Understanding Real America in Wasilla

After a few days in Wasilla, Jason Jones understands what real America is all about.

As Andrew Sullivan noted on his blog: Why does it take a fake journalist to find out the truth about Sarah Palin and Wasilla? Where is the rest of the Media on this?

Todd and Sarah Palin's Revolutionary Ties

Editor's note: It appears that if Palin makes false accusations of Obama, perhaps people won't notice her real, revolutionary ties to Alaskan secession.

From Salon.Com
By David Talbot
Todd Heisler/The New York Times/Redux

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her husband, Todd, at a rally in Vienna, Ohio, on Sept. 16, 2008.

Oct. 7, 2008 “My government is my worst enemy. I’m going to fight them with any means at hand.”

This was former revolutionary terrorist Bill Ayers back in his old Weather Underground days, right? Imagine what Sarah Palin is going to do with this incendiary quote as she tears into Barack Obama this week.

Only one problem. The quote is from Joe Vogler, the raging anti-American who founded the Alaska Independence Party. Inconveniently for Palin, that’s the very same secessionist party that her husband, Todd, belonged to for seven years and that she sent a shout-out to as Alaska governor earlier this year. (“Keep up the good work,” Palin told AIP members. “And God bless you.”)

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AIP chairwoman Lynette Clark told me recently that Sarah Palin is her kind of gal. “She’s Alaskan to the bone … she sounds just like Joe Vogler.”

So who are these America-haters that the Palins are pallin’ around with?

Before his strange murder in 1993, party founder Vogler preached armed insurrection against the United States of America. Vogler, who always carried a Magnum with him, was fond of saying, “When the [federal] bureaucrats come after me, I suggest they wear red coats. They make better targets. In the federal government are the biggest liars in the United States, and I hate them with a passion. They think they own [Alaska]. There comes a time when people will choose to die with honor rather than live with dishonor. That time may be coming here. Our goal is ultimate independence by peaceful means under a minimal government fully responsive to the people. I hope we don’t have to take human life, but if they go on tramping on our property rights, look out, we’re ready to die.”

This quote is from “Coming Into the Country,” by John McPhee, who traipsed around Alaska’s remote gold mining country with Vogler for his 1991 book. The violent-tempered secessionist vowed to McPhee that if any federal official tried to stop him from polluting Alaska’s rivers with his earth-moving equipment, he would “run over him with a Cat and turn mosquitoes loose on him while he dies.”

Vogler wasn’t just a blowhard either. He put his secessionist ideas into action, working to build AIP membership to 20,000 — an impressive figure by Alaska standards — and to elect party member Walter Hickel as governor in 1990.

Vogler’s greatest moment of glory was to be his 1993 appearance before the United Nations to denounce United States “tyranny” before the entire world and to demand Alaska’s freedom. The Alaska secessionist had persuaded the government of Iran to sponsor his anti-American harangue.

That’s right … Iran. The Islamic dictatorship. The taker of American hostages. The rogue nation that McCain and Palin have excoriated Obama for suggesting we diplomatically engage. That Iran.

AIP leaders allege that Vogler, who was murdered that year by a fellow secessionist, was taken out by powerful forces in the U.S. before he could reach his U.N. platform. “The United States government would have been deeply embarrassed,” by Vogler’s U.N. speech, darkly suggests Clark. “And we can’t have that, can we?”

The Republican ticket is working hard this week to make Barack Obama’s tenuous connection to graying, ’60s revolutionary Bill Ayers a major campaign issue. But the Palins’ connection to anti-American extremism is much more central to their political biographies.

Imagine the uproar if Michelle Obama was revealed to have joined a black nationalist party whose founder preached armed secession from the United States and who enlisted the government of Iran in his cause? The Obama campaign would probably not have survived such an explosive revelation. Particularly if Barack Obama himself was videotaped giving the anti-American secessionists his wholehearted support just months ago.

Where’s the outrage, Sarah Palin has been asking this week, in her attacks on Obama’s fuzzy ties to Ayers? The question is more appropriate when applied to her own disturbing associations.

Palin's ties With the Alaskan Independence Party

Whose Leader Wants to Secede From the U.S. - quote: "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."

Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008 10:59 EDT
The other 49
Before even starting this post, can we just pause for a moment and consider what would have happened to that unpatriotic, American-hating Muslim the Democrats nominated for president if he had been part of a secessionist group led by a man who once said he was “an Illinoisan, not an American”? To borrow Clarence Thomas’ famous phrase, it would been a high-tech lynching.

But here comes Sarah Palin, former member of the Alaskan Independence Party and current Republican nominee for vice president of the United States. ABC's Jake Tapper reports:


Officials of the Alaskan Independence Party say that Palin was once so independent, she was once a member of their party, which, since the 1970s, has been pushing for a legal vote for Alaskans to decide whether or not residents of the 49th state can secede from the United States.

And while McCain's motto -- as seen in a new TV ad -- is "Country First," the AIP's motto is the exact opposite -- "Alaska First -- Alaska Always."

Lynette Clark, the chairman of the AIP, tells ABC News that Palin and her husband, Todd, were members in 1994, even attending the 1994 statewide convention in Wasilla. Clark was AIP secretary at the time.


Oops. The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder clarifies that Palin’s association with the AIP is not ancient history, either, for she addressed the organization earlier this year:


Basically, the AIP wants a vote on secession. According to the organizations' website. "[T]hough it is widely thought to be a secessionist movement, the Party makes great effort to emphasize that its primary goal is merely a vote on secession, something that Party advocates say Alaskans were denied during the founding of the state."

The AIP says that Gov. Sarah Palin used to be a member of the party. Earlier this year, Palin recorded a welcoming address to the AIP's convention.

This is a party whose founding member, Joe Vogler, said: "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."

Lee Atwater must be wincing in his grave right now. If he were alive -- in his pre-conversion/apology incarnation, that is -- and he found this on the résumé of a Democratic vice-presidential candidate, he would have attacked with relish. Unfortunately for the GOP, the candidate associated with people who want to bail on the other 49 states of the United States of America is Sarah Palin.

― Thomas Schaller