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Liberals, Palin, And Quail (Not Quayle)

When I was a boy growing up in south Alabama the passion of my life was quail hunting. (And when I say quail, I mean the classic American bobwhite quail, of course.)

It was, and I suppose still is, a sport characterized by ritual and clearly defined rules for all participants ? hunters, dogs, and birds. The dog or dogs find the birds, creep up on them as though walking on egg shells, and then point. The birds can run from the dogs (though they are not allowed to fly away once the dogs had their scent) until the dogs pointed, sometimes only inches away. Then they freeze in place. Sometimes, if the dogs point far away from the hunters, this tableau can stay in place for long periods of time. After the point (sometimes, as I say, well after), the hunter approaches from behind the dogs, walks into the covey of hunkered down birds, at which time the whole covey blasts off the ground with an almost explosive roar of beating wings. If you are a good shot, keep your nerves about you instead of firing blindly at the sound of the covey taking flight, and are lucky enough to have relatively open lines of sight (not usually the case), you can down two birds as they rise and before they get too far away or dodge behind a tree or brush.

But ?away? was not usually very far. Bobwhites are more runners than flyers, and the rules called for the covey to spread out in a nearby field (though woods were also allowed) and begin regrouping. The job of the dogs at that point ? after first retrieving your two downed birds, of course ? was to find these ?singles? before they regrouped, point them one or two at a time (same rules as before), allowing the hunter to take a few more birds out of that covey before moving on to find another. Moving on, leaving that covey behind, was required, because it was clearly against the rules to take too many birds out of one covey (the number being dependent on the size of the covey). Not doing so, shooting the covey down too low, was rightly regarded as being as despicable as shooting them on the ground.

These ?rules? had evolved over generations, even centuries, and were clearly understood by all communicants in the quail hunting religion. But rules are often broken by those of little faith (as well as by backsliders of even great faith, not to mention visiting Yankees who didn?t know better), and Mother Nature doesn?t always co-operate. Thus, whether for reasons of human or natural malfeasance, there came a time when the Alabama quail population became dangerously low.

In its wisdom the state game and fish department responded to this deepening crisis by fatefully deciding to import a large number of Mexican quail, who were smaller, wirier, tougher, to interbreed with the locals, both to increase their number and, so it was thought, to strengthen the locals, toughen them up, make them better able to adapt and survive.

It worked, sort of, but as with most experiments in social engineering there were some highly unanticipated consequences, most of them flowing from the obvious fact that these recent immigrants simply did not know, and hence did not play by, the rules. Before long not only they but their new hybrid cousins and half-breed descendants almost ruined the sport. Coveys would fly instead of run when the dogs approached. If pointed, they wouldn?t wait for the arrival of the hunter before taking off. Once flushed (or more-often, self-flushed) they would fly into the next county instead of flying a short distance and waiting to be hunted as singles. Or they would actually land in trees instead of on the ground! (Until the arrival of the Mexicans a quail in a tree was, to convert an old feminist line, rather like a fish on a bicycle.)

Well, you can imagine how this lawless, almost anarchistic behavior upset the natural order of things, turning good people bitter and good dogs crazy. One time I actually heard a frustrated old hunter (really; this is not apocryphal), sitting in front of a wood stove in a country store, complain about how ?stupid? the Mexican birds were. Worse was the creation of a whole generation of guilt-ridden, neurotic dogs who blamed themselves for the birds? bad behavior.

I was reminded of these ?stupid? Mexican quail, and how they violated all the rules about how quail are supposed to behave, by the frustrated, angry response of our cultural betters to Sarah Palin?s nomination, and especially to her conservative Christian supporters. Listen, for example, to Alan Wolfe (actually an old friend, and an impressive scholar of American religion and politics), writing on a New Republic blog:

It may seem like ages ago but during the Clinton administration, conservative traditionalists were everywhere. The nuclear family is sacrosanct. Women should shun the workforce and become full-time moms. Kids should obey their parents and, if they choose not to, discipline, including harsh measures, ought to be applied. Sex outside of marriage is strictly forbidden. Our culture is spinning wildly out of control, and sexual liberation, the worst byproduct of the God-awful 1960s, is the cause.  And, by the way, abortion is murder and should be forbidden.

