Was Feminism Necessary to Produce Sarah Palin?

As a nice bookend to the Hagan piece linked earlier today, Harvey Mansfield, notorious for fighting grade inflation at Harvard and for being one of the few faculty members there whom Buckley would have consented to be governed by, writes a brilliant column on the antecedents that produced Sarah Palin. It opens:

Was feminism necessary to produce Sarah Palin's fine performance at the Republican Convention? She is of course no heroine to radical feminists, who disliked everything she said, but could one rightly say--could they say--that she is indebted to their brand of feminism for the opportunity she used so successfully? I'm speaking of the feminism that says that women can be equal to men only when they are held to be the same as men.

Read it all.

H/T Bill Kristol at The Weekly Standard's blog.