Peggy Noonan: on the callous children in our government

 Few pundits have such insightful takes on our country than Peggy Noonan, a former Reagan speech writer and now a Wall Street Journal columnist. What I admire about Noonan is that - while certainly a conservative - she readily criticizes both Republicans and Democrats and never pulls her punches. Her Saturday column in the Wall Street Journal on the problems and malaise confronting our country (read full column here) is must reading for anyone concerned about our country. One salient passage:

  "It is a curious thing that those who feel most mistily affectionate toward America, and most protective toward it, are the most aware of its vulnerabilities, the most aware that it can be harmed. They don't see it as all-powerful, impregnable, unharmable. The loving have a sense of its limits.
"When I see those in government, both locally and in Washington, spend and tax and come up each day with new ways to spend and tax—health care, cap and trade, etc.—I think: Why aren't they worried about the impact of what they're doing? Why do they think America is so strong it can take endless abuse?"