Former Ronald Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan used her column in the Wall Street Journal on Friday to once again lament the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance programs, arguing that programs could upend “Americans’ love of country.”
I feel that almost everyone who talks about America for a living—politicians and journalists and even historians—is missing a huge and essential story: that too many things are happening that are making a lot of Americans feel a new distance from, a frayed affiliation with, the country they have loved for half a century and more, the country they loved without every having to think about it, so natural was it. This isn’t the kind of thing that can be quantified in polls—it’s barely the kind of thing people admit to themselves. But talk to older Americans—they feel they barely know this country anymore. In governance its crucial to stay within parameters, it’s important not to strain ties, push too far, be extreme. And if you think this does not carry implications for down the road, for our healthy continuance as a nation, you are mistaken. Love keeps great nations going.
Noonan has emerged as a conservative critic of the NSA’s collection of phone and Internet data. Last week, she contended that most Americans held a “broadly held assumption” that the extraordinary measures taken by the government after 9/11 would only be temporary.
