Peggy Noonan: Way Too Much God

Wall Street Journal ^ | January 21, 2005 | Peggy Noonan

[RWR8189]

Was the president's speech a case of "mission inebriation"?

It was an interesting Inauguration Day. Washington had warmed up, the swift storm of the previous day had passed, the sky was overcast but the air wasn't painful in a wind-chill way, and the capital was full of men in cowboy hats and women in long furs. In fact, the night of the inaugural balls became known this year as The Night of the Long Furs.

Laura Bush's beauty has grown more obvious; she was chic in shades of white, and smiled warmly. The Bush daughters looked exactly as they are, beautiful and young. A well-behaved city was on its best behavior, everyone from cops to doormen to journalists eager to help visitors in any way.

For me there was some unexpected merriness. In my hotel the night before the inauguration, all the guests were evacuated at 1:45 in the morning. There were fire alarms and flashing lights on each floor, and a public address system instructed us to take the stairs, not the elevators. Hundreds of people wound up outside in the slush, eventually gathering inside the lobby, waiting to find out what next.

The staff--kindly, clucking--tried to figure out if the fire existed and, if so, where it was. Hundreds of inaugural revelers wound up observing each other. Over there on the couch was Warren Buffet in bright blue pajamas and a white hotel robe. James Baker was in trench coat and throat scarf. I remembered my keys and eyeglasses but walked out without my shoes. After a while the "all clear" came,

[Dr. Eckleburg]

pingaroonie...

[JeffAtlanta]

Don't misrepresent. I said she is off in the head because she has a problem with 2 or 3 references to God.

That is exactly what towing the party line is. Zell Miller was in favor of the Iraq liberation which is exactly what conservatives say all the time.

Putting faith in politics is the defacto party line at this moment. Noonan doesn't go along with that and since she isn't towing that line she must be "off in the head."

Her biggest error is that her column's title doesn't really go along with the body of the column. In her column, she criticizes the unrealistic goals laid forth in the speech. Beyond the headline, there was only one very short paragraph that even mentioned God in her column.

[Southern Federalist]

Several comments on this disappointing column:

I don't attribute bad motives to Peggy Noonan, and I generally like her work. My wife and I would hardly have made it through the post-election ordeal in 2000 without her. I think this piece bring to light some real unresolved issues in contemporary conservatism (maybe inside Peggy Noonan, too), which are also visible every day all over this board.

One way to describe it is as a latent disagreement over the real legacy of conservative anticommunism. For conservatives, was the Cold War only necessary in terms of narrowly material national interests, or was it necessary precisely as an ideological crusade? The huge role Natan Scharansky's book played in Bush's speech is a critical element here, because Scharansky is maybe the major voice linking the struggle against Communism with the struggle against Islamic Fascism. What people like Scharansky and Solzhenitsyn have tried to teach us is the old, old lesson that you cannot disengage your "interests" from morality.

There is a deep connection between what the dissidents learned in Soviet prisons and what they have tried to teach us about politics, between Scharansky's Fear No Evil (one of the greatest Soviet prison memoirs) and his new book The Case for Democracy. The lesson is this: the minute you accept the lie, the minute you pretend that evil is good and good is evil, you are a slave. And so you think you are protecting your interests, but what you are really doing is selling yourself. Think of what our pretending that the Saudis are a normal regime, a friendly regime, etc., has bought the United States: a chain (To anticipate criticism, I agree that the Saudi chain is one Bush should do more to break). That is why foreign policy "realism" always turns out to be totally unrealistic (cf. Kissinger and "detente"): it is based on pretending about the most important "real life" factors of all, truth and lies, good and evil. You pretend to yourself that you can cut a deal with the KGB interrogator or the tyrant, and bang! you have plunged into a fool's paradise in which you can no longer see what's real. That is why so called "tough minded" "realism" and soft lefty internationalism have the same basic flaw: they build up tissues of verbiage that have no relationship to reality.

