Peggy hits a grand slam

Peggy Noonan's column today is outstanding... excellent.

In response to an apparent request from Andrew Cuomo for a contribution to a book of essays on the future of the Democrat Party, she wrote the piece appearing as this column. She begins by arguing that the Party has become focused on winning for its own sake, rather than for the sake of a philosophy. Such a philosophy, she later argues, is in fact missing from the modern Democrat Party.

The bulk of the piece, though, argues that the Party is controlled by a bunch of snobs who either openly or secretly look down their noses as Middle America and its values. In this context, she pens a great line, a line which she applies to too many Democrats, but can also be applied to anyone, if they are not careful: "You may mean to be helpful in the abstract, but you are not helpful in the particular."

Replace "helpful" with "compassionate" or "loving"... it's very easy to love humanity, but it's a lot harder to love the particular humans whom we come in contact with in everyday life. The Democrat Party, Peggy argues, has fallen prey to this mentality which enables us to believe that we are helpful, loving, and compassionate without ever actually having to be helpful, loving, and compassionate (again, this is something which afflicts more than Democrats, Peggy's piece not withstanding).

I'd highly recommend reading this essay... if you're a Democrat, I'd love for you to read the piece and then comment here.