"Sarah Palin, give me back my Legions!"

In fact, they saw that he was so greatly affected that for several months in succession he cut neither his beard nor his hair, and sometimes he would dash his head against a door, crying: "Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!"

- Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Augustus, XXIII

It's not clear that the Roman defeat at Teutoburg was the worst military disaster in their history, but it's not clear that it wasn't. Three entire Legions, with associated Cavalry and Auxiliaries were wiped out almost to a man by German barbarians. The three Eagle emblems of the Legions were captured and displayed as booty by Hermann, their chief. You didn't rise to become Imperator of the entire civilized world without being tougher and more ruthless than your rivals, but this defeat seems to have unhinged Caesar Augustus. The idea that almost a fifth of the entire Roman army could be annihilated by naked savages was more than he could take. It ended the Roman drang nach osten into Germannia, and fixed the border of the Empire at the Rhine. To underestimate your opponent - as Varus and Augustus certainly did - is to invite disaster. Much of the Left is doing the same with Sarah Palin ("I can see Russia from my house!"), with predictably disastrous consequences. Which vision of healthcare is closer to the American public's? The Imperial Government version as defined in the 2000 opaque pages of the Obamacare bill, or her "Death Panels"?  

 Americans, by large margins, simply do not trust the Government to do the right thing, and she tapped into that. The Progressive Legions lost that battle, and Palin has the Eagles (figuratively speaking; perhaps literally come the November elections). But they continue to underestimate her:

Sarah Palin made a surprise appearance on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien tonight—and turned the tables on actor William Shatner. Shatner mockingly read passages from Palin's blockbuster Going Rogue—including ones about rapper Kid Rock and stalking sheep. Afterward, it was Palin's turn to read from Shatner's Up Till Now. The former Alaska governor's selections included one in which Shatner talks about visiting an African elephant "in my underwear." After the readings, there appeared to be no hard feelings. The two left the stage arm-in-arm.

She's gotten inside their head, as hilariously lampooned by Iowahawk:

Now where were we? Oh yes, Tina Fey. Now, just the other day Tina... umm... is everything all right? I mean, you have the strangest look in your subthalamus. Oh...! Oh, this. The bikini. Funniest thing. Turns out once I'm inside a liberal's head, It's like poof! Off with the clothes. I tell ya, it's gotten to the point that I really don't even notice it anymore. No, don't be embarrassed or ashamed, most of your friends don't even give me the bikini. Whoa! Did you feel that? I think I felt a little earthquake! Oh -- I see. It was just you, banging your head against the stair banister trying to get me out of it. Trust me, you might as well give up on that, because it's not gonna work. Just ask Tina Fey.

Why is the Left in full give-me-back-my-Legions garment rending fury? It's not a rational response, they're reacting to Palin as a symbol. She embodies a force that contradicts their world view. The Roman model is top-down, and has appealed for centuries to the Intellectual Elites who see themselves as potential Imperators, or at least Equites, fit by birth or by Class to instruct the Lower Orders. Palin is through and through representative of the Germanic/Celtic bottom-up system, where talent and determination is more important than Class membership. Coming from nowhere, the Left simply cannot conceive that she could successfully lead opposition to the "Civilized World". And so the deep political crisis of the day is whether she's had a boob job. Meanwhile, the November elections approach. Tactical brilliance will help save some of the Democrats, but the others are surrounded by enraged barbarians voters who see them as arrogant, out of touch, and ruling not for the people (bottom-up) but rather for their K Street lobbyist cronies (top-down). Progressives in general and the Intellectual Left in particular hate the market because it is chaotic and bottom-up, and has no deference to the Intellectual Elite's top-down pretensions. That's what Palin represents, and why they refuse to recognize her has the adversary she really is. Doing so would force them to confront the reality that an Ivy League degree (and Ivy League student debt) doesn't qualify them to rule, that results and not class membership are what matter, and that a horde of barbarians can cut the cream of the Imperial army to pieces when it coalesces around the right leader. Is she the right leader? Time will tell. But so long as the Left continues to spin fantasies about the opposition, their drang nach osten towards a Progressive Utopia is stalled.

Not by treachery, not against pregnant women, but openly against armed men do I wage war. There are still to be seen in the groves of Germany the Roman standards which I hung up to our country's gods. Let Segestes dwell on the conquered bank: let him restore to his son his priestly office; one thing there is which Germans will never thoroughly excuse, their having seen between the Elbe and the Rhine the Roman rods, axes, and toga. Other nations in their ignorance of Roman rule, have no experience of punishments, know nothing of tributes, and, as we have shaken them off, as the great Augustus, ranked among deities, and his chosen heir Tiberius, departed from us, baffled, let us not quail before an inexperienced stripling, before a mutinous army. If you prefer your fatherland, your ancestors, your ancient life to tyrants and to new colonies, follow as your leader Arminius [Hermann] to glory and to freedom rather than Segestes to ignominious servitude.

- Hermann's speech to the Germanni, Tacitus, Annals, 1.59

The Romans did finally retrieve their Eagles, and enshrined them in the Temple of the Avenging Mars. But their border remained the Rhine, and the Germanni unconquered. In the fullness of time, their top-down Empire collapsed of ts own weight, as an indifferent lower class and an incompetent ruling class proved unable to save the Caesars from a bottom-up world. Surrounded like Varus, they disappeared under a wave of barbarians. And good riddance. The Dinosaurs smell change on the air, and roar their defiance.