The right-wing commentariat is showing signs of senility. I’m reading more and more mainstream wingnut editorials that make no sense, that are poorly written, constructed, and articulated. Peggy Noonan’s They Should Have Killed Him is a case in point. She’s upset that Zacarias Moussaoui was not sentenced to death. In itself, that is a rational reaction shared by a large percentage of Americans. But her response is just bizarre. First, she says this:
It is as if we’ve become sophisticated beyond our intelligence, savvy beyond wisdom. Some might say we are showing a great and careful generosity, as befits a great nation. But maybe we’re just, or also, rolling in our high-mindedness like a puppy in the grass. Maybe we are losing some crude old grit. Maybe it’s not good we lose it.
This has echoes of Shelby Steele’s lament that we have lost our belief in the superiority of the white race, and therefore the self-confidence to use sufficient violence in Iraq. Noonan thinks the decision of these jurors is some kind of metaphor for America as a whole. We’ve lost the ability to give an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This is just silly. The jurors made a decision in this particular case…they didn’t do away with the death penalty. Part of Noonan’s problem is that she doesn’t have the internal voice that would tell her the following is illogical (emphasis mine).
I happen, as most adults do, to feel a general ambivalence toward the death penalty. But I know why it exists. It is the expression of a certitude, of a shared national conviction, about the value of a human life. It says the deliberate and planned taking of a human life is so serious, such a wound to justice, such a tearing at the human fabric, that there is only one price that is justly paid for it, and that is the forfeiting of the life of the perpetrator. It is society’s way of saying that murder is serious, dreadfully serious, the most serious of all human transgressions.
Noonan has no problem saying that the deliberate and planned taking of a human life is such a serious wound to justice that the only answer for it is to have the justice system deliberately take a human life. Some people have no irony sensors. There are arguments that can made in favor of the death penalty. Noonan’s is the worst I’ve ever seen. But, where she truly comes unhinged is with the following bizarre paragraph.
I have the sense that many good people in our country, normal modest folk who used to be forced to endure being patronized and instructed by the elites of all spheres–the academy and law and the media–have sort of given up and cut to the chase. They don’t wait to be instructed in the higher virtues by the professional class now. They immediately incorporate and reflect the correct wisdom before they’re lectured.
I’m not sure this is progress. It feels not like the higher compassion but the lower evasion. It feels dainty in a way that speaks not of gentleness but fear.
I’m not sure what to make of this pablum. She seems to be lamenting the fact that ordinary folks are no longer willing to be forced to endure moral lecturing from the elites in academies, law schools, and the media. I am reading that correctly? Is she saying that the ‘professional class’ has been instructing modest folks to enforce the death penalty, but that this verdict indicates that modest folk are no longer listening? Has the professional class lost their ability to overcome modest folks ‘gentleness’ and get them to exact the full measure of vengeance?
This seems to be a growing theme with the right-wing. I think they are seeing a collapse in morale over the war in Iraq and they are lurching about looking for some bogeyman to explain it. Rather than look at the lies and lack of competence of their Dear Leader, they are going after modest folks. They just won’t listen to the media anymore.
Even if Noonan feels that way, it’s strange to see her express it so openly. In fact, it’s so strange that I’m not even sure she meant to say what she appears to have said. It’s another example of an established Republican wordsmith suddenly losing their eloquence and coherence.
It’s not just the administration that is coming unglued. It’s their whole mighty wurlitzer.