Peggy the ProphetessThe Noonan Prophecies
Peggy Noonan has a gift for the faux-oracular. She is a conservatrix prophetess extraordinaire, always willing to infect her op-ed pieces with "big picture" diatribes on the "current state of things" (that, no matter how good things are going for Republicans, are never quite up to the mythical Age of Reagan).
How this political hack who speaks and writes as if she were an English professor at Bryn Mawr in the 1960s has morphed herself into "cultural critic" says more about our cultural debasement than anything she has to say herself. (I could say the same thing about Chris Matthews or any of the other ex-political operatives who now masquerade as "news people").
Peggy speaks and writes in periodic sentences--with a patrician affectation belied by her birth in Brooklyn as a Catholic girl. Maybe it was Fairleigh Dickinson (not Bryn Mawr) where she picked up that accent that sounds like a female version of William F. Buckley, Jr. The "seriously-ruminating-out-loud" voice, I like to think of it.
The thinker of big thoughts, as the Wizard of Oz would have it.
Her latest hack piece attacks the lack of leadership of the baby-boom generation of privilege.
"We are governed by callous children," she exclaims. (Alas, pigeons on the grass!)
She seems to be attacking Obama (who grew up with a single mother in lean circumstances) and his Ivy League wonk-consortium cronies out of touch with those hard-working capital A Americans who run small businesses (and also work for Big Pharma and run Insurance companies). Those sane for-profit folks who know that the business of America is business.
In her best speech-writerly fashion, she links together a couple "facts" to generate her hypothesis that American leadership is losing what Tom Wolfe diagnosed as "The Right Stuff." (This seems to be a perennial refrain for Peggy-O).
One "fact" is a New York Post article (gee, good cross-promotion, Peg--Rupert M will like) that New York city and state are losing its high-end tax base. I guess they're fleeing to Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware or maybe even the Caymans to protect their assets.
Sound the alarm! High taxes in a recession are running off the rich folk! Especially those high-salaried, income-making rich folks. The kind that has to pay those punitive taxes to support an ungrateful layabout society of under-employed troglodytes.
The second "fact" is a quote from an anonymous source "high up" in the insurance game who is ready to "just quit" after a lifetime of hard work and perks and bonuses.
"I'll just take my football home if Washington wants to regulate me. See how little money I pay in taxes when I'm retired. See! See!" So Joe Insurance-man threatens. (Wonder if he's looked at his 401k lately? Or "profit"-sharing? I guess there's no debt-sharing for these execs.)
Poor pretty Peggy-O, she seems to think there's no one out there to run AIG as badly as the fools who were running it before it wasn't allowed to go "tits up" (as the Brits would say).
Yes, Peg, we have soulless characterless bureaucrats in charge now. Who have been given everything they wanted by parents who suffered through Great Wars and Depressions so that they would not have to. This feckless generation's faith has not been tested--they cannot inspire faith in others. All they can do is offer handouts and regulations in place of spiritual sustenance necessary for inspiring the lower orders to serious self-bootstrap-lifting.
Why does the Republican soul always come back to suffering and faith? Is there a Calvinist, Puritanical streak to Republicanism?
Are the big-business money-making Wall-Street-Journal-reading crowd secretly uneasy with worldly success? (Particularly the Christians, Peggy, the real Christians who share their extraordinary abundance with private foundations?)
Are Republicans not sure they are "the elect" unless they have suffered? Had their faith tested?
Faith in God? Perhaps. Faith in capitalism and the Spencerian survival of the fittest? Definitely. Faith in a God who understands that capitalism (like Free Will) is the best way to "test" his creatures? Nail on the head.
So croon on, Peggy, croon on. Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul and even God (Him especially) are listening.