The Briefing Room
General Category => Editorial/Opinion/Blogs => Topic started by: Fishrrman on May 25, 2019, 06:49:24 pm
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http://www.peggynoonan.com/the-two-americas-have-grown-much-fiercer/ (http://www.peggynoonan.com/the-two-americas-have-grown-much-fiercer/)
The Two Americas Have Grown Much Fiercer
Peggy Noonan
The Wall Street Journal: March 28, 2019
Excerpt:
In my lifetime I have seen two things that have helped us reorder ourselves as a nation into some rough if temporary unity. Tragedy, such as 9/11, is one. Sheer political popularity is another. Ronald Reagan had two authentic landslides, the second time, in 1984, winning 49 states. Today’s America doesn’t yield outcomes like that. But there was something we did then that could never happen now.
Writing is never pleasurable, at least for anyone sane, but the most pleasurable and satisfying speeches I worked on with Reagan were those in which you get to bring your love for the other side. A Rose Garden speech praising the excellence of Scoop Jackson or JFK, a speech never given on the excellence of Eleanor Roosevelt. We quoted Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman more than Dwight Eisenhower. The boss had been a Democrat. He’d stumped for Truman in ’48 with Truman. Reagan was not sentimental about our divisions—he knew exactly why he was not a Democrat anymore—but he took every chance he could to reach across the lines and hold on.
But that kind of popularity is probably not possible in this environment. That’s for many reasons, and one is that policy demands have become maximalist. It’s not enough that contraceptives be covered in the government-mandated plan; the nuns must conform. It’s not enough you be sensitive to the effect of your words and language; you must be punished for saying or thinking the wrong thing. It’s not enough that gay marriage is legal; you must be forced to bake the cake. It won’t do that attention be paid to scientific arguments on the environment; America must upend itself with green new deals or be judged not to care about children.
Nothing can be moderate or incremental, everything must be sweeping and definitive. It is all so maximalist, and bullying.
...So I am worried, which is the point of this piece. The war between Trump and not-Trump will continue, will not be resolved, will get meaner. One side will win and one side will lose and the nation will go on, changed.
More at URL above...
Poster's note:
A month old, but still of interest.
Did a search, didn't see it posted earlier.
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Peggy Noonan is a squish. At no point in the story does she admit the Leftists started it, years before she ever wrote a Presidential speech. She's never been a terribly deep person, and can't seem to remember how the Rats hoodwinked Reagan on the immigration thing, and on the spending thing too.
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. It was called “The Two Americas,†and was elegantly written and prescient. The candidates were so unlike each other that they seemed to represent different “instincts†about America. “They suggested almost two different countries, two different cultures, two different Americas,†Mr. Morrow wrote. “The McGovern campaign marches to the rhythms of the long, Wagnerian ’60sâ€â€”racial upheaval, the war, feminism, the sexual revolution. McGovernites had a more romantic conception of what leadership could be, should be.
But whatever one thinks of her, her insights here are on the mark. And for the most part in the article.
One side will win and one side will lose and the nation will go on, changed.
Yes, we are in a battle, really boiling down to the McGovernism of back then.