Putting principle ahead of popularity [Dorothy Thompson and Sarah Palin]

The Daily Inter Lake ^ | May 29, 2011 | Frank Miele

[2ndDivisionVet]

Last week, I had the pleasure of introducing many of my readers to author Dorothy Thompson for the first time.

Thompson, who died in 1961, started her career before World War I as a suffragette working to win American women the right to vote, then briefly worked as a social worker. After the war, she sailed to Europe and began a stint as a foreign correspondent in Europe, where she had the reputation for always being in the right place at the right time during a chaotic period of history. Later, she became an on-air commentator on world events and wrote a charming column about domestic life in the Ladies Home Journal for many years.

But it was her career from 1936 to 1958 as a newspaper columnist that ensured Thompson not just a place in the history of journalism, but also in the history of ideas. She is frankly one of the most penetrating thinkers I have ever encountered, writing with ease on every topic of world politics — often puncturing those in power and elevating those without a voice.

Last week, I wrote about some similarities between Thompson and Sarah Palin, and I would like to expand upon that to some extent this week. Of course, it should be plain that Thompson and Palin are women of different eras, who made different choices, and are by no means exact parallels, but they are both fearless conservatives who put their principles ahead of their popularity. It should also be noted that Palin, in addition to her political career, is herself an on-air commentator and a hugely popular author (selling more than 2 million copies of her book “Going Rogue”). And although Palin chose not to continue a career in journalism, her college degree is in fact in communications, with an emphasis in journalism.

But those are relatively trivial similarities. What really cements the case for me is reading Thompson’s conservative analysis of national and world politics. Time after time, she boldly defends the Constitution, common decency and common sense against the platitudes of politicians and the perennial assault of assumed progress. She was certainly akin to Sarah Palin as a defender of Western civilization, and if she had lived today she would have been mocked just as mercilessly.

A few examples should suffice.

You remember how, during the last presidential campaign, it was Sarah Palin who unflinchingly drove home the point that Barack Obama was a socialist.

“Senator Obama said he wants to quote ‘spread the wealth.’ What that means is he wants government to take your money and dole it out however a politician sees fit,” Palin said in October 2008. “But Joe the Plumber and Ed the Dairy Man, I believe that they think that it sounds more like socialism. Friends, now is no time to experiment with socialism. To me, our opponent’s plans sounds more like big government, which is the problem. Bigger government is not the solution.”

Of course, the left-wing media (oops, I mean the mainstream media) said Palin was an extremist for such views — despite the fact that Barack Obama had the most liberal voting record in the Senate, and thus was essentially a self-avowed... (drum roll, please!) ... socialist. Naturally, liberals in Congress and in the media were offended by Palin’s blunt assessment.

What, then, would they have made of Dorothy Thompson’s bold assertion in a 1938 column that “Strict followers of the Moscow Party Line may call themselves ‘Liberals,’ or ‘Progressives,’ or ‘Democrats,’ or ‘New Dealers,’ or even ‘Republicans.” Thompson pointed out that the hopes of communism for victory in a country such as the United States was not through organizing its own political party, but by having their adherents spread throughout society and by “boring from within” as they penetrated every kind of social organization.

It goes without saying that Thompson was proven correct years later when communists were found to have infiltrated throughout not just all levels of American society, whether in academia or the arts, but also into our very government.

Thompson’s many, varied and broad attacks on the Franklin Roosevelt administration make Palin’s occasional forays against the Obama adminstration seem like child’s play, it is true, but Palin takes much more heat for her modest criticisms compared to the very direct attacks on FDR that Thompson waged almost weekly for years.

In 1937, when FDR threatened to reorganize the Supreme Court in order to bend it to his will, Thompson wrote a brilliant column that challenged both the public and the president. She likened the president’s plan for the nine justices to “decapitation” and compared it to the situation in Moscow where “political inconveniences are bumped off,” which in the slang of the day meant to be murdered.

Of course, Palin would be soundly criticized if she referred to any presidential action as “decapitation.” You remember what happened when she had the audacity to put some congressional seats in the “crosshairs”! Scary stuff!

But Thompson, like Palin, did not take her marching orders from folks who thought the best response to a socialist takeover of the country was to shut up and enjoy the handouts.

Thompson noted in her sly way:

“I am positively startled by the vigor of my objections [to FDR’s plan for the Supreme Court]... For along about now the American people, who are seldom interested in anything for more than two weeks, will begin to say, “Oh, let the President do what he likes. He’s a good guy.”

It is just such lackadaisical acceptance of the “fundamental transformation” of America that the left-wing media has proposed for the American public in today’s political battle. And it is because of Palin’s loud and lingering insistence that America should be “restored” to its former constitutional ideals — not transformed — that she has been caricatured as a “cocky wacko,” (Sen. Lincoln Chaffee) a “Nazi” (comedian Joan Rivers) and “profoundly stupid” (MSNBC host Chris Matthews).

The vehemence of the attacks on Palin from the left would not have surprised Thompson, who also spoke her mind as a conservative woman and thus outraged both her friends and enemies.

I think of one column she wrote about communist-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1952, who had won a landslide primary victory in Wisconsin despite being “repudiated” and “denounced” by his own party and by “the nation’s intellectuals.” Thompson warned that despite the wishes of the establishment GOP and the national media for him to just go away, the McCarthy victory revealed “considerable about the present American temper.”

