Peggy Noonan and the Dangers of Uncritical Thinking

Elvis Presley, as most would agree, sang beautiful songs. But he was wise enough not to attempt composing any of them. Peggy Noonan has written beautiful words and phrases, but she should have the wisdom to collaborate with a sound thinker whose thoughts, not hers, might be expressed through her belles-lettres. In her attempts to appear thoughtful, writing rhythmically from an Olympian perch, she dispenses vapidity disguised as wisdom. Her recent column, “A Republic, But Can We Keep It?” unwittingly shows the danger of a lack of critical thinking to our republic, not, as she claims to demonstrate, the dangers to the country of President Trump’s unconventional, decidedly not pretty, style.

This article purports to tell us all the ways that President Trump has violated our republic’s sacred norms and thus endangers the republic. There is no doubt but that the president is often vulgar, profane, and insulting, offending those who value dignity in our country’s officials. These are fair criticisms. But there is arguably a kernel of common sense in many, perhaps most, of his substantive projects that is lost on citizens who judge primarily on appearance.

As John Stuart Mill so eloquently wrote in 1835, our republic was founded on liberty, which in turn is achieved by principled argument and discussion. Thus, what our republic urgently needs today are thinkers who can separate wheat from chaff and argue about this frantic presidency on substance, not style. We have plenty of TDS victims and Rachel Maddow commentators in the vast legacy media, and do not need any more reflexive bombast. The problem with Ms. Noonan joining this vapid, uncritical crowd is that she claims the conservative mantle of Reagan and Bush Sr. Peggy Noonan is a conservative and a Republican, so her criticisms of Trump must be valid. So, to the extent she cites conclusions that are supposedly beyond principled argument, she thereby uses her status to stifle the very debate that is so crucial to our democratic republic.