Posted on 01/21/2005 4:19:45 AM PST by Mikmur
PEGGY NOONAN
Way Too Much God Was the president's speech a case of "mission inebriation"?
The inaugural address itself was startling. It left me with a bad feeling, and reluctant dislike. Rhetorically, it veered from high-class boilerplate to strong and simple sentences, but it was not pedestrian. George W. Bush's second inaugural will no doubt prove historic because it carried a punch, asserting an agenda so sweeping that an observer quipped that by the end he would not have been surprised if the president had announced we were going to colonize Mars. A short and self-conscious preamble led quickly to the meat of the speech: the president's evolving thoughts on freedom in the world. Those thoughts seemed marked by deep moral seriousness and no moral modesty.
The president's speech seemed rather heavenish. It was a God-drenched speech. This president, who has been accused of giving too much attention to religious imagery and religious thought, has not let the criticism enter him. God was invoked relentlessly. "The Author of Liberty." "God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind . . . the longing of the soul."
And yet such promising moments were followed by this, the ending of the speech. "Renewed in our strength--tested, but not weary--we are ready for the greatest achievements in the history of freedom." This is--how else to put it?--over the top. It is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder if this White House did not, in the preparation period, have a case of what I have called in the past "mission inebriation." A sense that there are few legitimate boundaries to the desires born in the goodness of their good hearts.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
Neo-progs.
You NAILED it. That's perfect.
I can almost hear it dripping from Chris Matthews' lips.
"Trying to democratize people who cannot be democratized is not breathtaking, it is pointless."
---
Unless you think they are subhuman..I don't get your point. All humans want to be free if they learn what it means.
Don't know how old this column is...
Religion is something that took decades to catch up with Noonan."My parents were not religious people," she says. "On Sunday mornings they listened to Frank Sinatra." What religious training she had came from her great-aunt Jane, who "used to take me to Mass when I was a little girl. I absorbed something from seeing her say her prayers on her knees at night, and seeing religious pictures in the mirrors in her bedroom. It just sort of suggested to me that all these things may be true. Eventually, by the time I was an adult and in my forties, I just knew I needed God in my life I knew I needed faith very much. I set out to really feel it and to find it and to know it."
Today, she says, "I love to go to Mass. It's the happiest moment of my day, and if I'm home, I'm there."
Her faith is part of what makes her writing unique, according to Bently Elliot, Noonan's former boss at the White House and now vice-president of communications at the New York Stock Exchange. "She embraces God fervently, and helped the President articulate his own, deep faith." Elliot hired Noonan on the recommendation of close friend Kevin Lynch, then the articles editor at National Review.
My information is that 20 or more persons wrote this thing, and it reads like the work of a (loony) committee.
All true except for the "well-grounded conservative" part.
How true. Juan Williams has the same trait.
Once again pointing out the Libertarian fallacy. It does matter what you do in the privacy of your own home, even though the government must not have the right to snoop into it without evidence of crime.
Shalom.
Indeed. I misspoke (miswrote?) when I said "he wrote" it. Surely, he indicated the direction he wanted to take with it and he approved the final draft. Generally, these speeches are largely the product of one person, with others giving tweaks. But if you have sources inside the Bush inner circle...
It hangs together so much better than Clinton's committee-written speeches.
I guess the method is being perfected.
Exactly. A perfect example of this is found in the based-on-a-true-story film "Not Without My Daughter." American Betty Mahmoody marries a very "Westernized" Iranian doctor, goes with him to visit his family in Tehran, and ends up a virtual prisoner forced to escape on the sly through Turkey. The "westernization" was basically a veneer.
Like the Japanese?
Juan positively glowed.
Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self.
I thought it was worth posting again. I love that line. It's a very important point.
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.