Peggy Noonan

WASHINGTON—A postelection stay in the cool, cloudy capital reveals a sober Republican Party attempting every day in conversations throughout Capitol Hill a rancor-free analysis of why the party lost, and in a way that was so killingly close and yet brutally decisive. There is a general sense the loss was not undeserved—this is an unusual attitude for runners just back from the race—and that it was not so much a vote for something as against something: them. And roiling, rudderless Iraq. And an unpopular president.

There is a sense the nation’s culture and politics are and have been changing, shifting, and agreement that the election was not a realigning one but could yet prove to be if, among other things, Republicans fail to step back, refind and rethink their philosophy, style, priorities and meaning. They must develop a conservatism that speaks for and to the times. And stop being pigs—i.e., earmarking careerists who started with belief and wound up with hunger.

*   *   *

As for Democrats, they have a unique opportunity, one they haven’t had in 14 years, to redefine for the public what their party is. It is their chance to change their public label. Now, with the cameras of the country trained on Capitol Hill, they can throw off the old baggage of the 1960s and ‘70s and erase the cartoon version of their party, which is culturally radical, weak in its defense of America, profligate, McGovernite, bitterly devoted to the demands of its groups as opposed to the needs of America.

In 1992 the young Southern moderate Bill Clinton got a chance to erase the cartoon, and he did, for a while. But he quickly slid back, undone by his own confusion as to the purpose of his power, and reinforced the public’s worst assumptions about his party with everything from the health-care fiasco to using the Lincoln bedroom as a comp room for big rollers to horrifying fund-raising and personal scandals. What he did prove—and the area in which he did break away from the cartoon version of Democrats—was that he didn’t dislike money or its makers. He did nothing to harm Wall Street, little to slow the economy, displayed a personal tropism toward the rich. Beyond that he didn’t change his party’s rep.

Can Nancy Pelosi? She looked radiant when she was elected by the Democratic conference yesterday, and she was careful to speak—everyone was careful to speak—of children and grandchildren. No one held up a sign saying “We’re Normal,” but the message was sent.

Can the Democrats spend the next two years showing a moderate, centrist, mature face to the country? Republicans say—this is the big phrase—“It’s not in their DNA.” But betting on the other guy’s inability to change is not, really, a plan. And these Democrats, or many of them, seem a rising generation of pragmatists. They seem to know what’s at stake. If they scare America, they give Republicans a ready campaign theme for 2008: If you liked the crazy Democratic Congress, you’ll love a crazy Democratic White House.

Can they go down the center, or will radicalism of various sorts erupt and gain sway? No one knows. The Democrats don’t know. The answer is going to help shape America’s future political history. And it will help shape George Bush’s. If the Democrats are radical, he will look more reasonable, not only in the eyes of the public but of history. If the Democrats are moderate, I think he will do something surprising, and yet much in line with his personality and nature.

I am taken aback this week at the level of disenchantment with and dislike of the president and his men—not among Democrats, but among Republicans. On the Hill they no longer see the White House as talented and formidable. They see it as shuttered and second-rate. There are bitter anecdotes about the way the White House has rigged and controlled events, only to blame those who followed them when disaster ensues. There are more anecdotes about the president’s refusal or inability to absorb information he emotionally resists: the senator who kept telling him the past year what trouble the party was in only to be ignored, the former congressman who pressed the point with the president and received a tongue lashing. There is increased criticism too of the habit of high White House staffers to muscle critics, silence dissent, force obedience.

It is assumed by everyone, and accepted as truth that hardly needs expression, that the brilliant and independent Michael Steele was not chosen as head of the RNC for the simple reason that he doesn’t look like someone who’d simply take orders. Mel Martinez was chosen for the reason that he will. I heard talk of what is called “the list”—the lengthening White House list of those who are to be treated as enemies. A White House preoccupied with the petty gave too little attention to policy, to the big picture. Thus the history of bungles.

Old affection and regard for the White House and the president have dissipated. But fear remains. They have two more years, they have the power to nominate, they have money. And so a party that might begin the process of refinding itself by thoughtfully detaching from the White House will, likely, not.

*   *   *

But I see a surprise coming.

