[Pokey78]

Ping for the PNPL.

[kancel]

What an inspiring article. A much more positive outloook than the Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times."

Thanks for posting it.

[JimSEA]

"Once more unto the breach . . ."

[Kermit]

I love Peggy Noonans stuff. She really can capture the passion, the suspense, the heroic around us.

"We'd come together to battle the asteroid, pooling our best talent and sharing our genius, wouldn't we?"

She got this wrong. It'll be the Americans taking care of it. Possibly the British, Russians and Germans will help out in some way.

[SuziQ]

A congressman who regularly fills the Capitol with his deranged banter and whose head looks like the last sanctuary of tree squirrels

ROTFL!! She has SUCH a way with words!!

[GretchenEE]

The most significant marker of this time of lore that Peggy writes about is the sense that we are waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It just doesn't seem over yet. There is a suspense in the air that doesn't lift; I cannot help but wonder if we have done enough, if our covert and overt operatives have found enough information to prevent the next attack. It isn't like living under what I would imagine a bombardment is like, or how the Anne Franks of Europe felt while holed up in an attic. It's more a sense in the air, a feeling of wonder: Will another attacker get through? To me that is the best descriptor of the times. And until that sense of wariness can leave us, we are, in a sense, hostages to the unknown abilities, will, and way of the terrorists.

[mercy]

****Maybe we are living in a perceptual warp, in a time when so many stray images and thoughts are coming at us that none of them successfully and completely come to us. ***

Yeah man, like it's been that way ever since I ate all that acid back in '68. Just keeps gittin wierder.

[Despiser of Democrats]

Lyrical writing!

I am reminded of Paul Simons' song "The Boy in the Bubble" from the Graceland album..."These are the days of miracles and wonder"

[BreitbartSentMe]

his opponent, a new-age whack job who, upon his loss, grew a beard and came to look like a portly Gilded Age banker.

What a great description of the Gore-on

[bescobar]

Aliens it's all about them damn aliens from Mars!!! There planning the attack by brain washing the Chinese and Middle Easterners to suck in with a tractor beam a large Asteroid that will kill us all!! Speaking of Asteroids my butt is killing me... Thank God these interesting times produce such wonderful ointments

[maica]

And there is the current president's predecessor, who seems more and more like Warren Harding, president as the Roaring '20s came to a screeching halt--handsome, gray-haired, wayward, blame-deflecting and, as Alice Roosevelt Longworth memorably said, "a slob."

This word picture actually gave me a heart-racing thrill. I will forever think *Warren Harding* when X42s image crosses my sight in the future.

Peggy is such a terrific writer!

This is another wonderful line - He was elected legally but with fewer votes than his opponent, a new-age whack job

Just great!!!

[Valin]

Great stuff! But then it's what we've come to expect from Peggy.

[tear_down_this_wall]

IMHO, one of her best in weeks.

Thanks, Pokey!

[NYer]

The great man of the age, a giant, the old pope, comes to our continent, to Canada, and arouses now a thing he never inspired, pity. Well, pity and awe. The Toronto Sun called the trip "a stubborn act of courage" and said his arrival was "magnificent."

Peggy Noonan ping to the Catholic List

[Brices Crossroads]

Although I have read and enjoyed many of Peggy Noonan's pieces over the years, this was not one of them, for several reasons. First, she praises a lay group that seeks to "wrest some control of the church from the hands of the bishops". This is protestantism at its essence. Someone please tell me why any devout,lay Catholic in the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska would want to wrest control of the Church from Bishop Bruskewicz. The same could be said of many dioceses. The problem lies not in the hierarchical nature of the Catholic Church(which makes it unique) but in some of the bishops who have failed. But that is no reason to try to change the nature of the Church. Nor is it a reason to wish those who try to change the Church in this manner "Good luck."

I also take issue with her "interpretation" that the little girl who greeted the Holy Father was "understandably" frightened by his "rough outer shell." Peggy Noonan may have been repelled by the Pope's condition, but the wave after wave of applause and affection from the million young people told me that the youths at WYD were not only not put off by the Pope's condition but that they loved him even more than in previous years. Being repelled by the Holy Father's condition seems somewhat analogous to being repelled by the Crucifix. Peggy Noonan should have tuned in to EWTN and seen the WHOLE ceremony before drawing a conclusion based upon one snippet.

Finally, comparing the sex abuse scandal with the inquisition, which the unnamed priest does with Noonan's approval, is just an effort to slime the Church. The two episodes have nothing in common, factually, historically or theologically, except for the fact that they are routinely cited by those who wish to bash the Church with compact little "cuss words" like "Inquisition" and " priest sex abuse". Noonan has a right to say what she pleases, but her prose should not be exempt from a critical review.

[Phaedrus]

Once again, Peggy hits it out of the park. She is indeed our Chronicler of the Soul of America, and beautiful to boot. She captures the mood of our times so well -- there is a luminescence and uniqueness to the quality of events these days, a larger-than-life quality, that only she can express, it seems. I hope she lives forever.

[Euro-American Scum]

Bump for the Poet Laureate of FR.