Here's something to be scared about

Aug. 30, 2006 | 8:34 p.m. ET

Feeling morally, intellectually confused?

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeldâs remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday
demands the deep analysisâand the sober contemplationâof every
American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence
-- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the
transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still,
it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a
total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor
this administrationâs track record at home or abroad, suggests they
deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the lifeâs blood of
human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against
the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as âhisâ
troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeldâs speechwriter was adroit
in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their
time, there was another government faced with true perilâwith a
growing evilâpowerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeldâs, had a monopoly on all the
facts. It, too, had the âsecret information.â It alone had the true
picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in
terms like Mr. Rumsfeldâs -- questioning their intellect and their
morality.

That government was Englandâs, in the 1930âs.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its
own policies, its own conclusions â its own omniscience -- needed to
be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all â it âknewâ that its staunchest critics
needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the
foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly
senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.

That criticâs name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening.
We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville
Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History â and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England
â have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty â
and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can
not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.

It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to todayâs Omniscient ones.

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of
omniscience â about Osama Bin Ladenâs plans five years ago, about
Saddam Husseinâs weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrinaâs
impact one year ago â we all might be able to swallow hard, and
accept their âomniscienceâ as a bearable, even useful recipe, of
fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually,
about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the
entire âFog of Fearâ which continues to envelop this nation, he,
Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have â inadvertently or
intentionally â profited and benefited, both personally, and
politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and
the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the
Emporerâs New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose
heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he
dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United
States of America?

The confusion we -- as its citizensâ must now address, is stark and forbidding.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon
and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our
flag. Note -- with hope in your heart â that those earlier Americans
always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this
administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the
terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for
which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake
City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeldâs other main assertion, that this country faces a ânew type of fascism.â

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything
could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that --
though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble
tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary
journalist Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come
close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of
us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew
everything, and branded those who disagreed: âconfusedâ or
âimmoral.â

Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:

âWe must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,â he said, in
1954. âWe must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that
conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

âWe will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be
driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history
and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful
men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to
defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.â

And so good night, and good luck.

Decided to install and run a movable type blog. Will post here ocassionally but most of my stuff is at http://rivendellweb.net