Friday, January 31, 2014

Meanwhile, Back in America . . .

◼ Sarah Palin: Great article, Peggy, but where the heck were you when I and other commonsense conservatives were sounding the warning bell in '08? You joined the "cool kids" in mocking and condescendingly criticizing -- ultimately demanding that we "sit down and shut up." Better late than never, though, Peggy and your ilk, because, meanwhile back in America...

◼ The growing distance between Washington and the public it dominates. - Peggy Noonan/Wall St. Journal

The State of the Union was a spectacle of delusion and self-congratulation in which a Congress nobody likes rose to cheer a president nobody really likes. It marked the continued degeneration of a great and useful tradition. Viewership was down, to the lowest level since 2000....

I watched at home and thought: They hate it. They being the people, whom we're now supposed to refer to as the folks. But you look at the polls at how people view Washington—one, in October, had almost 9 in 10 disapproving—and you watch a kabuki-like event like this and you know the distance, the psychic, emotional and experiential distance, between Washington and America, between the people and their federal government, is not only real but, actually, carries dangers.

...Meanwhile, back in America, the Little Sisters of the Poor were preparing their legal briefs.

...Meanwhile, back in America, disadvantaged parents in Louisiana—people who could never afford to live in places like McLean, Va., or Chevy Chase, Md.—continue to wait to see what will happen with the state's successful school voucher program.

...Meanwhile, back in America, conservatives targeted and harassed by the Internal Revenue Service still await answers on their years-long requests for tax exempt status.

...All these things—the pushing around of nuns, the limiting of freedoms that were helping kids get a start in life, the targeting of conservative groups—all these things have the effect of breaking bonds of trust between government and the people. They make citizens see Washington as an alien and hostile power.

Washington sees the disaffection. They read the polls, they know.

They call it rage. But it feels more like grief. Like the loss of something you never thought you'd lose, your sense of your country and your place in it, your rights in it.

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