Taking a long view...
I've often wondered when studying about major world civilizations that have come and gone-- Rome and its fall, for instance--what it was like to be living in the last years before the collapse. Would I have sensed it? Would I have been worried about what I saw? Would I have been listening for voices that articulated what I was vaguely feeling? Or would I have been one of the ones with my fingers in my ears, rearranging the chairs on my deck, making sure that I got all I could while the getting was good?
This morning I woke to a whispering of one of the voices to which I often listen. She's not shouting...she's not pontificating...she's not on a soapbox with some dogmatic tirade. She is telling us what she thinks she is seeing, and the degree to which it resonates out here in the country will tell us much about its validity. Yes, it's possible that everyone in the country might disagree with her even if she's right, but I suspect that there will be a lot of heads nodding today. There will be more than one serious thinker who will see words on a page expressing the knot he already feel in his stomach.
Those of you who know me will suspect that the referenced essayist is Peggy Noonan. Here's a taste of what she writes this morning in the Opinion Journal:
I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon. That our pollsters are preoccupied with "right track" and "wrong track" but missing the number of people who think the answer to "How are things going in America?" is "Off the tracks and hurtling forward, toward an unknown destination."
Please, read the whole piece and leave me your thoughts:
OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan
posted by Granny at 10/27/2005 09:14:00 AM
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2 Comments:
From the perspective of a human, a citizen, this is scary and I can't help but nod my head. But from the perspective of a parent, this is chilling, and I want to close my eyes and forget I read it.
St. Augustine's THE CITY OF GOD, should help us keep this reality in perspective. Yes, it is a scary thing to see a society sinking further into depravity (and I believe the West in general and America specifically is doing just that) with the natural (or supernatural if you will) consequence of diminishing status/prestige/power, etc., as God withdraws His hand. Our task is to prepare our children to be good American citizens, but that is secondary to our task to prepare them to be citizens of the City of God. We, like Abraham, are nothing but sojourners, looking for a city whose foundations were not made by man.
In the meantime, we should be about the business of doing the right things, regardless of what goes on around us.
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