What is the first thing men do when they’re drowning? They save themselves. With the waters rising on every side the president will attempt to re-enact his first and most personally satisfying political success when, as governor of Texas, he won plaudits and popularity for working hand in glove with Democrats. He accepted many Democratic assumptions—he shared them, it wasn’t hard.

The White House’s reaction to the recent election was, essentially, Now we can get our immigration bill through with the Democrats. That was a clue. I suspect the president will over the next two years do to Republicans what he did to Donald Rumsfeld: over the side, under the bus and off the sled.

He doesn’t need them. They’re not popular. They’re not where the action is. He’ll work closely with Democrats, gain in time new and admiring press—“Bush has grown,” etc.

This is the path he will take to build his popularity and create a new legacy. If the Democrats let him. It would be in their interests, so I think maybe they will.

In a way they never tell the truth until the concession speech. That’s when nothing they say can hurt them anymore. They’re worn to the bone and they’ve been in a struggle and it’s over, and suddenly some basic, rock-solid, dumb knowledge of what they’ve been involved in—a great nation’s life—comes loose and declares itself.

Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee, who lost his Senate race, said he’d wanted to be in government since he was 4 years old, that people had taken a risk on him, that he was grateful. “I love my country,” he said. “Don’t lose faith in this great thing called America.”

Sen. Lincoln Chafee up in Rhode Island said America is divided; “common ground is becoming scarce.” He’d miss those in the Senate “who take their responsibility to govern more seriously than their personal ambitions.”

From Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a demonstration of patriotic civility. He praised his opponent as a human being—”a fine man, he’ll do a fine job for the state.”

Sen. George Allen, gentleman of Virginia, said, “We are placed here on earth to do something well.” He vowed to do all he could to help Jim Webb come in and serve in the U.S. Capitol.

Oh, that the new ones would carry in what the old ones have finally learned, or finally meant, or said.

*   *   *

It was the first real post-9/11 election, in that it was shaped not by the trauma itself but by public response to decisions taken after the trauma. Turnout was high. America is awake, alive, bristles. In the races for Senate, 25 million said “stay with the Republicans,” while 31 million said “no, move on.”

We have divided government. Good, and for many reasons. One: It confuses our enemies. “Who do we hate now?” they ask in their caves, “the evil woman from San Francisco or the old infidel from Texas? Which do we hate more? And if we hate them both does that…unite them?”

We are in a 30-year war. It is no good for it to be led by, identified with, one party. It is no good for half the nation to feel estranged from its government’s decisions. It’s no good for us to be broken up more than a nation normally would be. And straight down the middle is a bad break, the kind that snaps.

We all have things we would say to the new Congress if we could. We are a country that makes as many speeches in the shower as it sings songs. I would say this: Focus on the age you live in. Know what it is. Know what’s coming. The old way is over; the old days are over; the old facts and habits of mind do not pertain, or no longer fully pertain.

This is the age we live in: One day in the future either New York or Washington or both will be hit again, hard. It will be more deadly than 9/11. And on that day, those who experience it, who see the flash or hear the alarms, will try to help each other. They’ll be good to each other. An elderly conservative congresswoman will be unable to make it down those big old Capitol steps, and a young liberal congressman will come by and pick her up in his arms and carry her. (I witnessed a moment somewhat like this during a Capitol alarm two years ago, when we were told to run for our lives.) I would say: Keep that picture in mind. Cut to the chase, be good to each other now.

Make believe it’s already happened. That’s the only attitude that will help us get through it when it does. I do not mean think like Rodney King. We can’t all get along, not on this earth. But we can know what time it is. We can be serious, and humane. We can realize that we’re all in this together and owe each other an assumption of good faith.

There are rogue states and rogue actors, there are forces and nations aligned against us, and they have nukes and other weapons of mass destruction, and some of them are mad. Know this. Walk to work each day knowing it, not in a pointlessly fearful way but in a spirit of “What can I do to make it better?”

What can you do in two years? The common wisdom says not much. But here’s a governing attitude: First things first.

Do all you can to keep America as safe as possible as long as possible. Make sure she’s able to take a bad blow, a bad series of them. Much flows from this first thing, many subsets. Here is only one: Strengthen and modernize our electrical grid. When the bad thing comes we will need to be able to make contact with each other to survive together. Congress has ignored this for years.

