#Peggy Noonan

[dk-thrive]

Touch the face of God

“In the story I’ve been telling myself lately, I became a poet, or became interested in becoming a poet, on January 28th, 1986, at the age of seven”—that is, the day the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated seventy-three seconds into its flight. The narrator recalls the power that Ronald Reagan’s subsequent speech—written by Peggy Noonan—had on him that night. The ending—one of the most famous conclusions of any presidential speech—entered my body as much as my mind:

We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

— Maggie Nelson, from "Beyond All Change. On Ben Lerner’s 10:04" in "Like Love: Essays and Conversations." (Graywolf Press, April 2, 2024)

#ben lerner #maggie nelson #like love #death #god #peggy Noonan #ronald reagan

[stoweboyd]

Parody of the Edward Hopper painting ‘Nighthawks’ depicting a few lonely workers in a brightly-lit office. ILLUSTRATION: MARTIN KOZLOWSKI

via The Lonely Office Is Bad for America

#peggy noonan #the lonely office #work #sociology

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

#quotes #DeSantis #Peggy Noonan #WSJ

[pargery]

I think the biggest reason for Congress’s behavioral deterioration may be simply that all Americans now, especially people in politics, are media-addled.

Lawmakers don’t experience themselves as political figures doing the business of the nation but as actors in a streaming series called “Populism!” on some tacky cable network, and they have to keep it lively and keep the action going.

--Peggy Noonan, "So You Think You Want a Political Fighter?" in @wsj November 17 2023

#Peggy Noonan #us congress #politicians behaving badly

[lizardtracks]

Peggy Noonan

I must admit that I ignore a lot of the pro/con stuff being written about AI. Maybe it will be the salvation of mankind. Maybe it will destroy its creators. Who knows? But one headline caught my eye. Well, not the headline exactly, but the byline. The article was by Peggy Noonan.

I haven’t read anything by Peggy Noonan in practically a quarter of a century. In fact, I am in a socioeconomic class that has little use for the Wall Street Journal in general. But I read Noonan’s opinion on AI. And I was surprised by her reason for wanting a moratorium on its development. She fears that AI will deceive us.

But, Peggy, isn’t that your job? Hasn’t that been your entire career? Didn’t you win a Pulitzer Prize for exactly that? In the words of the prize committee your commentary was lauded for "rising to the moment with beautifully rendered columns that connected readers to the shared virtues of Americans during one of the nation's most divisive political campaigns.” And whatever slop you wrote in 2016 to convince us that Americans still had shared values was nothing compared to your willingness to drumbeat us into accepting the Second Gulf War.

Where I come from, using pretty words to gaslight people is the very definition of deceit.

Don’t worry, Peggy. When AI takes over you will still get your Pulitzer Prizes for bullshit. AI won’t be winning those anytime soon. But if your fears about AI are founded, you will have a competitor in deceiving humanity.

#peggy noonan #WJS #wall streeet journal #pulitzer prize #deceit

[sgreffenius]

Respect for institutions and rule of law

In a recent WSJ article, Peggy Noonan argues that when people lose faith in their institutions, the whole society suffers. It loses its cohesion. Faith in foundational institutions, such as rule of law, is essential for democracy to work, and for overall order and stability. Only cohesive societies can maintain these qualities.

A key implication of this argument - and Noonan is not subtle about this point - is that we should not undermine these institutions. People who do so undermine the whole society, and do no service to anyone. We can criticize our institutions, of course. That’s what it means to live in a democracy. We must not, however, lead people to lose faith in them, distrust them, or become alienated from them.

I am a good example of the latter type of critic. I have written dozens of articles, whose main point is to make people see that the FBI - and by extension the Department of Justice - are bad jokes. Their very existence undermines rule of law. The sooner we rid ourselves of these pustules on the state, the sooner we can restore rule of law, respect for legal institutions, and free ourselves of the fear that poisons our sense of community.

I need offer only one example here: Waco. We approach the thirtieth anniversary of that horrific travesty. The FBI and the Department of Justice are responsible for that mass murder. Yet no official, not Attorney General Janet Reno, not FBI Director William Sessions, not any of the FBI agents on the scene, took responsibility for the outcome. What was the outcome? A religious group that minded its own business was wiped out.

