I have been a big admirer of Peggy Noonan’s since the time she was writing speeches for Ronald Reagan. We share a common Christian-Catholic faith that serves as a common ground for trying to understand each other’s philosophies of life and politics—which many times differ from each other. In my opinion she has the heart of a Joan of Arc, and the literary talent of a Hemmingway or Mark Twain. There is both soul and thought—faith and experience, that permeates all her writings. Two paragraphs in today’s Wall Street Journal show how faith and politics are joined at the hip, and they demonstrate precisely what Donald Trump was able to understand—and his opponents still don’t appreciate. One comes from F. Scott Fitzgerald and the other from C. S. Lewis:
“A century ago in a short story, F. Scott Fitzgerald said the rich are different from you and me. Ernest Hemingway is said to have mocked him: Sure, they have more money. But Fitzgerald’s point wasn’t a romantic one. He said that something in the experience of the rich “makes them soft where we are hard” and hard where we are soft. That’s true, it can be unpacked forever, and applies even to our politics. On crime and illegal immigration, the private-school-educated bail-reform scholar or the wealthy donor to nonprofits is soft where we are hard. Crime and chaos can’t hurt the rich the way they hurt others. Money changes people because it changes experience.” The “choice of the convenience” of abortion may be different for a rich or poor person, but the sinfulness of the act is the same, jml
The immediacy of the need for confession and the promise of reconciliation may be more easily understood by the poor person. Remember the story of Lazarus—the poor man at the gate in Luke. The rich man went to hell not because he was rich, but because he was prideful. The poor man, Lazarus went to Heaven not because he was poor but because he was humble. Sometimes those that experience and overcome true struggles in life are humbler than those who don’t have such experiences. For that the struggle is a gift.
May I also add that the experience of suffering, of strife and striving and struggle, creates a moral scaffolding of perspective. When moral choices have immediate ramifications, but also when there is an understanding of being judged by a higher moral standard, then short term decisions can be seen as having long term consequences. I have always believed that the truly disadvantaged children are those who grow up in homes where there is no struggle, where there are no choices that have to be made between wants and needs, where they don’t have to have a summer job themselves to learn the value and goodness of work. If at some later day in their lives they have to make a tough decision, they will know that they are capable of hard work and sacrifice and will not make a choice of convenience but make the correct moral choice.
A paraphrase from C.S. Lewis—Empires rise and fall, great nations come and go, but the man who poured your coffee this morning is immortal, because his soul is immortal. That is a world-altering thought and one that, if you keep it in the center of your mind, will modify how you treat others.
Do you see the connection? Donald Trump does, and Ronald Reagan did. Both understood the majesty and special nature of the individual who was “made in the image of God”. Each has understood that all men and women are to be valued equally not because of their ethnicity or skin color, but because we are all made equally in the “image of God”. Both in earlier lives held progressive views (DJT) or socialistic political philosophies (Ronald Reagan). Both had “Come to Jesus” epiphanies” in their lives that then informed their political philosophies when they became—and in the case of DJT rebecame President. Both understood the dangerous and evil nature of the commune. Their faith informed not only their political philosophies, but also their economic belief in capitalism that is based on individual “free will”—God’s second greatest gift to man and today is the bases of what The Enlightenment Fathers referred to as LIBERTY.
At least for this past election cycle the connection between the struggles of everyday people, and the innate majesty of individual men and women was appreciated by those who supported the MAGA movement, The elite Wall Street, Hollywood, mainstream media establishment types have no idea what just hit them square in the face. The are still making excuses forgetting the adage that “alibies destroy character”.
Good luck, Mr. Trump. Our prayers are with you.