Make America in the world as safe as possible by tending to and building our friendships in the world, by causing no unnecessary friction, by adding whatever possible and necessary emollients. In your approach to foreign affairs, rewrite Teddy Roosevelt: Speak softly, walk softly, and carry a big stick.

Much flows from this, including Iraq. This involves a huge and so far unanswered question: How to leave and not make it all infinitely worse. America will never accept a long war whose successful end even its most passionate proponents cannot convincingly envision or articulate. And America will never allow a repeat of the pictures of 1975, with desperate people who’d thrown their lot with us clinging to the skids of helicopters fleeing the U.S. Embassy. We will never get over Vietnam. And it’s to our credit that we won’t.

Those to me are the two big things. Much follows them, and flows from them. But to make some progress on these two things in the next two years would be breathtaking.

*   *   *

So that is my shower speech.

At the end of the day, or the end of this day, I look at the new Congress and wish them so well, such luck. Don’t you? I want to say: Go, Nancy Pelosi. Be the speaker of whom historians will write, in 2032, “This was her moment, here was the summit, here she found greatness.” Go, Democrats, be great and serious. Go, minority Republicans, refind yourselves. Go, conservatives.

To the freshmen: Walk in as if you’re walking out. Put your heart on your sleeve and go forward. Take responsibility, and love America. No one will think less of you. They will in fact think more, as they do of politicians after the concession speech.

It has been hard not to experience the election as a brute-force clash between two armies struggling over terrain their soldiers have come to see, inevitably—they are at war, they are exhausted—as the location of the battle, but not its purpose. The nation is where the contest takes place; you can forget, in the fight, that its actual future is what’s being fought for.

But here’s an exception: the state of Pennsylvania, which has been this year a bright patch of meaning. Its U.S. Senate contest has been the great race of the cycle, the one about which conservatives in their hearts most care. And not only conservatives, but those who know, for whatever reason and in whatever way, that there is something truly at stake here, something beyond mere red team and blue.

That would be Sen. Rick Santorum. The sense among so many people—including politicians and journalists—is that the Senate needs his sort, his kind.

The other day I called a former senator, a crusty old moderate Republican, and asked him if he liked Mr. Santorum. “No,” he said, “I love him.” When Mr. Santorum was new to the Senate, in 1995, he, the elder, seasoned legislator tried to mentor him. He wanted to help him survive. Mr. Santorum was grateful and appreciative, “but he kept speaking his mind!” The former senator: “The political scientists all say to be honest and stand for principle, that’s what people want. And he was exactly that, and he’s about to get his head handed to him.” He chuckled then with what seemed the reflexive pleasure of one pol about to see another take a tumble. Then he stopped. It was sad, he said.

*   *   *

Being a U.S. senator is a hard job. I mean this not sarcastically. John F. Kennedy once observed that it carries within it an always potentially conflicting dynamic. He was a senator from Massachusetts, he said, there to look after the needs and interests of his state. “Who will speak for Massachusetts if her own senators do not?” At the same time, look at his title: United States senator from Massachusetts. He was a member of a deliberative body whose duty it was to look, always, to the national interest. Senators could not only be “special pleaders” for “state or section.” He was there, in the end, to speak for America, to address issues greater and higher than those of region, state and party.

Rick Santorum’s career (two Senate terms, before that two in the House) suggests he has thought a great deal about the balance, and concluded that in our time the national is the local. Federal power is everywhere; so are the national media. (The biggest political change since JFK’s day is something he, 50 years ago, noted: the increasing nationalization of everything.) And so he has spoken for, and stood for, the rights of the unborn, the needs of the poor, welfare reform when it was controversial, tax law to help the family; against forcing the nation to accept a redefining of marriage it does not desire, for religious freedom here and abroad, for the helpless in Africa and elsewhere. It is all, in its way, so personal. And so national. He has breached the gap with private action: He not only talks about reform of federal law toward the disadvantaged, he hires people in trouble and trains them in his offices.

Santorum issues are hot issues, and raise passions pro and con.

His style has been to face what his colleagues hope to finesse. His opponent, reading the lay of the land, has decided the best way to win is to disappear. He does not like to debate. Mr. Santorum has taken to carrying an empty chair and merrily addressing it.