Her description of the GOP repudiation of McCarthy is certainly reminiscent of the national Republican Party’s hand-wringing over the “wacko” Tea Party movement that is largely populated by people who vote for Republicans.

Thompson wrote that, “All sorts of explanations have been offered [for McCarthy’s victory] to avoid the simple and obvious one: That Americans regard the fight against Communists and their sympathizers as the preeminent issue in this campaign, and they are not squeamish about the tactics used, as long as something is done.”

Ditto the Tea Party’s insistence on fiscal sanity, whatever the political cost. You can call them names all you like, but the Americans behind the Tea Party movement are doing what they believe is best for their country and their children.

Again, Thompson, like Palin, spoke out in defense of the common folk and common sense. She was willing to make politically incorrect assessments because she viewed them to be true, and because she was not beholden to the powers that be. And she, like Palin paid a price. In this same column about McCarthy, when she called him “an asset to the Republicans,” she noted, “We have said it against the enraged cries of many readers, the denunciation of our personal friends, and our own regret. But objective analysis tells us that this country (and its independent voters) is moving away from the ‘liberalism’ that has held sway for twenty years.”

Of course, history proved Thompson wrong. To her regret, I am sure, liberalism continued to hold sway throughout her lifetime, and became even more dominant in the years after her death. One of the clearest signs of that victory of liberalism is that it is considered bad manners to even bring up Sen. McCarthy without prefacing his name with an adjective such as “reviled,” “repudiated” or “disgraced.”

In fact, just by quoting Dorothy Thompson’s quasi-defense of McCarthy, I expect to be branded as a crypto-Nazi, a fascist or a right-wing troglodyte. That’s just the way liberals express their tolerance of ideas they don’t agree with.

Oh well, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Wow!

[onyx]

Dorothy Thompson was an American journalist, who was noted by Time magazine in 1939 as one of the two most influential women in America, the other being Eleanor Roosevelt.

She is notable as the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany (in 1934), and as the inspiration for Katharine Hepburn's character Tess Harding in the film Woman of the Year(1942).

According to Bennett Cerf in Try and Stop Me (1944), she socked a woman who made pro-Nazi remarks in her presence after asking her to step outside.

She also attended the Bund rally at Madison Square Garden, where she showed her disgust by giving the participants the Bronx cheer.

I will supply the link in a minute. Need to open another window.

GAME ON!


Sarah Palin's Ping List!

GAME ON!


Sarah Palin's Ping List!

GAME ON!


Sarah Palin's Ping List!

[leapfrog0202]

Onyx, do you know the person that does the dog pings? I just posted an urgent message about 32 dogs rescued in MT from the local reservation....the reservation is/was flooded and their homes have been condemned and the dogs had to be removed due to the owners not being able to take care of them.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2726969/posts

[leapfrog0202]

Sorry for the off-topic thread.

[txhurl]

The above know.

[leapfrog0202]

Thanks in advance, all of you!

[onyx]

Never be sorry! You’ll get your answer now!

[onyx]

Dorothy Thompson biography LINK

[SueRae]

Great article!!

[WVNan]

Believe it or not, I remember Dorothy Thompson. She was one of my girlhood heroes and I had not thought of comparing her to Sarah, but it’s true, they are alike in lots of ways.

[WVNan]

Dorothy Thompson. WWII Conservative government watchdog.

[onyx]

I believe you! And believe it or not, as soon as I spotted the article, I knew that she sounded familiar, so I went straight to her biography and wouldn’t you know that I remembered reading about her, too?

I am thrilled with this comparison and I’ve bookmarked the article.

[savagesusie]

Loved the article.

BTW, Thompson and the people were fighting a full-frontal communist propaganda machine that was deliberately destroying McCarthy, a WWII hero. to shut out his message. He was right on everything he said and the “free” press reported lies over and over to discredit and demean him and probably drove him to kill himself with drink at age 48. Censured and set up by committees in Congress that were led by communists to make MdCarthy appear ridiculous to the public. It was all a ruse.

The Communist press is still putting out lies and constant propaganda...the only difference now is we have talk radio because of Reagan and so far the internet.

Hopefully, this communist charade of journalism will be exposed to the masses who still believe everything they are fed.

Truth no longer can be silenced as effectively. Thank goodness that there always were a few good people like Thompson who knew what was truly going on.

[WVNan]

I should bookmark it too, but I have so many bookmarks I don’t even know what I have any more.

[Diver Dave]

Wow indeed!
Great article.
Thanks for the ping, onyx.

[onyx]

I’m very happy you all enjoyed the article/column. I knew when I pinged, it would be selectively received. Given Sarah Palin’s degree is in Journalism, I’ll wager she would delight it this article and I do hope the writer has sent it to her.

[Absolutely Nobama]

An apt comparison, to say the least. Dorothy Thompson is an unsung hero.

[hershey]

According to Boston’s Osama-boot-licking outlet, WCVB,(CBS), Sarah will head to New Hampshire sometime this week!!!!! The long knives will be out in earnest, and let’s hope Sarah does some plain speaking. God knows the Northeast needs it.

[who knows what evil?]

New England should be sold to China to help offset outstanding debts...then build Great Wall II along the Hudson.