Peggy Noonan: An Idiot In The Extreme

I've often noted on this blog that the good, patriotic Americans who oppose extremism in this country never go far enough in responding to the attacks from the Radical Right. And that's why I found right-wing extremist Peggy Noonan's recent Wall Street Journal column to be pretty hysterical. She writes:

Free speech means hearing things you like and agree with, and it means allowing others to speak whose views you do not like or agree with. This--listening to the other person with respect and forbearance, and with an acceptance of human diversity--is the price we pay for living in a great democracy. And it is a really low price for such a great thing.

We all know this, at least in the abstract. Why are so many forgetting it in the particular?

Let us be more pointed. Students, stars, media movers, academics: They are always saying they want debate, but they don't. They want their vision imposed. They want to win. And if the win doesn't come quickly, they'll rush the stage, curse you out, attempt to intimidate.

And they don't always recognize themselves to be bullying. So full of their righteousness are they that they have lost the ability to judge themselves and their manner.

And all this continues to come more from the left than the right in America.

Please excuse the indelicate language, but is she fucking kidding me? Does Noonan really believe that more vitriol is coming from the left than from the right? Does she ever listen to Oxycontin Rush or Heil Hannity? If not, then why not? Is it because she's been living in a Pakistani cave these last few years raising bin Laden's love child?

Eric Boehlert has this to say in response to Noonan's ridiculous assertions:

Noonan's attempted maneuver about grace and free speech is clunky, but it's not unfamiliar. She's simply mimicking a popular right-wing attack that happens to be a classic Rovian, jujitsu thrust, which is to acknowledge your own weakness -- unhinged hatred for liberals and bullying desire to muzzle dissent -- and relentlessly project it onto your opponents, arguing that they're the ones who have blinders on and are driven by partisan rage. Consequently, Republican pundits pretend it's high-minded conservatives -- gentlemen and women who prefer the Queensbury Rules of intellectual combat -- who are trying to cling to a fading notion of poise and civility in the public square.

Where to begin? You could start with Media Matters for America's catalog of graceless attacks made by the likes of O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh, who owe their careers to their willingness to assault political opponents and stomp on minority viewpoints. In terms of Noonan herself, travel back to last year's Terri Schiavo right-to-die controversy and try to find the grace hidden in the insults Noonan hurled against anyone who disagreed with her radical notion that Congress needed to overrule the rights of Schiavo's husband and keep Terri alive via legislation. To Noonan, her opponents had a "bizarre passion" for death, were "unstable," "unhinged," and "red-fanged and ravenous." She warned that they were paving "the low road that twists past Columbine and leads toward Auschwitz."

And keep in mind that, by 2000, Noonan had literally run out of ways to call Clinton a creep and a predator (she once suggested he was being sexually blackmailed by Fidel Castro's intelligence service), so she started demonizing Al Gore, who was "not fully stable" and "altogether as strange and disturbing as Bill Clinton." And Noonan was actually late to the Gore name-calling game, which formed the foundation for mainstream conservative commentary during the 2000 election when Gore was "a monster willing to trash the whole country" (The National Review; 12/04/00) as well as being "self-obsessed, conniving, dangerous" (The Weekly Standard; 12/04/00).

The rest of Boehlert's response to Noonan is pretty good and is definitely worth reading. I find it troubling, though, that Boehlert felt compelled to write it. I mean, isn't it obvious that Noonan is completely full of shit?

Of course it is. But extremists like Noonan have no problem writing such crap because they know that right-wing blowhards pretty much dominate the political discussion in America these days and that no one in the Mainstream Media (except for Keith Olbermann) will challenge their nonsense.