First, a brief note on words and their meanings:
Ignorant: 1. Lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated.
2. Lacking knowledge, information, or awareness about something in particular: "ignorant of astronomy".
Stupid: 1. lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind; dull.
2.characterized by or proceeding from mental dullness; foolish; senseless: a stupid question.
3.tediously dull, especially due to lack of meaning or sense; inane; pointless: a stupid party.
These are the denotations of ignorant and stupid. Those words are also used as insults, but we'll get that later in the essay.
I will make the case here that Sarah Palin is not stupid (although she is widely ignorant) and that no progressive or liberal should call her stupid, for broad policy reasons. There's a poll at the end. Sceptical? Join me over the swirl ---
We can observe a number of traits from Sarah Palin's behavior. She was willing to endanger her child of an at risk pregnancy by flying during labor against medical advice. She made rape victims pay for their rape kits. She and her husband built a house under circumstances that are still being investigated. She was vindictive against a state trooper for personal reasons. Numerous other examples could be added here.
From these we can deduce that Sarah Palin is very self-centered. It is likely that this self-centeredness is behind her sometimes stunning lack of curiosity but in any case she has given ample evidence of being ignorant, both of general knowledge that many adults have as well as of more particular knowledge (economics, foreign relations) that were relevant to her past job as governor or the job she sought as vice presidential candidate.
Her ignorance however is not the same as stupidity. She has acted energetically and quite capably to gain the goals that matter to her. "Stupid" (lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind; dull) is hard to reconcile with her having already served half a term as governor, raised a family (including a child with developmental challenges), published a book (with assistance) and hosting a television show (how many of these have you done? Take the poll!). I am not claiming that Sarah Palin is a genius; she clearly is not. Nor am I claiming that she hides a deep reflective character; it would surprise me enormously to discover that she was. But she does have at least average intelligence and quite possibly more than average intelligence, even if she chooses to direct it to selfish ends.
Why does that matter? Well, there are people who are ignorant for many reasons other than self-centeredness. Many people do not have access to good public education or even public libraries, many have grown up in families that have little or no education - there are a number of reasons that people may be ignorant, and some of them are traceable to bad public policy or poor support for education.
There are even some people who are ignorant because they are, to use the blunt old fashioned word, stupid. They are, simply, "lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind; dull." They are people who are not going to be able to master calculus or Attic Greek no matter how hard they try.
So why should progressives and liberals avoid using "stupid" as an insult? Because if the claim is not true (as it is not true of Sarah Palin) it is insulting only by association, and if it is true it is a fault that the person cannot correct.
We can do better than that.