An interesting take on the Ponnuru/Derb complaint re: W.’s eulogy:

Ronald Reagan: “I was raised from my childhood by parents who believed bigotry and prejudice were the worst things a person could be guilty of.”
John Derbyshire writes: “I think the same principle can be applied to funeral tributes. GWB’s remark was just the cant of our age.”
Actually, how about see these remarks as the “cant” of a simpler age – that of Dixon, Illinois in the early 1900s. We should envision Dixon as a place where you didn’t have to lock your doors at night, where chewing gum in class was the worst of offenses (unlike say, rape, murder, etc… today). In a place like Dixon, perhaps bigotry and prejudice WERE the worst things a person could be guilty of. And, if those were the two worst things a person could be guilty of, we today should envy Dixon’s trivial worries.