The other point I would raise was pointed out in a good critique of Noonan today by Orrin Judd. He points out that ending tyranny is not the same thing as bringing about Paradise, and there is no reason to believe that Bush thinks it is. He has shown on plenty of occasions that he knows, for example, that a democracy can be capable of embracing a culture of death. Linking American security with an elementary global standard of governmental decency is not, in a world this interdependent, all that utopian.

I'm not sure this is as clear as I would like. I've got some kind of ailment today, and I'm groggy but exercised. Hope the general point is clear.

[exhaustedmomma]

You're welcome!!

[ohioWfan]

OK, you seem like a fair-minded libertarion (which....pardon me if it offends you.....is not a quality the majority who share your political views around here have), and that was a reasoned reply.

The only part with which I must take exception, is the part where you said I was "leaping" to be insulted. I knew you were not insulting me, I just recoiled at your use of the words 'blind followers' as a libertarian talking point, not unlike those the DNC sends out, and that was what I was responding to.

I'm not sure if you're old enough to remember when Rush first came on the air nationally. Thousands of us around the country had the same beliefs as he was stating on air. We had those beliefs long before, but we were (and still are) being called 'blind followers' by the left. Most of us don't agree with Rush all the time, but we are accused (by the left) of marching in blind lockstep with him.

The President is just a few years older than I, and from the time I was in my twenties (while he was drinking too much, partying, and not very interested in politics), I could describe myself as a 'compassionate conservative'......interested in social justice and racial equality, concerned for the poor, but not at the expense of the taxpayer, or with government money. Fiscally conservative, morally conservative, wanting less government rather than more, pro-military and pro-America. At the time, I didn't even know his name.

Now this man comes along, and espouses all the things I have ALWAYS believed in, and is running for President. He becomes President, and proceeds to DO the things I think are important.

He believes what I have believed for 30 years, and yet on this forum, I am routinely accused of being his 'blind follower' when it is patently untrue.

I assume that is also the case for most of the others here who defend him with fervor. Be careful about slinging empty insults at them because others of your political persuasion do so with impunity.

You might just be wrong about us all.

[what's up]

Her biggest error is that her column's title doesn't really go along with the body of the column.

Yes...in using this title she shows she wanted to call attention to the God issue. I'm not sure it's a "mistake" as you put it. Rather, she doesn't like the the 2-3 references to God...and that's clear in the title...that's her opinion.

I don't agree with other points in her article as well but have chosen to remark on the God issue which so blatantly stands out for me.

I have not "towed the party line" about Noonan in the past. Never liked her emotionalism.

[Paperdoll]

I will try to encapsulate as best I can.
I would like to have heard from the President:l. Why the open border policy 2. Why the continuation of the Fed. Dept. of Ed. when our higher institutions are turning out hate mongers 3. Why the tolerance of disbanding of Christiantity while the teaching of Islam is encouraged in elementary and secondary schools. 4. A progress report on the war in Iraq. 5. The problem of anarchy in our own country. I suppose I expected more a state of the nation speech in view of where we find ourselves these days.

1. >From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, snd dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth.< As Christians this is true. Ideally, it would be wonderful if everyone felt the same way about eachother. We are hated throughout the world. Our form of government is even hated within our own country! As Christians we are in the world, but we are not of the world. And as Christians we are hated.

Yes, we should promote freedom by example not by force. We have always been a beacon on the hill and the world hasn't beat a path to democracy. As they say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Although we should not impose our will on others, we should remain forever alert, and never naive.

2. >We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right< This should go over big with Muslims and Communists! Threats are always taken kindly!

3. >We will encourage reform in other governments by making clear that success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people.< They say that people deserve the government they have, and that is true, unless they are kept in complete poverty and starvation. It would be best if the entire world together would change these terrible conditions, thus the possible amalgamation of governments? What is the job of the UN if not to oversee these kinds of problems? Why should it fall on the American taxpayer to try to do what only God can do?