In my critiques, I have tried to stick with more recent transgressions, such as the FBI’s involvement in the 2016 election and its aftermath. Of course, you can go further back, to the 1950s, when the FBI illegally targeted Communists and homosexuals. No matter what decade you select, you can discover activities in the FBI inconsistent with the rule of law, or worse, activities that undermine our rights in ways we cannot repair.

Why then, should we maintain respect for institutions that do not deserve it? Noonan is not the only defender of so-called democratic institutions, who suggest that we cannot expect good government if critics constantly encourage people to run it down. I can only respond with a brief question: what if the criticisms are true? What if the FBI threatens democracy far more than its critics do?

#FBI #Peggy Noonan #Waco #Janet Reno #William Sessions

[usunezukoinezu]

People often refer to their consciences—they say things like “My conscience is clear.” It’s not an unknown entity to them. But they seem to think it’s something they were born with, like a sense of smell. When actually a conscience has to be formed and developed or it doesn’t work.

Peggy Noonan

#Peggy Noonan

[deadpopes]

If I’m interested in learning more about Pope John Paul II, do you have any good book recs? Love both of your blogs by the way!!

Thank you! I’m sorry that I didn’t see this question earlier; I always tend to overlook the papal blog because I’m so terrible at updating it.

There are tons of books about Pope John Paul II, so I’ll try to narrow the suggestions down to a handful:

•George Weigel’s two-volume biography of John Paul II is almost certainly the best-known and definitive studies of John Paul II’s life from Poland to the Vatican. The first volume, Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (BOOK | KINDLE), was originally published in 1999 and tracks the Polish Pope from birth until the turn of the millennium.

The second volume of Weigel’s biography, The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II -- The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (BOOK | KINDLE), was published in 2010 and devotes almost the entire first half of the book to an in-depth look at John Paul II’s lifelong crusade against Communism. The other half of the book focuses on the Pope’s final years as his health began to fail and as he seemingly used his very public physical deterioration as a lesson in suffering, humility, and strength until his death in April 2005.

In 2017, Weigel published another book -- Lessons In Hope: My Unexpected Life with St. John Paul II (BOOK | KINDLE) -- which isn’t a traditional biography, but a much more personal book about Weigel’s journey as the Pope’s biographer and his relationship with John Paul II over the years. It’s unique compared to his formal biographies because it shows John Paul II from a different, more human perspective than that of the infallible “Keeper of the Keys to Heaven”.

Some of the other books that I’ll suggest are very good, but they can also feel incomplete because John Paul II’s papacy lasted so long that the authors were only able to capture certain parts of his reign.

•His Holiness: John Paul II and the Hidden History of Our Time (BOOK | Kindle not available) by Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi is one of those books that is solid but not a complete history of the Pope’s reign because it was published in 1996, nearly 10 years before John Paul II’s death. And, yes, the co-author is the Carl Bernstein of Washington Post/Watergate/All the President’s Men/Woodward & Bernstein fame.

•John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spiritual Father (BOOK | Kindle not available) by former Ronald Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan was published shortly after John Paul II’s death in 2005 and is excellent. Noonan’s book is also very personal to the author and paints a portrait of John Paul II that helps us understand what he meant to so many people. Noonan also helps explain the source of the Pope’s unique charisma and how he used his immense natural political gifts to reach his audiences. 

•The Pontiff In Winter: Triumph and Conflict in the Reign of John Paul II (BOOK | KINDLE) by John Cornwell is not the most flattering book about Pope John Paul II, but it is an important book to get a balanced understanding of his life and of the health of the Catholic Church towards the end of John Paul II’s papacy. Cornwell has long been one of the best connected Vatican journalists and this book is important because it questions how much blame should have or could have been placed on John Paul II for the scandals and corruption that simmered below the surface inside the Vatican throughout his reign.

•John Paul II: My Beloved Predecessor (BOOK | Kindle not available) is a short collection of writings and homilies by Pope Benedict XVI that he wrote about John Paul II over the years -- as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger while John Paul II was alive, and as Benedict XVI after succeeding John Paul II in 2005. There’s nothing earth-shattering in the book, but it’s an interesting look at one Pope directly from the pen of another Pope.

