New York
Peggy Noonan was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and is a graceful essayist and good Catholic lady who happens to be a political conservative. I haven’t seen her in years but sometimes we exchange emails. She has written a book about how badly Americans need Patriotic Grace, the title of her opus, and I bought it just as the news of a Catholic archbishop being found strangled on the Brighton Beach boardwalk came in. The killers took his wallet, his cellphone and his shoes. Peggy thinks that Washington is a city run by two rival gangs who have a great deal in common with each other, ‘including an essential lack of interest in the well-being of the turf on which they fight’.
Once upon a time the killing of a priest used to arouse such revulsion, even very bad people would come forward and provide info to the fuzz. But the recent assaults on God in general, and the Christian and Catholic religion in particular by scum like Christopher Hitchens and a clown by the name of Bill Maher, have clouded the issue. Mugging and killing a priest for a cellphone is now looked upon — well, like stealing an apple was during the good old days. Peggy wants a more amiable political discourse in order to improve our brutish impulses. Poor Peggy. Poor us. The killers of the priest are unknown, but I’ll bet my last dollar that they are either Russian gangsters or hoodlums on drugs as well as generous welfare. Open borders have not helped. The Brighton Beach area is crawling with ex-Soviet criminals, all welcomed here after the fall of the only system which knew how to handle them.
My son lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two children and I’m worried sick each and every day.
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