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Tell us what jla thinks

Give me a second or two, I'm putting in a Natalie MacMaster CD ---

...ahh yes, one of my favorites from the fiddlin' virtuosa... Tullochgorum.

Now, what was your question? Oh yes! The Peggy Noonan column:

Our Founders, especially Thomas J, believed vehemently in freedom of expression.
Yes, the practice of such may be at times impolite, out of place, or downright rude. Yet, we have here, in the United States, the solemn right, not a privilege, to do just that.
This is what PN was exultant over. She made it very clear that she did not think the remarks made by the Clinton-duo, Jimmah C., and the most reverend Lowery were to her taste, yet she is ecstatic that she lives in a country where these folks, for voicing dissenting opinions and acting rudely, aren't carried off and shot.

PN referring to Bill Clinton as "the master" is not a term of endearment. (Let's not forget that PN wrote the book The Case Against Hillary Clinton).

Peggy Noonan loves this country the same way RR did, and as I, and a lot of others do.
We sleep well at night, not worrying that some evil Clinton bogeyman lies under the bed.
We sleep sounding, and dream sweet dreams. We do so because we believe in our Founders, we believe in America, and most importantly, we believe in God.

This column by Peggy Noonan was an hymn to America!.

"So what? This was the authentic sound of a vibrant democracy doing its thing. It was the exact opposite of the frightened and prissy attitude that if you draw a picture I don't like, I'll have to kill you." --- Peggy Noonan

"By God, she sounds just like Jefferson!"

Sorry for the belated reply. Just awoke and noticed your post. (As I told you, I've been nursing the flu.)

This is beautiful, jla. And it captures the essence of the compelling part of the Noonan piece.

This part of her essay is precisely the part that I was talking about when I wrote: "I thought her analysis of Coretta Scott King's funeral provided an interesting and coherent--if disputable--point of view." If I made an error here, it is that I understated just how compelling this part of the essay is. Thanks for not allowing that understatement to stand.

I also said this compelling part was "disputable." It is disputable because there is a natural tension between freedom and responsibility, between what is a right and what is right; it is disputable because people were practicing the limits of freedom of expression, often for opportunistic reasons, at the expense of honoring the dead at another family's funeral.

So the part of the essay you discuss so beautifully is indeed compelling; but it is also disputable.

The other part of the essay, the unfathomable part, is the part in which Peggy waxes poetic about a pair of serial abusers of women, a pair of serial abusers of power. That is the part that my essay addresses.

We sleep well at night, not worrying that some evil Clinton bogeyman lies under the bed.

We do? What was that I heard last night under my bed, the resting cats ears perked up before they scampered into the walkin closet.

;-)

****

I do have a lingering fear that, if that dark, dark day should one day arrive that 'The Beast' becomes 'First Thug', she will be able to find out (as with the FBI files) who we all are, all of us who have been poking at her and Billy Jeff over the years. We'll be off to re-education camps...... or worse.

;-)

Well, considering the fact that Jefferson was an elitist snob shopaholic, who reveled in turning up at his own dinner parties, dressed in a ratty old bathrobe, in a sate of dishabille, treating his embarrassed guest THE finest food and French wines, that he could NOT afford, but which he used to IMPRESS those he looked down his long, thin, aristo nose on, perhaps he would have also loved "the master" Billy BJ. Yet,he most assuredly wrote and spoke on a vastly higher plan than she.

Or, did you mean the Thomas Jefferson, who engaged a professional dirt digger, teller of tale tales, mud slinger pamphleteer, who wrote lies about his political rivals. Unfortunately for Tom, this self same person, angry as a wet hen, for not getting what he expected, turned the tables on Jefferson...slinging mud all over Tom, by spreading the lie about him and Sally Hemmings, which far too many people, down to today, still believe; erroneously.