Embarrassing the Angels

I want to revise and extend my remarks, as they say, from last week's column on airport security. The reaction was great, but I have two reasons to amend. The first is that I didn't really get to the heart of what is for me most offensive about airport security, and the second is that that thing, the most offensive part, connects to a larger, and I think more painful, fact of our culture.

I start with a dictionary definition, not that anyone needs it because everyone knows what a lady is. According to American Heritage, a lady is a well-mannered and considerate woman with high standards of proper behavior. "A woman, especially when spoken of or to in a polite way." Under usage, American Heritage says, "lady is normally used as a parallel to gentleman to emphasize norms expected in polite society or situations."

Do I think this way, in these terms, because I am exceptionally virtuous? Oh no. I'm below average in virtue, and even I know it's all gotten low and rough and disturbed.

"You are embarrassing the angels." This is what I intend to say for the next 40 days whenever I see someone who is hurting the culture, hurting human dignity, denying the stature of a human being. I mean to say it with belief, with an eye to instruction, but also pointedly, uncompromisingly. As a lady would. All invited to join in.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father," (Penguin, 2005), which you can order from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.

"You are embarrassing the angels." This is what I intend to say for the next 40 days whenever I see someone who is hurting the culture, hurting human dignity, denying the stature of a human being.

Peggy’s article on the wonderfulness of the Clintons at the Coretta Scott King funeral embarassed the angels.

Thank you for posting this, and pinging it.

I fear we are losing sight of the issues Ms. Noonan raises here, that we collectively have come to accept the gradual coarsening of our discourse, and the erosion of our personal dignity.

This melting-away of our civility isn't the sort of thing that grabs headlines; it is not the sort of thing that functions as a flashpoint. It is not a topic that "shouts;" it cannot compete with "masturbation!" as a topic from the stage.

But it is the battleground where our future will be decided. If the trends do not reverse, I fear we will end up with a uniquely American version of the Taliban in charge, one where private is public to an infinite degree.

You know, in this nation we are truly blessed with peace and prosperity. How else could the "personal views on sexual questions ... be Topic A on the national agenda in America right now"?

While Ms. Noonan's felt rightly violated by her treatment at the airport, imagine how much worse her treatment would be in Saddam's Iraq, the Taliban's Afghanistan, Mao's China, Stalin's Soviet Union, and so forth.

Thank God for the foresight of the Founding Fathers; I think the Second Amendment and the RKBA give us the ability to hold off that sort of totalitarian society here in the USA.

Because, without that, it could happen here.

As for me, I'm a little embarrassed to read Ms. Noonan publicly writing, even tangentially, about masturbation! If there is one public figure who I view as a Lady, it surely is Peggy. Tain't nothin' wrong with it, but surely let's all keep it private!!

As for her protests that "I'm below average in virtue", I think that rings as true as my being below average in Gluttony! Surely that is not true!

Again, thanks for the post - sorry to go on at such length.

I feel the same way Peggy Noonan does. You just have to have memories that go back to the 1950's, or recourse to old movies, to see that our public life in public places, our culture, has become coarse, offensive, crude and vulgar: what's poured in our ears, what's offered to our eyes, the dismal seepage that trickles into our souls.

You want to be kind; you want to be part of a local community, a national community where you treat people with consideration and you yourself are treated with consideration; you want people to show respect, to turn down the volume, to act like rational and even lovable beings. And when the offenses come, as they do in multiples every time you venture out of your house, you just don't know how to respond.

My husband is a deep-down decent and considerate man; my kids are helpful and polite; even my aged father is a darling. But how DO you respond to magazine covers at the supermarket checkout that are nearly pornographic, loud (ha) "music" (ha, ha) that features vile contempt, sleazy young guys on the corner with filty slogans on their T-shirts?

Glad I don't fly. I'd hate the physical invasion of my personal space. Even without flying, I feel I'm being spiritually violated by my culture, my country, my used-to-be God-bless-America.

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