Peggy Noonan on the Graceless Left: Columbia, Columbine, Barbra, and Rosie

On the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal website Friday, Peggy Noonan put together several recent media events -- Columbia students robbing the Minutemen of their free speech, the furor over CBS's "freeSpeech" commentary from a conservative Columbine parent, Barbra Streisand's profane concert outburst, and Rosie O'Donnell's whupping of Elisabeth Hasselbeck on gun rights -- to conclude that the left preaches about dissent, but isn't very skilled at letting it be practiced against them:

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.