Mr. Santorum has been at odds with the modernist impulse, or liberalism, or whatever it now and fairly should be called. Most of his own impulses—protect the unprotected, help the helpless, respect the common man—have not been conservative in the way conservative is roughly understood, or portrayed, in the national imagination. If this were the JFK era, his politics would not be called “right wing” but “progressive.” He is, at heart, a Catholic social reformer. Bobby Kennedy would have loved him.

This week I caught up with Mr. Santorum by phone as his van drove east along the Pennsylvania Turnpike toward Philadelphia.

He sounded joyful. He said this campaign was “the hardest and most wonderful ordeal I’ve ever been through.” He said he’s been taken aback by all the prayers, by all the people who’ve come from so far to help him. “I’ve never had that before. I’ve never had it. I met a guy from Seattle, and a guy from Waco, Texas—they came in for a week just to help me. We have 14 kids coming in from Great Britain!” He said, “Wonderful things are happening.”

He sounded startled. And moved. And hopeful. Which is a funny way for a guy down 10 points to feel.

He told me something is happening. And I hope he’s right. Because the U.S. Senate is both an institution and a collection of human beings, and it needs his kind.

*   *   *

I end with a story too corny to be true, but it’s true. A month ago Mr. Santorum and his wife were in the car driving to Washington for the debate with his opponent on “Meet the Press.” Their conversation turned to how brutal the campaign was, how hurt they’d both felt at all the attacks. Karen Santorum said it must be the same for Bob Casey and his family; they must be suffering. Rick Santorum said yes, it’s hard for them too. Then he said, “Let’s say a Rosary for them.” So they prayed for the Caseys as they hurtled south.
A friend of mine called them while they were praying. She told me about it later, but didn’t want it repeated. “No one would believe it,” she said.

But I asked Mr. Santorum about it. Sure, he said, surprised at my surprise. “We pray for the Caseys every night. We know it’s as hard for them as it is for us.”

Personally I’ll shed no tear for the careerists of either party who win or lose, nor for the BlackBerryed gargoyles in the second row of the SUV who tell them how to think and where to stand. That means this election night will be, for me, a dry-eyed affair.

But if Rick Santorum goes down to the defeat all expect, I will feel it. Like the crusty old moderate Republican, I know a national loss when I see one.

A year ago I wrote a column called “A Separate Peace,” in which I said America’s leaders in all areas—government, business, journalism—were in some deep way checking out. They saw bad things coming in the world and for our country, didn’t think they could do anything about it, and were instead building a new pool or buying good memories for their kids. Soon after I was invited to address a group of Capitol Hill staffers to talk about the piece. When the meeting was over a woman walked up to me. She spoke of what was going wrong in Washington—the preoccupation with money, a lack of focus on the essentials, and the relentless dynamic of politics: first thing you do when you get power is move to keep power. And after a while you don’t have any move but that move.

I said I thought the Republicans would take it on the chin in 2006, and that would force the beginning of wisdom. She surprised me. She was after all a significant staffer giving all her energy to helping advance conservative ideas within the Congress. “Yes,” she said, in a quiet, deadly way. As in: I can’t wait. As in: We’ll get progress only through loss.

That’s a year ago, from the Hill.

This is two weeks ago, from a Bush appointee: “I hope they lose the House.” And one week ago, from a veteran of two GOP White Houses: “I hope they lose Congress.” Republicans this year don’t say “we” so much.

What is behind this? A lot of things, but here’s a central one: They want to fire Congress because they can’t fire President Bush.

*   *   *

Republican political veterans go easy on ideology, but they’re tough on incompetence. They see Mr. Bush through the eyes of experience and maturity. They hate a lack of care. They see Mr. Bush as careless, and on more than Iraq—careless with old alliances, disrespectful of the opinion of mankind. “He never listens,” an elected official who is a Bush supporter said with a shrug some months ago. Along the way the president’s men and women confused the necessary and legitimate disciplining of a coalition with weird and excessive attempts to silence Republican critics. They have lived in a closed system. They now want to open it but don’t know how. Listening is a habit; theirs has long been to suppress.

In the Republican base, that huge and amorphous thing, judgments are less tough, more forgiving. But there too things have changed.

