I wasn't expecting to be writing yet another Palin diary, but in many of the diaries gloating over the fact of Bristol's pregnancy (and those that still insist that Bristol, not Sarah, gave birth to Trig), most are missing the true story behind the scenes.
This diary will enable to reveal the truth.
Sarah Palin is a member of the Republican Party, the party of "family values", yet this party has presided over the most anti-family policies ever seen.
Sarah Palin is a member of a Republican party that supports and cheerleads the Iraq War, a war that has created thousands of single parent families as fathers (and mothers) are sent overseas on multiple deployments. This is especially hard on our National Guard members who did not sign up for the Guard to be sent overseas -- just like George W. Bush signed up for the Air National Guard to avoid Vietnam -- yet they've become the first resort rather than the last in too many cases.The parent left behind has to pick up the slack, and in many cases the family suffers due to the loss of a major income source. Most of these single-parent families are only temporary, though the returning parent is changed in ways that we cannot fathom...but just check out IGTNT some evening and look at the list of the dead, and especially the ones who leave behind young children, and you realize that the risk of those temporary single parent families becoming permanent is all too real. Where are the "family values" in taking parents away from their children for months or years at a time...or taking them away permanently?
Sarah Palin is a member of a Republican party that has decimated the social safety net that supports many low-income (and even moderate-income) families: decimating SCHIP, cuts in food stamp programs, cuts in childcare programs and early childhood education, and economic policies that have left many families on the verge of collapse. And when those families ask for a little bit of a break, or a chance to get back on their feet, they're considered "whiners". Where are the "family values" in leaving America's families on their own, to sink or swim?
Sarah Palin is a member of a Republican party that gives tax breaks to corporations who take jobs away from hard-working Americans and send them overseas where people will work cheaper. Where are the "family values" in forcing parents to work 2 or 3 minimum-wage jobs (if the Republicans don't succeed in gutting minimum wage) simply to make ends meet, leaving the children without any parents whatsoever?
Sarah Palin is a member of a Republican party that ignored the warnings that we were prone to an attack back in 2001, and who used that incident to eliminate many of our liberties and rights, as well as to go into a war that didn't need to be fought. Where are the "family values" in causing our children to live in fear?
Sarah Palin is a member of a Republican party that pretty much across the board denies the fact of global environmental change, much of it caused by human disregard for the sensitive balances in ecology but rather taking the ultra-religious view that man is to "subdue the earth." Where are the "family values" in forcing our children to breathe dirty air, drink polluted water, and fall prey to cancer and other diseases?
This is what we need to focus on -- not the fact that Bristol Palin is pregnant, not the fact that Sarah Palin gave birth to a Down's Syndrome infant. Being "pro-choice" means supporting others in their decisions, as much as we may question them. By the same token, I do not want Sarah Palin or her ilk telling me or my nieces or my great-nieces what we can or cannot do about our own health decisions. But let's focus on not the incident, but the hypocrisy of the Republicans referring to themselves as the "family values" party when their policies do everything but value families.