Peggy Noonan On the Thought Leaders
Shortly before noon on Tuesday, January 28, 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger took off from Cape Canavarel, Florida, to put a new tracking and data relay satellite into orbit.
Seventy-three seconds into the flight, the spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean. All seven astronauts aboard were killed.
Among those astronauts was the first member of the Teacher in Space Project, Christa McAuliffe.
That night President Ronald Reagan was scheduled to deliver his State of the Union message to Congress and the Nation. Instead, he gave what American Rhetoric has named the 8th most important political speech of the 20th Century.
The speech was written by his young Special Assistant, Peggy Noonan.
A former commentary writer for ultra-liberal CBS Nightly News anchor, Dan Rather, Noonan would go on to a long career as writer, journalist, political commentator, college professor, consultant for network television dramas and GOP activist — though many conservatives consider her a RINO (Republican In Name Only).
She became a critic of George W. Bush in 2005– after his second inauguration—and supported Barack Obama in 2008.
A dweller on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, in many ways — except for her having graduated from Fairleigh Dickinson University — she perfectly fits the template for what Codevilla calls this country’s educated elite — East Coast Liberal Republican branch.
Yesterday, in her regular weekly column in the Wall Street Journal, Noonan announced “America Is At Risk Of Boiling Over: And out-of-touch leaders don’t see the need to cool things off”.
She sees ordinary Americans — The Country to use Codevilla’s term — with “a kind of tough knowingness” seeing that “the effects of 30 years of a low, sad culture” have left “the whole country messed up”.
She squarely lays the blame on “the country’s thought leaders, as they’re called—the political and media class, the universities”.
She says, “…they make their moves, manipulate this issue and that, and keep things at a high boil”.
She goes on, “those in authority take actions that reveal their detachment from the concerns—even from the essential nature—of their fellow citizens”.
There’s an impassioned, intelligent set of hundreds of comments at Noonan’s WSJ column.
