I am trying to find the transcript of a speech one Dennis Praeger gave, more or less voicing opinions expressed in this editorial.  The video is at the end of this item, and the key quote is at the top.

Who is Dennis Praeger?  Hm.  Some guy.  Really, in the realm of pundits, I have sort of become egalitarian in my attitude to them — one basically unread blogger is worth about as much as one well paid radio show host who can get someone to pay for a talk.  (Hell.  These days an uninformed plumber apparently is credentialed enough to hold forth on national television on Israel.)  I really would like to add a few prefacing sentence to this line, since I’m never comfortable with dangling sentences that look like they could be floating out of context, but the situation is thus that I just have to go with this:

“Equality, which is the primary value of the left, is a European value, not an American value.”

On to the French Revolution, and a statement of just what are the American values.  I sometimes think there’s a “too clever by half” attitude with “shocking” contrarianism.  It comes forth in arguring that America isn’t a democracy — the founders didn’t like such a thing–, and it comes forth even moreso here in arguing that “equality” was not an American value.  I honestly haven’t read the Federalist Papers, though I probably should, which may put me at a disadvantage in taking on learned scholars of America, but here’s something from the Declaration of Independence.:

We hold these truths to be self-evident:  that all men are created equal […]

You can look up the rest to see for yourself if the words that follow this negate that “equal” part.  But I’m thinking that Praeger may be stopping his reading of this document even sooner, and emphasizing this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident:  that all men are created […]

Which to him, and them, suggest that there is no separation of church and state, goddamnedit.  Well, it’s all a matter of emphasis.

Meanwhile, the noted Constitutional Scholar Sarah Palin comes out full force on her interpration of the Freedom of the Press:

In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by “attacks” from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.

Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama’s associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks.  Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate’s free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.

We really are screwed, aren’t we?  Understand, yesterday the sort of Drudge-directed noise machine was in an uproar over Obama bumping three generally conservative reporters off his press entourage.  The Dallas Morning News is understanding; The Washington Times is not so much.  The total effect of this contrived controvery, in light of Sarah Palin’s fascist interpretation of the First Amendment, is the “yes for me, but not for thee” rule.

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