Peggy Noonan on Mark Felt’s crimes against humanity and history …
The Washington Post said yesterday that Mr. Felt’s information allowed them to continue their probe. That probe brought down a president. Ben Stein is angry but not incorrect: What Mr. Felt helped produce was a weakened president who was a serious president at a serious time. Nixon’s ruin led to a cascade of catastrophic events–the crude and humiliating abandonment of Vietnam and the Vietnamese, the rise of a monster named Pol Pot, and millions–millions–killed in his genocide. America lost confidence; the Soviet Union gained brazenness. What a terrible time. Is it terrible when an American president lies and surrounds himself by dirty tricksters? Yes, it is. How about the butchering of children in the South China Sea. Is that worse? Yes. Infinitely, unforgettably and forever.
And who are the real heroes of Watergate?
Were there heroes of Watergate? Surely many unknown ones, those who did their best to be constructive and not destructive, those who didn’t think it was all about their beautiful careers. I’ll give you a candidate for great man of the era: Chuck Colson. Colson functioned in the Nixon White House as a genuinely bad man, went to prison and emerged a genuinely good man. He told the truth about himself in “Born Again,” a book not fully appreciated as the great Washington classic it is, and has devoted his life to helping prisoners and their families. He paid the price, told the truth, blamed no one but himself, and turned his shame into something helpful. Children aren’t dead because of him. There are children who are alive because of him.
Mark Felt, force of death; Chuck Colson, force of life.
Earlier in the piece, she has this choice sentence: “Mr. Felt simply leaked information gained from his position in government to damage those who were doing what he didn’t want done.”
The stuff truly takes <$NoAd$> your breath away.
I guess, though, we owe Peggy et al. thanks for stipulating for the record that they don’t think anything of any consequence was done wrong in Watergate because that provides a helpful context for understanding why they keep carrying the water of this administration, knowing as they do that many of the same things are happening.
