I remember when I had dinner with Peggy Noonan here in mid-Michigan along with three or four hundred other people. She was the guest speaker at a local Republican event and I was smitten with how she made me think more clearly about what I believe. That had to be more than a decade ago.
She does the same with her column in the Wall Street Journal. In her latest offering which was published Friday, she writes about conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart who recently died.
Noonan recounted his passionate battle with any liberaal politician or any so-called progressive. He was in a full-time holy war and never took his foot off the throttle. Liberals were considered by enemies by him.
Noonan comments about this attitude
But in their fight against liberalism and its demands, too many conservatives have unconsciously come to ape the left. They too became all politics all the time. Friendships were based on it, friendships were lost over it. "You agree with me? You're in. You don't? You're out." They became as good at ousting, excluding and anathematizing as Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, as Jacobins. As self-righteous, too, and as adept at dehumanizing the enemy.
It is not progress when you become what you hate, when you take on its sickest aspect.
The result is continued polarization and balkanazation of this country. How do we swing this back in a productive way? Is it too late?