There remains a broad, reflexive, and very Republican kind of loyalty to George Bush. He is a war president with troops in the field. You can see his heart. He led us in a very human way through 9/11, from the early missteps to the later surefootedness. He was literally surefooted on the rubble that day he threw his arm around the retired fireman and said the people who did this will hear from all of us soon.

Images like that fix themselves in the heart. They’re why Mr. Bush’s popularity is at 38%. Without them it wouldn’t be so high.

But there’s unease in the base too, again for many reasons. One is that it’s clear now to everyone in the Republican Party that Mr. Bush has changed the modern governing definition of “conservative.”

He did this without asking. He did it even without explaining. He didn’t go to the people whose loyalty and support raised him high and say, “This is what I’m doing, this is why I’m changing things, here’s my thinking, here are the implications.” The cynics around him likely thought this a good thing. To explain is to make things clearer, or at least to try, and they probably didn’t want it clear. They had the best of both worlds, a conservative reputation and a liberal reality.

And Republicans, most of whom are conservative in at least general ways, and who endure the disadvantages of being conservative because they actually believe in ideas, in philosophy, in an understanding of the relation of man and the state, are still somewhat concussed. The conservative tradition on foreign affairs is prudent realism; the conservative position on borders is that they must be governed; the conservative position on high spending is that it is obnoxious and generationally irresponsible. Etc.

This is not how Mr. Bush has governed. And so in the base today personal loyalty, and affection, bumps up against intellectual unease.

The administration tries to get around this, to quiet the unease, with things like the Republican National Committee ad in which Islamic terrorists plot to kill America.

They do want to kill America, and all the grownups know it. But this is a nation of sophisticates, and every Republican sipping a Bud at a bar in Chilicothe, Ill., who looks up and sees that ad thinks: They’re trying to scare the base to increase turnout. Turnout’s the key.

Here’s a thing about American politics. Nobody sees himself as the base. They see themselves as individuals. And they’re not dumb. They get it all. They know when you’re trying to manipulate. They’ll even tell you, with a lovely detachment, if you’re doing a good job. (An unreported story this year is the lack of imagination, seriousness and respect in the work of political consultants on both sides. They have got to catch up with American brightness.)

*   *   *

The Republican establishment, the Republican elite, is quietly supporting those candidates and ideas they think should be encouraged. They are thinking about whom they will back in ‘08. But they’re not thinking of this, most of them, with the old excitement. Because they sense, in their tough little guts, that the heroic age of the American presidency is, for now, over. No president is going to come along and save us, and Congress isn’t going to save us. Events will cause a reckoning, and then we’ll save ourselves. And in this we will refind our greatness.

The base probably thinks pretty much the same. They go through the motions, as patriots are sometimes called to do. As for the election, it reminds me not of 1994 but 1992. That year, at a bipartisan gathering, I was pressed for a prediction. I said it was a contest between depression (if Republicans win) and anxiety (if Democrats win). I said Americans will take anxiety over depression any day, because it’s the more awake state.

Al Gore was later told of this, and used it on the campaign trail. Only he changed “anxiety” to “hope.” Politicians kill me.

Everyone is focusing on the polls and spreadsheets, on the scandals and negative ads. This in fact may be the year negative advertising reached critical mass. Voters are no longer running from the room saying, “Smith is dishonest, I must vote for Jones!” They’re slouched in front of the TV thinking, They’re all bums, I’ll try to pick the least bummy. Or asking, “Honey, which bum is least likely to raise my property taxes?” The irony of the ads: Their relentless tearing down may force voters to decide based on actual issues.

But this is about something else. This is about the dance.

*   *   *

The dance is where you see the joy of the joust. It’s a gifted pro making his moves. It’s a moment of humor, wit or merriness on the trail; it’s the clever jab or the unexpected line that flips an argument. It’s a thing in itself and is so much itself, so distinctive, that whether you are left, right or center, red team or blue, you can look at the moves of a guy on the other side and say with honest admiration: “Man, that was good.”

FDR, of course, could dance. He gets caught breaking a vow he’d made in Philadelphia when first running for president. What to do? He and his aides agree. “First thing, deny we were in Philadelphia!” FDR on the stump, chanting the names of his congressional foes, rolling their names in his marbly tones. “Martin, Barton and Fish!” And announcing, gravely, that he is not offended by charges he used government transport to ferry his pets, but his little dog Fala is very upset.

