Peggy Noonan and St. Paul

Well, my love affair with Peggy Noonan continues. She is that all-too-rare combination: a lady, a Conservative, a human, demonstrably non-insane, and a thinker (although I disagree, and quite vigorously so, with several positions she has held), something nearly as hard to find as 'small town values' in small towns.

Tonight Ms. Noonan was on the Daily Show to promote her new book, Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now. The title will be disturbing in some quarters for its inclusion of the term 'patriotic,' syllables which, when mispronounced, rhyme rather effortlessly with volk and kokutai (国体). I, however, would advise those naysayers to notice the second word, grace, and reflect on what our country, its politicians, and its political contests, might look like were grace, alongside its parents maturity and reflection, to be employed more widely.

Nor did Ms. Noonan's performance belie her espousal of grace as a virtue. She was calm, soft-spoken, persuasive, and did not once wink, wrinkle her nose, lick her finger and stick it in the air, or escalate her pitch to shrill or girlish levels. She spoke, reasoned, and comported herself like an adult, something which one should hope might pass unremarked, yet cannot for its rarity. And despite Ms. Noonan's recent still-on-microphone gaffe in which she used mild profanity and dismissed the wisdom of the Palin nomination, her ladylike demeanor and reasonable speech helped stifle almost all of John Stewart's customary swearing.

Part of Sarah Palin's gut demagogic appeal, I suspect, is that she acts like a girl. She is unintimidating, even when she resorts to the crudest, most puerile sarcasm. But girlishness, or childishness, does not engender respect, nor does it facilitate rational conversation or debate. I entertain grave doubts that the Corinthians wore red peep-toe pumps or bobbed their heads coquettishly while pursuing the Vice-Presidency, but Paul nonetheless saw fit to caution them thus: “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became a man, I put childish ways behind me”(1 Corinthians 13:11). Would that the majority of American politicians follow Peggy Noonan and do the same thing.

'Shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it;-this is knowledge.' -Confucius