‘We’ or ‘They’?
Written by Andrew on October 27th, 2006Peggy Noonan has a great essay in the WSJ. Here’s a good pull quote:
But there’s unease in the base too, again for many reasons. One is that it’s clear now to everyone in the Republican Party that Mr. Bush has changed the modern governing definition of “conservative.”
He did this without asking. He did it even without explaining. He didn’t go to the people whose loyalty and support raised him high and say, “This is what I’m doing, this is why I’m changing things, here’s my thinking, here are the implications.” The cynics around him likely thought this a good thing. To explain is to make things clearer, or at least to try, and they probably didn’t want it clear. They had the best of both worlds, a conservative reputation and a liberal reality.
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“. . . the heroic age of the American presidency is, for now, over. No president is going to come along and save us, and Congress isn’t going to save us. Events will cause a reckoning, and then we’ll save ourselves. And in this we will refind our greatness.”
I don’t know how she does it, but nothing I have read or written over the last year so perfectly captures the essence of how I feel about our current political situation.
Yes, let’s refind out greatness. And it won’t be found in DC, it will be found among us, people like Alex and Mark who may be small now, but could oneday reshape the entire nation with the mere power of their ideas.