QOTD: Peggy Noonan
by digby
Reflecting on the year, Noonan makes a trenchant observation about the perils of living in this world today:
There aren’t really a lot of nice things about flying. It’s scary, germy, full of delays. They don’t clean the planes as they once did—the tray is not clean and as you open it and see the coke and coffee marks, you wonder if it was used on the last flight by a Senegalese tourist with typhus.
She also quoted a billionaire who says he is worried about the guillotine. As always, she has her finger on the pulse of Real America:
The most arresting words heard this year? A billionaire of New York, in conversation: “I hate it when the market goes up. Every time I hear the stock market went up I know the guillotines are coming closer.” This was interesting in part because the speaker has a lot of money in the market. But he meant it. He is self-made, broadly accomplished, a thinker on politics, and for a moment he was sharing the innards of his mind. His biggest concern is the great and growing distance between the economically successful and those who have not or cannot begin to climb. The division has become too extreme, too dramatic, and static. He fears it will eventually tear the country apart and give rise to policies that are bitter and punishing, not helpful and broadening.
This year I came to understand, at meetings and symposia, that this has become an ongoing preoccupation of the wealthy. They are not oblivious, they are concerned. And though they give away hundreds of millions of dollars to charities, schools and scholarships, they don’t know what can be done to turn the overall economic picture around. Globalization isn’t leaving, industrial manufacturing isn’t coming back as it was, technology will continue to give jobs to the educated, and the ever-evolving mischief of men and markets won’t change.
They are worried. They are right to be. They are trying to think it through, trying to find any realistic solutions, and words.
I think most of them — the ones that agree with Noonan’s politics anyway — know exactly what’s to be done: cut government spending and cut their taxes. That’s always what they think should be done, no matter what the circumstance.
But I’m quite sure they’re willing to support what they see as government’s primary purpose — police, military and “security.” That’s one thing they’re always willing to pay for. And for good reason.
