There were many extraordinarily bad things in Peggy Noonan's latest - the most obvious being her funeral oration for the golden goose of free-market capitalism. For a good general takedown, see Scott Rosenberg's commentary.
What struck me was something a little different, namely this: she attacks the Obama administration for obscurantist language, then serves up the following...
The second great fear [after the death of the aforementioned goose] is that the balance between those who pay taxes and those who need benefits will be left, after the great flurry, all out of whack. When this balance is deeply disturbed or distorted, when the number of those who need to take truly overwhelms those who need to make, a tipping point occurs. People become disheartened. Generations become resigned. Tiredness steps in. We will miss irrational exuberance.
Ah, excuse me, Peggy, but isn't that your own brand of linguistic fog? First of all, there's the odd passive tone. Apparently because of some external oppression - the arrival of socialistic, Obama-speaking technocrats - "[the] balance is... disturbed... People become disheartened. Generations become resigned. Tiredness steps in." There has been a great disturbance in the Force. Attention must be paid.
If I'm not mistaken, the balance was disturbed and the people became disheartened because of irrational exuberance. It's not being taken away arbitrarily - it's what got us here. Basically, she's telling us that the passengers on the Titanic miss recklessness and bad shiphandling.
But apart from the Ayn-Randian melodrama, there's also this insidious bit: "...when the number of those who need to take truly overwhelms those who need to make..." Once again, a tap on the shoulder... Miss Noonan? A large number of those who need to take used to be those who need to make. That's true in my case... and in my father's case... and in millions of other cases. See, it's not that there's a permanent underclass desperately scrabbling at the wallets of the overachievers. It's that the people who swallowed the party line and tried to be overachievers are now below the line. Disheartened. Resigned. Tired. All thanks to that terrific irrational exuberance, again.
Of course, the problem is that Noonan thinks there is a scrabbling underclass - and that it's undermining the moral fiber of good hardworking people in her "Old America." The truth is there aren't two classes - instead, there's a steady flow between them. At the moment the flow is mostly downward. Yesterday's have is today's have-not.
But to admit that suggests that something's wrong in the system, and that the irrationally exuberant free market may not be the answer, and that "old America" is a bit like Willoughby. A nice image. Shame it doesn't exist anymore. Shame it never did. But you can get there if you try.
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