A reader writes:
I think it is important that you show the about-face of someone like Peggy Noonan. Something about it struck me as ridiculous though. I think it is because, whether you reached this conclusion now or three years ago, it came much too late. As a conservative with libertarian leanings, how could you fail to not be suspicious of this administration sooner, led by someone who wrapped himself in the flag after 9-11 and so clearly engaged in fear-mongering? Remember operation flight-suit? By then it was well past the time when reasonable people should have been afraid, not of the terrorists, but of a government so clearly willing to exploit the fears of its citizens for the most trivial partisan gains, a government led by someone so clearly dependent upon extreme political theater to accomplish anything.
I lived 4 blocks north of the WTC, in Tribeca, and as horrible as that was, what I witnessed in this country in the months following scared me more: the total silence of any opposition to the president’s policies after 9-11and the glorification of war and hero-worship engaged in by the mainstream media. Even the internet offered little in the way of alternatives. All the problems we see now I think can be traced to that silence and the excess of maudlin sentiment and lack of perspective all around. It’s absurd to me that many vehement supporters of this president and his policies, the excuse-makers and seemingly innocent people who attacked anyone who opposed the president’s policies as unpatriotic or as a supporter of terrorists, should have much an audience any more.
They abandoned their principles and reason when it counted most. Some of them probably had neither to begin with. There should be a wall of shame for them or perhaps an asterisk by their names for the next ten years, or the word dupe in parenthesis. This president has had so much help from supporters outside of his direct circle of influence, mostly from amoral, ambitious types and the occasional well-meaning but frightened intellectuals; assembled together in their unqualified support for another human being they did an excellent job exploiting the fear and uncertainty of others and silencing any alternative voices – as if those alternative ideas were in fact what they were afraid of, instead of the terrorists. Must not question the fearless, infallible leader.
I worry about what will happen to the United States if there is another terrorist attack and someone like Rudy Guiliani is president. Perhaps he is autocratic, but with pricinples that will restrain. We can hope. As it is now, it seems that Americans must count on the moral backbone of the head of the executive branch to keep from abandoning the American Experiment altogether. But if that is the case, isn’t the experiment already finished?
The Dish 