STAND FOR THE PERMANENT AGAINST THE MERELY PREVALENT

Each weekend I look forward to reading Peggy Noonan’s column in the WSJ. Today’s article, The Captain and the King was well written as usual but Ms. Noonan’s article illustrated the heart of the mission of The Character Building Project … “standing for the permanent against the merely prevalent” by restoring virtue in our political leaders.

In offering advice to the commoner, Kate Middleton, who this year will be marrying into the royal family of England, Peggy counsels Kate: “Stay boring, strive to appear to be a person of rectitude and high morality, don’t be modern, stand for “the permanent against the merely prevalent,” love God and his church, don’t act out and act up. Be good.”

Peggy offered Kate advice in context of discussing the apparent sad state of the less than dignified actions of an officer and once gentleman (Captain Owen Honors of the USS Enterprise.) More to the point of our mission, were the portrayal and dignified actions of the eccentric speech tutor and the soon to be King, in the excellent movie, The King’s Speech. I was particularly interested in Peggy’s characterization of this movie since my wife and I saw it last week. We enjoyed it very much. We were pleased and pleasantly surprised with the audience standing applause at our movie’s conclusion, as did Peggy’s audience.

Peggy reviews The King’s Speech as follows: “It’s about someone being grown-up, someone doing his job, someone assuming responsibility. It is about a time when someone was taking on the mantle of leadership, someone was sacrificing his comfort for the good of his country.”

I hope members of the 112^th Congress will see the movie and join the applause for old-fashioned moral virtues of responsibility, rectitude, self-sacrifice as well as love of God and country.