All that is left, if the Palin controversy is any indication, is abortion. Palin's defenders, far from being traditionalists, are moral relativists. We should not rush to judgment. It is important to understand the pressures that families face. Love is all you need. Forgive in order to forget. People are entitled to their privacy, even, if not especially, in the bedroom. The state should not be in the business of telling people what to do. It sounds like the language of the left, but it has also had long resonance on the libertarian right. When the McCain campaign said that Bristol Palin had a choice, it was correct. These days we all have choices. The fact that we do has always bothered conservative traditionalists.

Sarah Palin's nomination is a public service. No longer will we hear lectures from the likes of Newt Gingrich telling poor women on welfare how to conduct their sex lives. Focus on the Family will have to focus on a different kind of family.  William Bennett has no virtues left to write about. At long last our national nightmare over sexual hypocrisy has come to an end, and we can all thank John McCain for that.

And that is not all. In rushing to Sarah Palin's defense, the leaders of the Christian right have made it abundantly clear how they define a Christian. We don't care if you sin. We are not bothered if you put your ambition ahead of the needs of your children. If you have lied or broken the law, we will look the other way. It all comes down to your stand on guns and fetuses. Vote the right way, and you have our blessing. If any proof were needed that James Dobson is a political operative rather than a spiritual leader, his jumping on the Palin bandwagon offers it.

Those damn Christian conservatives! You just can?t rely on them any more to play their assigned role.

I?m not the only one to notice our cultural elite?s discomfort. Here is William Kristol in the current, or upcoming, Weekly Standard:

By the end of the week, after Palin?s tour de force in St. Paul, the liberal media were so befuddled that they were reduced to complaining that conservatives aren?t being narrow-minded enough. Thus, Hanna Rosin--who has covered religion and politics for the Washington Post, and has also written for the New Yorker, the New Republic, and the New York Times--lamented in a piece for Slate: ?So cavalier are conservatives about Sarah Palin?s wreck of a home life that they make the rest of us look stuffy and slow-witted by comparison.? I suppose it was ungenerous of conservatives, in our broad-mindedness and tolerance of human frailty, to have let Ms. Rosin down, just when she was counting on us to bring out the tar and feathers. But she gives us too much credit when she suggests we make the liberal media look stuffy and slow-witted. They do that all by themselves.

And here is the always reliable Michael Barone, observing the same phenomenon:

As I was leaving the convention, a liberal reporter noted something I didn?t notice: that Palin made little reference to abortion and other cultural issues (and, though he didn?t mention it, none to same-sex marriage). Instead, she spoke in coded language. ?But we are expected to govern with integrity, good will, clear convictions, and...a servant?s heart.? But she didn?t have to talk about these issues. She?s lived them. She gave birth to a son with Down?s syndrome she could easily have aborted. She has endorsed her 17-year-old daughter?s decision to give birth to a child conceived out of wedlock. She and, on the airport tarmac, John McCain embraced the father of the child. Liberal MSM journalists imagine that evangelical Christians cast out girls who have become pregnant without being married. Factually wrong: They provide counseling and support to them. And, as Sarah and Todd Palin?s statement shows, tell them that they will have to grow up and take on responsibilities sooner than they expected. The convention is cool with that. MSM has been trying to spin it as intolerance. They don?t understand. But the viewing public sees religious conservatives with a happy face.

Religious conservatives with a happy face? How can that be? Don?t they know they?re supposed to be the ones who are scowling, dour, vindictive, (?judgmental,? as the elite would put it), and mean-spirited? Instead, it?s the MSM journalists and other cultural arbiters who are the one sputtering and spewing vitriol.

I almost (but not quite) feel sorry for them. For as soon as they finally come to grips with the fact that not all conservatives, Christian or otherwise, are busybodies gleefully rounding up sinners to throw in a fiery pit they will have to confront the even more disturbing and unsettling fact that many whites are going to vote against a black candidate for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with his race.

That might push them right over the edge. But whether it does or not, and even whether McCain wins or not, we conservatives already owe a large debt to Sarah Palin, our very own Mexican quail.

Full post as published by Discriminations on September 06, 2008 (boomark / email).