•The last recommendation isn’t a book about Pope John Paul II, but a book written by John Paul II: The Place Within: The Poetry of Pope John Paul II (BOOK | Kindle not available). This book of poetry written by John Paul II at various points throughout his long life is an incredibly unique window into the soul of a Pope. Some of the poems -- which are translated into English from John Paul II’s native language of Polish by Jerzy Peterkiewicz -- are quite good! Like I said, it’s not a biography of John Paul II, but in many ways reading his poetry can be just as revealing.

#Books #Book Suggestions #Book Recommendations #Popes #History #Pope John Paul II #John Paul II #Books about Popes #Papal History #Papacy #St. John Paul II #Pope St. John Paul II #George Weigel #Peggy Noonan #John Cornwell #Pope Benedict XVI #Joseph Ratzinger #Carl Bernstein #Marco Politi

[parttimereporter]

Peggy Noonan writes about the Uvalde school shooting: the scandal

The great sin in what happened in Texas is that an 18-year-old with murder in his heart walked into a public school and shot to death 19 kids and two teachers. The great shock is what the police did—their incompetence on the scene and apparent lies afterward. This aspect has rocked the American people.

Uvalde wasn’t an “apparent law-enforcement failure.” It is the biggest law-enforcement scandal since George Floyd, and therefore one of the biggest in U.S. history. Children, some already shot, some not, were trapped in adjoining classrooms. As many as 19 cops were gathered in the hall just outside. The Washington Post timeline has the killer roaming the classrooms: “The attack went for so long, witnesses said, that the gunman had time to taunt his victims before killing them, even putting on songs that one student described to CNN as ‘I-want-people-to-die music.’ ”

#Peggy noonan

[dk-thrive]

Tolstoy himself is still alive. He isn’t gone, his mind is still producing, he continues in human consciousness.

Don’t be afraid to visit old worlds. Man is man, wherever he is you can follow.

Sometimes a thing is called a masterpiece because it is a masterpiece.

When you allow a past work of art to enter your mind and imagination you are embarked on a kind of reclamation project, a rescue mission. As you read, Nicholas and Sonya are alive, but Tolstoy himself is still alive. He isn’t gone, his mind is still producing, he continues in human consciousness. You are continuing something. You should feel satisfaction in this.

— Peggy Noonan, from "My Summer With Leo Tolstoy. This year I finally resolved to read ‘War and Peace.’ To think I might have died without having read it." (wsj.com, August 31, 2023)

#classics #read #reading #books #Leo Tolstoy #masterpiece #War & Peace #Peggy Noonan

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[Steve Brodner]

* * * * *

[From Wall Street Journal :: Peggy Noonan]

Peggy Noonan: As to soft Trump supporters, the charges do nothing to keep them in his camp. They reinforce the arguments of former Trump Republicans now backing other candidates: He was our guy but in the end he’s all danger and loss. What were Mr. Trump’s motives? Why would he refuse to give the documents back, move them around Mar-a-Lago, mislead his own lawyers about their status and content?

Because everything’s his. He is by nature covetous. “My papers” he called them. Because of vanity: Look at this handwritten letter. Kim Jong Un loves Trump. See who I was? Look at this invasion plan. Because he wished to have, at hand, cherry-picked documentation he could deploy to undercut assertions by those who worked with him that he ordered them to do wild and reckless things.

My fear is that Mar-a-Lago is a nest of spies. Membership in the private club isn’t fully or deeply vetted; anyone can join who has the money (Mr. Trump reportedly charges a $200,000 initiation fee). A spy—not a good one, just your basic idiot spy—would know of the documents scattered throughout the property, and of many other things. All our international friends and foes would know.

Strange things happen in Mar-a-Lago. In 2019 a Chinese woman carrying four cellphones, a hard drive and a thumb drive infected with malware breezed past security and entered without authorization. She was arrested and jailed for eight months. Another Chinese woman was arrested soon after; a jury acquitted her of trespassing but convicted her of resisting arrest. In 2021 a “Ukrainian fake heiress and alleged charity scammer” gained access, according to the Guardian.

