Peggy Noonan shreds Chris Christie

[jct74]

posted on Rand's facebook page


Why Christie Is Wrong

by Peggy Noonan
August 5, 2013, 9:40 PM

I can’t shake my dismay at Gov. Chris Christie’s comments, 12 days ago, on those who question and challenge what we know or think we do of the American national security state.

Speaking at an Aspen Institute gathering attended by major Republican Party donors, a venue at which you really don’t want to make news, Christie jumped at the chance to speak on the tension between civil liberties and government surveillance. He apparently doesn’t see any tension.

Christie doesn’t like seeing the nature and extent of government surveillance being questioned or doubted. He doesn’t like “this strain of libertarianism that’s going through both parties right now.” In fact, it reflects “a very dangerous thought.” He said: “These esoteric, intellectual debates—I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation.” Those who challenge surveillance programs may come to regret it: “The next attack that comes, that kills thousands of Americans as a result, people are going to be looking back on the people having this intellectual debate and wondering whether they put—” Here, according to Jonathan Martin’s report in the New York Times, Christie cut himself off.

The audience—again, including GOP moneymen, at the tony Aspen Institute—was, according to Martin, enthralled. They loved it.

Libertarians and many others did not. I did not.

...

read more:
http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/2013/08/05/why-christie-is-wrong/

[AuH20]

The Aspen Institute is largely funded by foundations such as the Carnegie Corporation, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation, by seminar fees, and by individual donations. Its board of trustees includes leaders from politics, government, business and academia who also contribute to its support. Board members include Madeleine Albright, Sylvia Earle, Henry Louis Gates, David Gergen, David H. Koch, Queen Noor of Jordan, and Condoleezza Rice[1]. Walter Isaacson is President and CEO.

Who is Walter Isaacson?



Walter Isaacson – CFR Member, Trilateral Commission member, Rhodes scholar. Wrote an autobiography of Kissinger, Vice-chair of the ‘Partners for a new beginning’, former Chairman and CEO of CNN and Managing editor of TIME mag. Obama appointed him chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (basically an organization running american propaganda towards the foreign world, outside of America).

[neoreactionary]

This is excellent. Peggy Noonan, George Will, Newt Gingrich . . . these are people it will be very helpful to have on our side come primary season.

[Anti-Neocon]

This is excellent. Peggy Noonan, George Will, Newt Gingrich . . . these are people it will be very helpful to have on our side come primary season.
I'd hold my breath about them being on our side come primary season, but I'll accept any mainstream GOP allies.

[FSP-Rebel]

Nice to see Rand taking a media off-day so that the anti-Graham factions can go full court press.

[Bern]

Rand is reasonable. Christie is rabid.

[anaconda]

No mention of Rand in the article.

[georgiaboy]

To call growing concerns about the size, depth, history, ways and operations of our now-huge national-security operation “esoteric” or merely abstract is, simply, absurd. Our federal government is involved in massive data collection that apparently includes a database of almost every phone call made in the U.S. The adequacy of oversight for this system is at best unclear. The courts involved are shadowed in secrecy and controversy. Is it really wrong or foolhardy or unacceptably thoughtful to wonder if the surveillance apparatus is excessive, or will be abused, or will erode, or perhaps in time end, any expectation of communications privacy held by honest citizens?

It is not. These are right and appropriate concerns, very American ones.

...

The concerns of normal Americans about the new world we’re entering—the world where Big Brother seems inexorably to be coming to life and we are all, at least potentially Winston Smith—is not only legitimate, it is wise and historically grounded.

Yep.

[jct74]

neocon Jonathan Tobin is upset that too many conservatives including Peggy Noonan and George Will are siding with Rand Paul over Chris Christie regarding the national security debate


Wrong on Paul? Christie Showed Leadership

Jonathan S. Tobin
08.06.2013 - 7:20 PM

Rand Paul is the quintessential outsider of American politics. Like his ally Ted Cruz, his disdain for the sensibilities of the Washington establishment is matched only by his refusal to play its rules. But the willingness of some members of the conservative establishment to come to Paul’s defense after New Jersey Governor Chris Christie took him to task is a disturbing sign of the crackup of a generations-old Republican consensus on foreign and defense policy. George Will’s brush back of Christie wasn’t surprising as he has always been a critic of post 9/11 American foreign and defense policy. But Peggy Noonan’s attack on Christie in the Wall Street Journal removes all doubt that some of veteran members of the GOP’s chattering class are headed off the reservation.

The timing of this attack, like Paul ally Rep. Justin Amash’s claim that NSA leaker Edward Snowden is a courageous “whistleblower” and not a traitor, is unfortunate. While Noonan characterizes Christie’s attempt to refocus Americans on the reality of a war still being waged on the United States by Islamist terrorists as “manipulative” and as ”an appeal to emotion, not to logic,” it is she who is ignoring the larger context of the debate Paul has launched. While all government power deserves scrutiny, her allusion to a “national security” state — the old line of the hard left that has now been appropriated by some on the right — and Orwell’s Winston Smith is disturbing because it bespeaks not the natural skepticism of the conservative but the knee-jerk isolationism of a libertarian movement that has never cared much for America’s global responsibilities or the need to engage with the world and face our enemies. The isolationist impulse that Paul and Amash are seeking to promote is not a case of “conservatives acting like conservatives,” as Noonan put it, but a disturbing retreat that could, as Christie pointed out, produce awful consequences.

...

read more:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/08/06/wrong-on-paul-christie-showed-leadership-peggy-noonan-isolationism/