Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

The attacks on Sarah Palin are so vicious, so intemperate, and so absurd that some explanation is called for. Something about her turns otherwise reasonable people into sputtering goons. Kay Hymowitz thinks she has an explanation. No, it's not Palin's position on abortion, although that contributes to it. It's Palin's view of the legitimate role of government. I think it goes deeper than that, actually, and that the people best placed to explain Palin Derangement Syndrome are not political scientists or sociologists but psychologists. The problem, in other words, is not in Palin; it is in the critics. She is merely the occasion for them to display their neuroses and psychoses.