Noonan Alert: God Guns Down Three in Atlanta

You may recall that three courthouse workers were recently gunned down in Atlanta. You may not know that God did it. Allegedly.

Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Is it a matter of happenstance, is it without meaning, that America was taken by this drama at Eastertide, in the days before Palm Sunday, when a wanted man rode by donkey to an appointment at Golgotha?

Is it an accident that a great but troubled country that yearns so to be good is given such instruction at this time?

Maybe we should be thinking: God loves all of us, every one of us most tenderly, even convicts, maybe especially convicts, who know what they are and hang their heads and one of whom, so long ago, looked up, and cried out to the man on the other cross, and received from him a promise of forgiveness and a promise that soon, very soon, they would stand together in a place without pain.

Maybe we should think: This is all quite a mystery, too big to be understood, too beautiful to be ignored.

I just feel like bowing to everyone, all the victims and all the survivors, the good judge, the good guards, the good woman, the reporters, all of whom became part of something big and without borders.

The only lesson is love.

I feel certain this is true.

Now, to be fair, Peggy is thinking only of the ordeal of Ashley Smith, a hostage who was released unharmed.

(In fact, Ashley's telling of her story takes up 2900 of the 3600 words Peggy wrote. We sincerely hope Peggy is not being paid by the word. Or by any other method.)

But if she is going to credit divine intervention for saving Ashley's live, she really ought to recognize God's role in the triple homicide (and, frankly, the rape (alleged) that brought Brian Nichols into that courtroom in the first place).

It's part of the whole omnipotence trip.

Conservatives, however, have a preternatural ability to parcel out praise to one favored person (say, hypothetically, George W. Bush) for random bits of good news (the Cedar Revolution -- best of luck, by the way) while completely ignoring the bad shit (1500 Americans dead in Iraq, unknown thousands injured, unknown tens of thousand (or more) of Iraqis killed and injured, a nicely brewing civil war, near-total loss of international prestige, all at a cost of hundreds of billions of rapidly devaluing dollars).

For the bad news, we have the Clenis.