Or this: It’s the 1960s and California’s new governor, warring with the public university system, goes to meet with the chancellors. Students mass to protest his arrival by standing shoulder to shoulder and staring at him in complete and jarring silence. He arrives, walks past, turns at the doorway and puts his finger to his lips. Ssshhhh, he says, and winks. They start to laugh. Or the time he was heckled at a rally in 1984, and said, “You know, I may let Mr. Mondale raise his taxes.” Ronald Reagan could dance.

Or: Jack Kennedy waving with his short modest chop as the nuns jumped as the cavalcade passed and the crowds went mad. The sweet, knowing smile that said “I don’t deserve it”, and “But don’t let that stop you.” He had the dance too.

It’s hard to find the dance this year. On the stump Barack Obama shows pleasure, a lower form of the dance. So does Republican Rep. Mike Pence, who says he’s a conservative “but not in a bad mood about it.” John McCain can dance. In one week he wowed college kids on “Hardball,” bopped Hillary Clinton, and announced that if Republicans lose Congress he’ll “commit suicide.” Translation: I love Republicans, and if they lose I’ll be fine!

Arnold Schwarzenegger has dance. In a debate the other night he accused challenger Phil Angelides of reflexively backing tax hikes. The Los Angeles Times: “At one point, smiling across the stage at his rival, the governor taunted: ‘I can tell by the joy you see in your eyes when you talk about taxes, you just love to increase taxes. . . . Look out there right now and just say, ‘I love increasing your taxes.’ “ That’s a gift for the game.

Bill Clinton is still the master. Last week he went to Iowa, in the middle of the country, and told Democrats to reach out and embrace with love all these poor Republicans who no longer have a home. Their party has been taken over by “the most ideological, the most right-wing, the most extreme sliver of the Republican party!” Republicans are good—it’s their leaders who’ve gone nutty! “Forget about politics. Just go out and find somebody and look them dead in the eye and say, ‘You know, this is not right.’ “

He’s moving to drive a wedge between an unpopular president and his frustrated party. It’s a move to reframe, to separate and pick off. And it’s exactly how to go at moderate Republicans right now, not with a punch but a hand on the shoulder.

It’s classic Clinton. He gets real nice when he smells blood. You may say he has a natural advantage: The dance is what he was born for; governing was his problem. But give him his due. He can foxtrot.

As can his wife. Here she was this week in a timely clarification of her long-ago fable that she’d been named for Sir Edmund Hillary, who climbed Everest six years after she was born. “It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter,” said her office. Ah. She was just showing loyalty to her mother’s tender efforts to ignite dreams in a daughter oppressed by patriarchy and pervasive gender bias. (A less sweet way of seeing it: Mama lied, I didn’t!)

The clarification came days before Hillary’s first debate, where her challenger might have uncorked a reference to famous fibs, throwing in Everest. He can’t now.

Mrs. Clinton, who will soon go fully national again, shrewdly makes more and more religious references and has taken to wearing a cross on her neck on the campaign trail. Ben Smith of New York’s Daily News called it a diamond cross. It looks like one. But diamonds would be an odd thing for a Democratic politician to campaign in. No Democrat or Republican politician has worn expensive jewelry in New York since Mario Cuomo looked at his wealthy opponent in their first debate and purred, “Nice watch, Lou!”

A hunch. Hillary is just waiting for someone to ask her about the diamond cross so she can shyly respond, ‘Lord, it’s glass, actually.’ Her office will elaborate: It was given to her by a little girl in Poughkeepsie, to remind her of what’s important. Hillary promised to wear it every day. Then she promised a dying boy she’d hit a home run for him, while wearing her Yankees hat.

*   *   *

The Clintons, Mr. Schwarzenegger and Mr. McCain are the exceptions. There’s a dance dearth out there. This is surprising, isn’t it? The issues are large and deep. Great battles are ennobled by happy warriors. We have two weeks left. If you’re bothering to run, get off the grim reading of talking points. Show some roar, show some game. Show some dance. Joylessness is unworthy of a great republic.

