about what Conservativsm MEANS....

The core idea behind Conservatism is that most of human learning is done not by rational theorizing, but by pattern recognition....

This pattern recognition is called common sense, and over generations, it’s called traditions, conventions etc. Religion is usually a carrier meme for these evolved patterns. It’s sort of an evolutionary process, like a genetic algorithm....

Liberals, Lefties and even many Libertarians want to use only 10% of the human knowledge that’s rational.....

Conservatives are practical people who instinctively recognize the importance of evolved patterns in human learning: because our rational knowledge simply isn’t enough yet, these common sense patterns are our second best option to use. And to use these patterns effectively you don’t particularly have to be very smart i.e. very rational. You have to be _wise_ and you have to have a good character: you have to set hubris and pride aside and be able to accept traditions you don’t fully understand....

Anti-Palin Conservatives don’t understand it. They think Conservativism is about having different theories than the Left, they don’t understand that it’s that theories and rational knowledge isn’t so important.

What's especially interesting is the enthusiastic response following this idea of "going with your gut and calling it wisdom". I think the truth is a lot of what all of us consider reasoned analysis that reaches a conclusion is actually a gut response that's going through the motions, but to not even bother to fight for logic and knowledge is pretty striking.

A Casablanca/Palin mashup needed

News item:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has made a crackdown on gift-giving to state
officials a centerpiece of her ethics reform agenda, has accepted gifts valued
at $25,367 from industry executives, municipalities and a cultural center whose
board includes officials from some of the largest mining interests....

About a quarter of the entities bestowing gifts on the governor are
represented by one of Alaska's most influential mining lobbyists....

On forms disclosing the gifts, Palin, who is the Republican vice
presidential nominee, routinely checked "no" when asked whether she was in a
position to "take official action that may affect the person who gave me the
gift"....

Records show that 23 of the gifts were offered during Palin's
early months in office, when she was pushing the legislature to address a state
corruption scandal by passing a package of ethics reforms....

Palin has come under fire for speaking out against a statewide
initiative, Proposition 4, that would have imposed costly environmental
regulations on mining operations....

So someone with more video editing skillz than me just needs to float Palin's head on top of Claude Raine's. Maybe even blank out the last part of the audio and substitute this dialogue:

I'm shocked - shocked! - that there's corrupt gift-taking in here.

Your gifts, Governor Palin.

(Crossposted to the Obama website.)

Hope versus belief in holy war

I will agree there's been a slightly unfair attack on Sarah Palin regarding the "holy war" issue. The full quote:

“Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”

People from a non-religious background might miss that praying that the war is God's plan is different from announcing that it's God's plan. What the full-throated Palin defenders then miss, though, is that the gap between hoping something is God's plan and believing it to be God's plan is likely pretty small. A believer who thinks God's approval or disapproval is discernable and extends to virtually every action would presumably believe that the Iraq war has God's support, or the believer would oppose the war. So Palin might not be making the assertion as a matter of faith, but to the best of her judgment it is a holy war.

On the other hand, her Lincoln quote-mining appears to be one of the many fake Lincoln quotes.

More McCain campaign backing away from cap-and-trade

More retreating from McCain's promise of a weak version of cap-and-trade, by McCain surrogate Tim Pawlenty:

First of all, anything that adds cost to energy prices right now is going to be viewed with a great amount of concern. And so, you notice the cap and trade debate has kind of faded into the background and it’s unclear what that would look like when and if it reemerges. I would also state Sen. McCain supports that approach, but how you do it is really important....you can argue that the world, the globe is warming as it always has for natural reasons. But I think the weight of the science indicates that at least some of it — you know you could argue it’s half a percent or something more substantial, you know — is caused by human behavior. So there are some things that we can reasonably and voluntarily do to reduce the human impact.... in the wake of this energy crisis, where people are, you know, struggling to pay the bills, that debate on cap and trade has fallen to the background for understandable reasons.

Bush waited until after the election to backtrack, but we're seeing it beforehand.

UPDATE: Some good news though - Palin is now waffling about anthropogenic climate change instead of outright denying it, and denying that she previously denied it. Progress through lying! (Though her statement that you need to do something about it regardless of whether it's natural or artificial hardly lends confidence in her ability to analyze.)