I'm ambivalent about Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal column today. She makes some wise observations, but her column fails to rise to her usual fluid standard. It seems like a draft waiting for more attention to structure and polishing. Nevertheless I include here a few of her contrasts between the "Old America" (represented by Sen. McCain) and the "New America" (represented by Obama). See also Dennis Prager's reflections on the same subject posted a few days ago. Herewith brief excerpts from Noonan's column today::
-In the Old America, love of country was natural. You breathed it in. You either loved it or knew you should.
In the New America, love of country is a decision. It's one you make after weighing the pros and cons. What you breathe in is skepticism and a heightened appreciation of the global view.
- The Old America: Religion is good. The New America: Religion is problematic.
- Mr. McCain is the old world of concepts like "personal honor," of a manliness that was a style of being, of an attachment to the fact of higher principles.
Mr. Obama is the new world, which is marked in part by doubt as to the excellence of the old. It prizes ambivalence as proof of thoughtfulness, as evidence of a textured seriousness.