Sarah Palin’s attacks on Barack Obama for being a socialist are odd enough on their own terms—if supporting progressive taxation makes someone a socialist, then most Americans are socialists, and Red-baiting seems like a rather tired political tactic. But what’s really strange about hearing Palin levy these attacks is that the American state that’s the closest to a socialist paradise is, of course, Palin’s own Alaska. After all, Alaska doles out two thousand dollars a year to every citizen from its oil revenue. That’s revenue the state gets because it owns most of the oil-producing land in Alaska, and it’s revenue that makes up most of Alaska’s annual budget. Indeed, the state’s economy depends so much on oil and natural-gas production that it looks far more like a Middle Eastern petro-state—complete with the cronyism and corruption that are typical of those economies—than like the rest of America. Now, the annual distribution of oil revenue to Alaska’s citizens isn’t a problem—they own the land, so they should get to keep some of the wealth it generates. The problem is Palin’s peculiar brand of hypocrisy. She’s against socialism, but for state ownership of natural resources, and against tax increases, except when they take the form of the windfall-profits tax she helped levy against oil companies last year. Maybe being Red only counts when you live in a blue state.