STORY UPDATED
With the revelation that Sarah Palin was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, I have been doing some research into them. The party founder and Chair until he was murdered in 1993 (one year before Palin attended the AIP convention) was Joe Vogler; Mr. Voglar was apparently an interesting person. The Yukon-Charley Oral History Project has a number of audio interviews with Mr. Vogler which I have been going through. The interviews were done shortly before his death and cover a wide range of topics (some are very interesting about Alaska history) but tape 18 is on the topic of why he considers himself to be an Alaskan not an American. The tapes are on the University of Alaska's website as a part of their oral history project. So this is a credible source.
I have attempted to transcribe a part of that tape. Here is a relevant part. Volger speaking:
You get to think why the hell do I owe them anything and then you get mad; and you say to hell with them; and you renounce allegiance; and you pledge your efforts, your effects, your honor, your life, to Alaska; that is how I do it; I am an Alaskan; they know it; I've told them to go to hell in every way I can in a nice way; I took a case to the Supreme Court believing in the Supreme Court, but I'd rather be tried in a whorehouse with the madam as the Judge; there is more Justice in a whorehouse than in the Supreme Court; and if they don't like they know where they can go; ..... and if you think I am ever going to forget that, the fires of Hell are glaciers compared to my hate for the American Government, and I won't be buried under their damn flag; I'll be buried in Dawson and when Alaska is an independent nation they can bring my bones back to Alaska, back to my country.
I strongly urge all to listen to the tapes. They are very informative and, at least to me, call into question the views and ideology of Sarah Palin. She joined this Party either while Mr. Vogler was still Chairman, or at the latest within one year of his death. The Party still maintains Volger's mission and goals.
I might be willing to excuse this as politics of youth, but, she gave a recorded welcome message to this year's AIP Convention.
Is this the type of person that John McCain believes share his values and views?
UPDATE I Sort of interesting the recording were made possible by a grant from British Petroleum, (seems fitting)
UPDATE II On tape one, Vogler speaks of the US entry into WWII Here is what he said:
In December of 1941 there was a little fraccus over in Pearl Harbor and I happened to read of the ultimatum that FDR and Hull has sent to the Japanese Emperor on November 27th 1941 with three demands: get out of Manchuria, pay damages and promise not to do it again. .... This was on November 29th that I read of this in the Houston Chronicle; 7 days later, eight days later I guess, Sunday afternoon on December 7th (he learned of the attack on radio- I leave out some details here). And I said oh oh they got their answer from Hirihito; so we immediately declared war ..... I knew what had happened - President Roosevelt had involved us in a war. He had to do something to make Americans mad. And I speak pretty frankly, I call him the dirty rotten son-of-a-bitch communist traitor, because he had involved us in that war that we had no business in.