Instead of wasting your time on this weekend’s Noonan, go read Freeman Hunt:

Who will be the next Reagan?  Who will be our Thatcher?  Who will show encroaching statism for the tyranny it is and turn the tide against it?  Never mind that Reagan and Thatcher, while they did make great gains, did not turn that tide permanently.  We expect some even greater personage.  The minute a promising face appears we ask, “Could it be? Is this the one?”

I tell you it isn’t.

He is not coming.

We don’t even bother to ask who our next Jefferson or Washington or Adams or Lincoln will be.  We seem to have accepted that we have not produced one of these.  Yet, that is what it would take, isn’t it?  At the very least anyway.  Even then, who knows?  Even that might not be enough.

He is not coming.  And he is not coming because we have not produced him.  From whence would he come?  We are an ignorant people.  Our best and brightest, outside of the hard sciences, are a sorry lot by historical standards.  Intelligence, we have.  Wit, we have in surplus.  But knowledge?  Real, discriminating knowledge, where is it?  Our standards for knowledge are now so low. Now we are only required to sound as if we know. We are masters of rhetorical style, but of wisdom there is a dearth...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 17:12:43 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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