Posted on 10/30/2009 3:14:39 PM PDT by ckilmer
Peggy Noonan adopts a meme that has been sweeping the blogs of late, the idea that America’s elite is broken; so broken she says, that it doesn’t know it’s broken. In a WSJ article, she describes the current and disastrous reign of “callous children”; people who have “never seen things go dark” and are leading their nation into the abyss. For the first time, she says, the national mood is one of despondency. There are no solutions because the problems come from within. The heirs have grown strange and wayward. They have gone off into the dark to return at whiles speaking in odd voices. Noonan describes the sense of loss she feels in the current economic and political crisis. Everyone had a path through. Now they don’t. The most sophisticated Americans, experienced in how the country works on the ground, can’t figure a way out. Have you heard, “If only we follow Obama and the Democrats, it will all get better”? Or, “If only we follow the Republicans, they’ll make it all work again”? I bet you haven’t, or not much. This is historic. This is something new in modern political history, and I’m not sure we’re fully noticing it. Americans are starting to think the problems we are facing cannot be solved … from the White House through Congress, and so many state and local governments … they are not offering a new path, they are only offering old paths—spend more, regulate more, tax more in an attempt to make us more healthy locally and nationally. … Rep. Barney Frank had just said on some cable show that the Democrats of the White House and Congress “are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area.” The executive [Noonan spoke to] said of Washington: “They don’t understand that people can just stop, get out. I have friends and colleagues who’ve said to me ‘I’m done.’ ” He spoke of his own increasing tax burden and said, “They don’t understand that if they start to tax me so that I’m paying 60%, 55%, I’ll stop.” The bipartisan urge to tax and spend has become an addiction. And amazingly enough, the addicted think the music will never stop. Those words: “I’ll stop” are a phrase that the people in power — “the children” in Noonan’s words — never thought to hear. What? Stop? How can you stop? How can you say there’s no more money? Where have you hidden the money? Those in power think there’ll always be more money, Noonan believes, because there’s always been money. All they had to do was cry louder to make it come. They’ve come to imagine they’ve come into possession of a magic orange. All you have to do is squeeze harder and the juice keeps flowing out. She continues: When I see those in government, both locally and in Washington, spend and tax and come up each day with new ways to spend and tax—health care, cap and trade, etc.—I think: Why aren’t they worried about the impact of what they’re doing? Why do they think America is so strong it can take endless abuse? I think I know part of the answer. It is that they’ve never seen things go dark. … they don’t feel anxious, because they never had anything to be anxious about. They grew up in an America surrounded by phrases—”strongest nation in the world,” “indispensable nation,” “unipolar power,” “highest standard of living”—and are not bright enough, or serious enough, to imagine that they can damage that, hurt it, even fatally. We are governed at all levels by America’s luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they’re not optimists—they’re unimaginative. They don’t have faith, they’ve just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don’t mind it when people become disheartened. They don’t even notice. “They don’t even notice.” But in the end, they must. The one thing no generation of parents can protect their children from is reality. No inheritance can withstand the foolishness of heirs. The harsh arithmetic on the frontier, the terrible outflow of dollars and cents, the gradual and then sudden loss of credibility as people see they are dealing not with serious people but with gilded fools cumulate their irresistible effects. In the end the gay parade of capering children enters a dark cavern and the entrance shuts behind them. Those who don’t want to join in this cavalcade have two duties. The first is to survive; to have the wit to realize that if something can’t go on, then it won’t. The administration is touting “green shoots”. Others might use the phrase “pushing up daisies”. People who can tell the difference have got to rig for depth charges and evade worst; but be ready to take aggressive productive action where they can. But the second duty is more important. Those unentranced by the magic flute have an obligation to remember what happened; to keep the history books free of revisionism so that by shame and memory those pied pipers who led a generation astray can never return unchallenged to sound their witching tune again. But for the children already lost to the dark we can only wish that wherever they have gone, they’ve found what they were looking for. The mayor sent East, West, North and South,
The Lordlings
To offer the Piper, by word of mouth,
Wherever it was men’s lot to find him,
Silver and gold to his heart’s content,
If he’d only return the way he went,
And bring the children behind him.