Four moments in the recent annals of free speech in America. Actually annals is too fancy a word. This all happened in the past 10 days:

At Columbia University, members of the Minutemen, the group that patrols the U.S. border with Mexico and reports illegal crossings, were asked to address a forum on immigration policy. As Jim Gilchrist, the founder, spoke, angry students stormed the stage, shouting and knocking over chairs and tables. “Having wreaked havoc,” said the New York Sun, they unfurled a banner in Arabic and English that said, “No one is ever illegal.” The auditorium was cleared, the Minutemen silenced. Afterward a student protester told the Columbia Spectator, “I don’t feel we need to apologize or anything. It was fundamentally a part of free speech. . . . The Minutemen are not a legitimate part of the debate on immigration.”

On Oct. 2, on Katie Couric’s “CBS Evening News,” in the segment called “Free Speech,” the father of a boy killed at Columbine shared his views on the deeper causes of the recent shootings in Amish country. Brian Rohrbough said violence entered our schools when we threw God out of them. “This country is in a moral freefall. For over two generations the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum. . . . We teach there are no moral absolutes, no right or wrong, and I assure you the murder of innocent children is always wrong, including abortion. Abortion has diminished the value of children.” This was not exactly the usual mush.

Mr. Rohrbough was quickly informed he was not part of the legitimate debate, either. Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post: “The decision . . . to air his views prompted a storm of criticism, some of it within the ranks of CBS News.” A blog critic: Grief makes people say “stupid” things, but “what made them put this man on television?” Good question. How did they neglect to silence him?

Soon after, at Madison Square Garden, Barbra Streisand, began her latest farewell tour with what friends who were there tell me was a moving, beautiful concert. She was in great form and brought the audience together in appreciation of her great ballads, which are part of the aural tapestry of our lives. And then . . . the moment. Suddenly she decided to bang away on politics. Fine, she’s a Democrat, Bush is bad. But midway through the bangaway a man in the audience called out. Most could not hear him, but everyone seems to agree he at least said, “What is this, a fund-raiser?”

At this, Ms. Streisand became enraged, stormed the stage and pummeled herself. Wait, that was Columbia. Actually she became enraged and cursed the man. A friend who was there, a liberal Democrat, said what was most interesting was Ms. Streisand made a physical movement with her arms and hands—“those talon hands”—as if to say, See what I have to put up with when I attempt to educate the masses? She soon apologized, to her credit. Though apparently in the manner of a teacher who’d just kind of lost it with an unruly and ignorant student.

On “The View” a few days earlier it was Rosie O’Donnell. She was banging away on gun control. Guns are bad and should be banned. Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who plays the role of the young, attractive mom, tentatively responded. “I want to be fair,” she said. Obviously there should be “restrictions,” but women have a right to defend themselves, and there’s “the right to bear arms” in the Constitution. Rosie accused Elizabeth of yelling. The panel, surprised, agreed that Elizabeth was not yelling. Rosie then went blank-faced with what someone must have told her along the way is legitimately felt rage. Elizabeth was not bowing to Rosie’s views. Elizabeth needed to be educated. The education commenced, Rosie gesturing broadly and Elizabeth constricting herself as if she knew physical assault were a possibility. When Rosie gets going on the Second Amendment I always think, Oh I hope she’s not armed! Actually I wonder what Freud would have made of an enraged woman obsessed with gun control. Ach, classic projection. Eef she had a gun she would kill. Therefore no one must haf guns.

*   *   *

There’s a pattern here, isn’t there?

It is not only about rage and resentment, and how some have come to see them as virtues, as an emblem of rightness. I feel so much, therefore my views are correct and must prevail. It is about something so obvious it is almost embarrassing to state. Free speech means hearing things you like and agree with, and it means allowing others to speak whose views you do not like or agree with. This—listening to the other person with respect and forbearance, and with an acceptance of human diversity—is the price we pay for living in a great democracy. And it is a really low price for such a great thing.

We all know this, at least in the abstract. Why are so many forgetting it in the particular?

Let us be more pointed. Students, stars, media movers, academics: They are always saying they want debate, but they don’t. They want their vision imposed. They want to win. And if the win doesn’t come quickly, they’ll rush the stage, curse you out, attempt to intimidate.

