NOONAN: It's Policy, Not Poetry

OpinionJournal ^ | 12/16/2004 | Peggy Noonan

[Ruth A.]

Wow, this is such an elegant home run article.

She has given the Dems a bulldozer of an idea to get themselves out of the hole, but they won't listen. Of course, it would be good for the country, but that makes no matter to the Dem leadership either. Were Hillary smart she would jump on this before any other Dem did. Am I holding my breath?

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The liberal is a person with a subconscious. The more conservative is your temperament, the less a subconscious you have.

Not sure I agree. The difference is really the willingness of the conservative to ask the second question. Not just,

"Wouldn't it be great if the story of the moment making me feel bad could be cured by some great protector?",

but

"What would be the effects of the various possibilities for ameliorating this situation?"

[Terabitten]

Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter, ping.

[terabyte]

Fabulous article...smart lady.

[Noachian]

You can get so well educated in America that your thoughts become detached from common sense. You can get so complicated in your thinking that the obvious isn't real to you anymore.

This is the phenomenon known as "overly-educated", and it's primarily an affliction of liberals.

[Bushforlife]

I've always viewed Peggy Noonan as being one of the Poet Laureates of Conservatism. She certainly has a knack for an elegant turn of phrase, and for injecting just the right emotional nuance into the discussion. I have read some discussions on FR to the effect that the emotion in her material is in some way inappropriate, but IMHO what she says [and the way she says it] resonates with how many of us truly do feel.
I must admit that I like to read her material because she makes me nostalgic for the Gipper. I don't think that it's because she was his speech writer, but more likely that he influenced her intellectually in the manner that a respected and admired teacher can do. IMHO.

[q_an_a]

thanks - can't wait for her next book, all she writes is great prose.

[Forgiven_Sinner]

"The liberal is a person with a subconscious. The more conservative is your temperament, the less a subconscious you have. Literally. So when you're a Peggy Noonan and some leftist academic asks you about rummaging around in voters' subconscious, you have no idea what she is talking about."

Thanks. You've explained something that has always puzzled me. I haven't believed in a subconscious, at least, as Freud described it, and wondered why people did believe in it. I was self aware of my decisions from my childhood and knew why I made my decisions. They weren't always good or right or well informed, but I knew why I made decisions. Making choices without knowing why was alien to me.

As I've gotten older, I realize many people make decisions like that because they don't want to know their own reasons. They want to lie to themselves because they don't like what they do and why they did. Self honesty, even if brutally critical, is essential to my personality. I'd rather deal with an unpleasant truth about myself than lie to myself and have reality smack me in the face with the lie.

I think lying to oneself is the nature of being a liberal.

[Taliesan]

Thanks. You've explained something that has always puzzled me. I haven't believed in a subconscious, at least, as Freud described it, and wondered why people did believe in it. I was self aware of my decisions from my childhood and knew why I made my decisions. They weren't always good or right or well informed, but I knew why I made decisions. Making choices without knowing why was alien to me.

We know as much about ourselves as we want to know.

I've always been amused by the whole debate prompted by Freud about motivations. Some people have argued powerfully for the Freudian picture of the soul as a stratified, murky lakebed; others have argued just as powerfully that he was all bunk. To me, the obvious answer is that souls are different and both sides of the argument are true. I've met people who I thought were a walking bag of complexes, and I've known people who were refreshingly less complex than that.

Liberals seem to like "complex" characters in fiction, "nuanced" politicians, and "sophisticated" verbal wittiness. Anybody who is not "complex" is stupid.

It has never occurred to them that the opposite of "complex" might be "healthy", and might really exist.

[Monti Cello]

They're playing he only card they have left - and it's a deuce.

Yup. When you sit down at the mainframe of the LIBTRON 2004 Black Box Liberal Policy Scheme Device, and type in '9/11' or 'religious sentiment in the rise' or 'ownership society' you hear grinding noises and smell smoke and a little slip pops out that says 'DOES NOT COMPUTE'.

So they are left making excuses for their lack of real thoughts while they decide what to do about their machine up on blocks.

[Ditto]

Amazing how Republicans are always associated with Scrooge and the Grinch in the public mind -- an image propagated by the press at every opportunity.

We need a Conservative production of The Christmas Carole.

Terry McCalluf as Scrooge.

Some old time Democrat like Wm. Jennings Bryant as "Ghost of Christmas Past"

Tiny Tim is just a ultra-sound image waiting outside an abortion clinic.