Who else has? Mar-a-Lago isn’t secure. Those documents didn’t belong there. It is a danger to our country that they were. This story will do Mr. Trump no good with his supporters. It will hurt him—maybe not a lot but some, maybe not soon but in time. I mean the quiet Trump supporters, not big mouths and people making money on the game, but honest people.

#spies #Mar-a-Lago #corruption #TFG #national security #a nest of spies #conmen and scammers #Steve Brodner #Peggy Noonan #Wall Street Journal

[incorrectlooneytunesquotes]

The battle for the mind of Stupor Duck was like the trench warfare of Woild War I: never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain.

Bat-Rabbit

#bugs bunny #source: peggy noonan

[deadpresidents]

Who would you say are some exceptional female historians who've written about the US presidency?

There are scores of great female Presidential historians, so any quick list that I make will invariably leave deserving historians out and I apologize ahead of time. Before I begin the list, I want to give special recognition to one of the very best: Doris Kearns Goodwin's bibliography measures up against the books of any and all Presidential historians. Her first book, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream: The Most Revealing Portrait of a President and Presidential Power Ever Written (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) was originally published in 1976 but, in my opinion, remains one of the greatest Presidential biographies EVER written.

Others, in no particular order: •Margaret Leech •Amy S. Greenberg •Elizabeth Drew •Brenda Wineapple •Candice Millard •Amity Shlaes •Jan Jarboe Russell •Annette Gordon-Reed •Alexis Coe •Lady Bird Johnson (her diaries are priceless first-person accounts of her husband's Presidency and life in the White House) •Joanne B. Freeman •Lynne Cheney (surprisingly to most people, the wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney is a respected historian who has written excellent books on James Madison and the early Presidents from Virginia) •Fawn Brodie •Aida D. Donald •Kate Andersen Brower •Elizabeth Brown Pryor •Peggy Noonan •Nancy Gibbs •Nancy Isenberg •Susan Swain •Margaret Truman •Edna Greene Medford

#History #Presidents #Presidency #Presidential History #Presidential Historians #Writers #Women in History #Female Presidential Historians #Doris Kearns Goodwin

[readingsquotes]

"Condescension, dismissal, and misrepresentation from elite journalists kind of proves the students’ point: they should be wary of the mainstream media’s intentions, as mainstream media has consistently misrepresented the movement’s goals. These journalists are holding student activists to a standard that they don’t hold other organizations to — including their own workplaces.

Journalists from the New York Times, the Atlantic, and the Wall Street Journal are powerful professionals at the top of their fields who regularly deal with media spokespeople. The organizations they work for enforce message discipline by investigating reporters’ leaks, directing inquiries to media liaisons, and maintaining strict social media policies that control how (and if) their employees weigh in on unfolding events. Many of the organizations’ reporters’ interviewees, such as universities, make it clear that individuals do not speak for the organization as a whole. Media policies are standard operating procedure for contemporary organizations and movements. A White House correspondent like Baker is surely used to talking with spokespeople.

Refusing to grant students the courtesy of talking to their chosen representatives — a courtesy that is part of the job when questioning the powerful — is of a piece with the disrespect often reflected in the reporting and commentary that demeans and misrepresents student protesters’ motivations and goals."

....

It is not difficult to figure out what pro-Palestinian student protesters want. Organizers at multiple encampments have written, publicized, and advertised their demands. Their disciplined refusal to break message discipline shows a remarkable seriousness. Their refusal also sends a message to mainstream journalism they feel has failed to rise to the historical moment: prestige journalism, examine thyself.

#mainstream media #corporate media #student activism #student protests #palestine #free palestine #gaza #genocide #isreal #colonization #apartheid #american imperialism #us politics #police state

[anonymoushouseplantfan]

Peggy Noonan compares him to Fredo! Very thoughtful essay though.

[philosophicalconservatism]

"Cynicism is not realistic and tough. It's unrealistic and kind of cowardly because it means you don't have to try."

Peggy Noonan (1950-) presidential speech writer.

#cynicism