But when they saw ’twas a lost endeavour,
And Piper and dancers were gone for ever,
They made a decree that lawyers never
Should think their records dated duly
If, after the day of the month and year,
These words did not as well appear,
“And so long after what happened here
“On the Twenty-second of July,
“Thirteen hundred and seventy-six:”
And the better in memory to fix
The place of the children’s last retreat,
They called it, the Pied Piper’s Street –
Where any one playing on pipe or tabor,
Was sure for the future to lose his labour.
Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern
To shock with mirth a street so solemn;
But opposite the place of the cavern
They wrote the story on a column,
And on the great church-window painted
The same, to make the world acquainted
How their children were stolen away,
And there it stands to this very day.
This Web Page Created with PageBreeze Free HTML Editor
A good reason that most of our politicians, State and Federal, need to go.
I agree with Rush. The mood isn’t one of despondency. It’s barely concealed anger.
I think many of “the lordlings” are perhaps useful idiots - others I’m guessing know exactly what they’re doing.
I don’t read Peggy Noonan anymore. But it sounds like she has some nerve pointing out the obvious after her kool-aid laced Obummer cheerleading.
Good riddance Peggy take Brooks and Buckley with you.
Um......didn’t Peggy follow the Pied Piper into the cave last Fall??
yeah that’s the interesting thing. looks like she’s getting it.
It’s a trick. She’s not “getting it.” Noonan never will.
So Peggy, now you wake up. I’m torn between scoffing at your tardiness and praising your ability to crack open the DC bubble wide enough to see out.
So, you think some people are going to quit. You are late again, quite a few of us have already pulled out of the rat/tax race to wait for better times. Check the Federal tax receipts. Those losses are much larger than the unemployment rate would indicate. Those of us who can are lowering our tax exposure until the current fools in power either go away or collapse the entire system. I include many Republicans in the current crop of fools.
I expect this process to take about 15 years. Remember, it took about 40 years to get here. There will be much resistance to the real hope and change, meaning changing to less government on all levels. It’s either that or a total collapse IMO.
Not most, all. Make a clean sweep of it, there aren't enough worthwhile ones to justify the risk of leaving any rotten apples in the barrel. The ones who are unjustly removed can always run again.
Would somebody please explain why the “theme” of Noonan’s article has now transmogrified into a “meme”? Why is her theme actually a meme?
The despondent are the ones who had their faith in O and are slowly realizing that the guy is an incompetent marxian con man.
The people who already knew he was an incompetent marxian con man aren’t despondent, they are ticked. They are starting to bow up. They’ve got no use for weak-kneed bi-partisan GOP swells, they are looking for someone who knows how to fight and isn’t afraid to do it.
The pols who get that and have the nerve to tap into it are going to get a good run out of it. The ones who are too smart for their own good, like maybe Newt and Noonan, and the mushes like McCain and Graham, are going to miss it; they thought they could outdance the devil when they ought never to have danced with him at all.
Life lesson. You don’t dance with the devil. You kick his butt.
DITTO!
Despondency is a place one needs to be in before anger. Some are really depressed, depression is repressed anger. Once they get in touch with their anger, well IMHO all hell will break loose.
At that point O orders to troops to fire on the conservative protesters.
I hate that word. Pointy headed journalists introduced it to the popular lexicon not too long ago, and now it's "hip". I hate hip. I prefer straight talk.
He can do that, but they're not going to shoot their friends, relatives, and fellow Americans.
He can do that, but they're not going to shoot their friends, relatives, and fellow Americans.
From what my military friends tell me...Bambi can't count on them one bit.They will obey LAWFUL orders from a LAWFUL president and not murder their own countrymen.
Note to Emanuel...This isn't China yet.
I wish Freepers would learn to read more carefully. This isn't Peggy Noonan's article - it was written by Wretchard for his blog, The Belmont Club, on Pajamas Media. He merely quoted one of Noonan's comments as part of making his own points.
Wretchard (aka Richard Fernandez) writes some brilliantly creative and insightful essays on his blog. Whether you agree with him or not (and I frequently don't), he is always worth reading.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.