Take Heart Peggy Noonan

 

back in 2016...

In 2016 Peggy wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal indicating the party is not the same party it was before future President Donald Trump was running. She was shocked at a person who would strike back with the same venom displayed by those striking him. I wrote this response but did not submit it to the WSJ simply due to no time. Here it is

Peggy, perhaps the Republican Party is shattering, but perhaps this is what a real fight looks like. This is the first real open, all-out ideological fight we have seen perhaps since the American Civil War. We Americans eventually react to a crisis of character. We certainly have all the crisis of character we can eat. Much of the Republican Party and voters are fed up with it. It is the snake on the factory floor that they need to stomp on and get back to business. This is exactly what they are doing. I am impressed with the Republican reaction to the insanity of doing the same thing over and over.

The Democratic Party “shattered” a little over twenty years ago with the arrival of the Clintons. Bill’s winning smile and extreme 1960s agenda changed their game from the ground up. It came to only remotely resemble that of Carter, Johnson, or Kennedy. They morphed it in a few short months. What they were told over and over became their truth and the rest is history. This is the point.

Compare the two responses. Democrats generally fell in line and did what they were told over the years with little argument. Their complacency got them a party that changed to almost unrecognizable. They also got more of everything they were promised they would not: poverty, crime, low academic test scores, terror, and dreaded global warming. Most of all, their freedoms eroded. They witnessed their leaders, both Clintons, as criminals or near criminals and routinely sidling up with a seedy global underbelly while behind closed doors. After years of considering this “normal” behavior, they ultimately elected a president that is intellectually and practically not up to the job and routinely abuses Constitutional power. They elect representatives freely admitting they do not understand what they vote for. As power concentrates in the hands of fewer and fewer, Democratic voters simply take their beatings. They do not fight back. Republicans are showing a different spine.

They show grit. By nature, they appear to be leaders. They are freedom fighters. They feel that they do best when the government does the least. They call out immorality. They revolt when their leaders make up the rules.

Over the last 75 years, they have felt the heavy hand of encroaching government with truckloads of regulations and new laws. Many are not even understood by the mostly Democrat ruling class implementing them. Their freedom has been confiscated inch by inch. They are pushing back, unlike Democrats. Perhaps this is healthy not only for the party but the country as well. Understand, though, that their success is a long shot. I recall that only about one in three of the colonists were in favor of a rebellion in the 1770s. They were a long shot, too.

Peggy, the character you admire in people is being played out before your eyes. These people choose not to roll over. They may lose the country. They may restore the country. All is on the line. You have sided with people unwilling to exchange safety for freedom.

We tend to think of freedom as a condition. It is really not, though. It is a process. Mankind is fallen. Our condition as free people is one of conflict and constant defense. Attackers always attack freedom wherever it is. If you are free, you are attacked. The United States remains an experiment. Individuals believing they can succeed against all odds in the pursuit of freedom are making this country great again.