Ditto.
This entire essay may be Noonan's greatest contribution to date.
Thanks for the post, Pokey78.
Exactly what I have been saying to anyone who will listen.
A big Bravo for Peggy, she has really hit a home run with this one.
Read Job chapter 33 (thats in the Bible) if you want the solution to getting off the wide path to destruction. Its great news, unlike all the crap the Bush administration has started tossing on us. Won't you come home Karen, and restore reality to the drunk on 75% poll numbers Bush adminstration.
I wish I could say that Bush's speech today gives me peace of mind, unless it's just the first of many sudden changes that will set things right again.
I'm not talking about Bush and his announced plan to create a Department of Homeland Security.
I'm not talking about Rush Limbaugh, who is a great talker, but he's not what the change is about.
Certain visible opinion leaders are beginning to step out in front of public opinion and demand radical changes in our domestic security structure, regarding profiling, border security, and other areas politicians and people like Tom Ridge won't touch.
I count them as follows:
Lou Dobbs mentioning Islamists.
Bill O'Reilly on border security, and today, indirectly calling for pre-emptive assassinations of terrorists (in a discussion about the CIA)
An opinion leader, I forget who, who on the Wall Street Journal op-ed page said we should pre-announce that we will nuke Mecca if a major American city is nuked
Now this piece by Peggy Noonan
Hopefully this can snowball and begin to be recognized by the popular culture.
Some people call these ideas conservative, but I think this opinion stream is going under the banner of common sense. (Conservatives would just say conservatism IS common sense).
This is one of the great things about our society, that opinion can move like this. Hopefully it will be fast enough to work that we can have something in place before the next strike. If not, hopefully the next strike will be a glancing blow and the next strike can wake up any segment of the population that has any self-preservation instincts left.
Meanwhile, idiots like Noam Chomsky prattle.
Call me superstitious if you like, but because of my religious belief, and because I believe there is a prime mover of evil in the world, a personality, Satan, I believe bad things WILL continue to happen. Possibly this will lead to the end of the world, I don't know. I just believe that because Satan is Lord of the current earth, he WILL have continued successes. We should continue to pray that the Lord will give us a protective shield.
Elected officials are very good at second guessing past things and saying 'this is not an effort to point fingers', all the while pointing fingers.
This is what 40 years of flower-power-hippie-love-smoke-that-doobie philosophy has left us: Afraid to defend ourselves for it will make us appear hard and uncompassionate to our enemies.
And, gee, it's all our fault for oppressing the noble savages anyway, so we deserve to die. Seem like an outrageously over-the-top statement? If you polled our glorious institutions of higher education nationally, solid majorities would opine that we do deserve it. It reminds me of the famous Oxford student vote in the mid 1930's, where the flower of British youthful intelligensia declared overwhelmingly that they would not fight in a war to defend their country. Hitler took note of that fine little exercise in academic freedom. Our enemies are watching us in the same manner today
If another shoe does drop in NY or D.C., my fervent hope is that the only casualties are the staunch Mr. Bloomberg who opined recently that even if another 9/11 were to occur because of it, he would still oppose profiling because that was a greater evil than mass murder, and the ever-correct Mr. Mineta. They, at least, really would deserve it.
Anyone know if this article has been published yet? It's not in last Sunday's NYT Magazine, and media society inner-circle New Yorkers like Peggy get next Sunday's issue delivered to them by hand the Wednesday before.
Judging from the conversations I've had over the last nine months, when the next shoe drops, if profiling isn't implemented immediately, there are a lot of people out there willing to start going vigilante, and/or marching (rioting?) on Washington to demand it.
I sometimes wonder how many of the important decisions made by our leaders are determined by similar childhood memories rather than adult rational decision-making processes.
Thanks to Peggy, and thanks for the ping.
"Fiddling while Rome burned" comes to mind.
This says it all, thanks, once again, to Peggy Noonan. Wake up, Senate! Wake up, Bush! Half-measures will not do. Profile young Arab/Islamic males. Use your common sense! Time is running out.