Peggy Noonan

Well-known works

 * wrote the famous "Read my lips: no new taxes" speech
 * coined the phrase "a kinder, gentler nation"

Comments

 * a "contemptible shill and far-right lickspittle" (3:33 "Anonymous" posting on Contrary Brin, 2005-12-06)

Quotes
"I note here what is to me a mystery. It is that people with lower IQs somehow tend, in our age, to have a greater apprehension of the meaning of things and the reality of life, than do our high-IQ professionals, who often seem, in areas outside their immediate field, startlingly dim. I don't know why intellectuals--or cerebralists or eggheads or IQ hegemonists--seem to miss the most obvious things, floating on untethered by common sense. If you talk to a brilliant scholar at a fine university about social policy, chances are he will say with honest perplexity that he cannot understand--really cannot understand--why people would not want men to marry men, or women women. I wish there were a name for this, for the cluelessness of the more intellectually accomplished, the simpler but truer wisdom of those who are often less lettered and less accomplished." --Peggy Noonan, The Heat Is On, 2006-07-20
 * Stefan Jones replies in Contrary Brin 2006-07-28, 10:24 PM:

HUH?

Here we see Noonan for what she is: A pandering demogogue who works for think tanks and advocates policies which benefit the kleptocracy, but coos soothingly about the humble wisdom of plain ordinary folks. "What Noonan does here is illustrate a phenomenon we should study carefully and recognize in all of its forms. In fact, it is what all enemies of America and the Enlightenment do... coining fancy rationalizations to explain away facts that would otherwise have to be acknowledged. Nay, recognized as clear refutations of their entire position."
 * David Brin says in Contrary Brin 2006-07-29, in part:
 * : Not that this is news to many readers of this site, but count me among those who don't understand why people would not want men to marry men or women to marry women either (and I don't even have a degree!). Stating it the way she does is basically argument by ridicule, aside from the ad hominem name-calling ("eggheads", "IQ hegemonists").