[ohioWfan]

Gee.........the cardinal sin that's first on the list is PRIDE.

Better watch that, mommy. I think you may have some confessing to do.

Thanks again though. You amused me with that one. :o)

[what's up]

You sayPutting faith in politics is the defacto party line at this moment

The fight against godless communism was the party's fight during the entire Cold War, if you will remember. It is not brand new.

Rooting out vestiges of that philosophy which dominated the US thru liberalism will involve many discussions of faith. This will go on for some time until institutions are restored. That is just logic.

[exhaustedmomma]

:)

[section9]

Which sort of surprises the hell out of me. Bush is doing what Reagan did: when the critics thought Reagan had to compromise with Gorbachev, Reagan simply doubled-down. At Berlin. At Reykavik. Reagan understood that men hungered for liberty, and that the Truth would will out. Bush understands this as well.

Bush is doing the same thing on a far grander scale. Why doesn't she get this? Why is it so hard to understand that the author of all that we have and hold allows no man to enslave another, nor any man to tolerate his own slavery.

Reagan does, looking down from on high. Ronnie gets it in spades.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

[windchime]

Personally, I agree with your points, but Noonan has the right to state her opinion. The dramatic change in that opinion within a few hours is what is perplexing.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

Excellent post 406. I do not mind it when columnists criticize Bush (I've criticized him plenty and still do), but this one seems so unfair and off base. If he had done something that deserved this, I would be on her side (though I have never been a fan of her columns). But she is seeing things that aren't there. And too much God? He didn't say anything that hasn't been said many times before by other Presidents.

[Palladin]

Lib, it's nice to get a little backup here. At one time in my life, I taught Speech and Rhetoric, and that was not a great speech.

It was nice and inoffensive and full of Rah-Rah patriotism, but I've heard a thousand and one like it, at American Legion High School speech competitions.

I like the President, I'm 100% behind him in the War on Terror, I love his swaggering Texas-style persona. I only wish there had been more of him in the speech, and less of Rove and the other advisors.

[Mo1]

Many of the same things being said about us "Bush Bots" could have .. and were said 20+years ago with a man named Reagan

They are not the exact same .. but they were/are both good men that love their country and hold strong conservative beliefs

[Unam Sanctam]

I think she could have made the point that idealism should be tempered by a little idealism without dissing the whole speach and the idealism. And yes, just because we conservatives don't believe in human perfectibility on earth does not mean we shouldn't have a long term project to try and make the world better, as it is with liberty and democracy and human rights.

[loveliberty2]

Thank goodness, Washington, the Adamses, Jefferson, Madison, Jay, Franklin, et al didn't have to ask today's pundits about including references to the "Creator," "Governor of the Universe," "Divine Providence," "Nature's God," "Supreme Judge," or the "Author" of liberty, or any of the other terms they used to acknowledge the Source of rights and liberty.

Bush's Second Inaugural is reminiscent of speeches of America's Founding Period, and one of the profound ideas he expressed sounded like the following quotation from Thomas Jefferson's very last letter in 1826. It comes from the UVA Jefferson Cyclopedia:

7628. RIGHTS OF MAN, Recognition of.

"All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by. . . ."

TITLE: To Roger C. Weightman. EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 450. EDITION: Ford ed., x, 391. PLACE: Monticello DATE: June 24, 1826

[cyncooper]

Ms. Noonan is very talented. Talented people tend to get full of themselves, especially if they don't have a spouse and children to assault their egos regularly!

Peggy Noonan is the mother of a son who is still at home. Young teens, I believe.

[cyncooper]

From what I read, they are. It's full of excuses why she must be being led astray. Perhaps she really just feels the way she feels.

Well by that criteria, what is wrong with posters on this forum feeling the way THEY feel? If Noonan can write down her "feelings", then so can posters here.