And they don’t always recognize themselves to be bullying. So full of their righteousness are they that they have lost the ability to judge themselves and their manner.

And all this continues to come more from the left than the right in America.

Which is, at least in terms of timing, strange. The left in America—Democrats, liberals, Bush haters, skeptics of many sorts—seems to be poised for a significant electoral victory. Do they understand that if it comes it will be not because of Columbia, Streisand, O’Donnell, et al., but in spite of them?

What is most missing from the left in America is an element of grace—of civic grace, democratic grace, the kind that assumes disagreements are part of the fabric, but we can make the fabric hold together. The Democratic Party hasn’t had enough of this kind of thing since Bobby Kennedy died. What also seems missing is the courage to ask a question.

Conservatives these days are asking themselves very many questions, but I wonder if the left could tolerate asking itself even a few. Such as: Why are we producing so many adherents who defy the old liberal virtues of free and open inquiry, free and open speech? Why are we producing so many bullies? And dim dullard ones, at that.

Four moments in the recent annals of free speech in America. Actually annals is too fancy a word. This all happened in the past 10 days:

At Columbia University, members of the Minutemen, the group that patrols the U.S. border with Mexico and reports illegal crossings, were asked to address a forum on immigration policy. As Jim Gilchrist, the founder, spoke, angry students stormed the stage, shouting and knocking over chairs and tables. “Having wreaked havoc,” said the New York Sun, they unfurled a banner in Arabic and English that said, “No one is ever illegal.” The auditorium was cleared, the Minutemen silenced. Afterward a student protester told the Columbia Spectator, “I don’t feel we need to apologize or anything. It was fundamentally a part of free speech. . . . The Minutemen are not a legitimate part of the debate on immigration.”

On Oct. 2, on Katie Couric’s “CBS Evening News,” in the segment called “Free Speech,” the father of a boy killed at Columbine shared his views on the deeper causes of the recent shootings in Amish country. Brian Rohrbough said violence entered our schools when we threw God out of them. “This country is in a moral freefall. For over two generations the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum. . . . We teach there are no moral absolutes, no right or wrong, and I assure you the murder of innocent children is always wrong, including abortion. Abortion has diminished the value of children.” This was not exactly the usual mush.

Mr. Rohrbough was quickly informed he was not part of the legitimate debate, either. Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post: “The decision . . . to air his views prompted a storm of criticism, some of it within the ranks of CBS News.” A blog critic: Grief makes people say “stupid” things, but “what made them put this man on television?” Good question. How did they neglect to silence him?

Soon after, at Madison Square Garden, Barbra Streisand, began her latest farewell tour with what friends who were there tell me was a moving, beautiful concert. She was in great form and brought the audience together in appreciation of her great ballads, which are part of the aural tapestry of our lives. And then . . . the moment. Suddenly she decided to bang away on politics. Fine, she’s a Democrat, Bush is bad. But midway through the bangaway a man in the audience called out. Most could not hear him, but everyone seems to agree he at least said, “What is this, a fund-raiser?”

At this, Ms. Streisand became enraged, stormed the stage and pummeled herself. Wait, that was Columbia. Actually she became enraged and cursed the man. A friend who was there, a liberal Democrat, said what was most interesting was Ms. Streisand made a physical movement with her arms and hands—“those talon hands”—as if to say, See what I have to put up with when I attempt to educate the masses? She soon apologized, to her credit. Though apparently in the manner of a teacher who’d just kind of lost it with an unruly and ignorant student.

On “The View” a few days earlier it was Rosie O’Donnell. She was banging away on gun control. Guns are bad and should be banned. Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who plays the role of the young, attractive mom, tentatively responded. “I want to be fair,” she said. Obviously there should be “restrictions,” but women have a right to defend themselves, and there’s “the right to bear arms” in the Constitution. Rosie accused Elizabeth of yelling. The panel, surprised, agreed that Elizabeth was not yelling. Rosie then went blank-faced with what someone must have told her along the way is legitimately felt rage. Elizabeth was not bowing to Rosie’s views. Elizabeth needed to be educated. The education commenced, Rosie gesturing broadly and Elizabeth constricting herself as if she knew physical assault were a possibility. When Rosie gets going on the Second Amendment I always think, Oh I hope she’s not armed!