Received this from a commenter today: "We're at a turning point. The Bush people know it. Today in Salt Lake City, Utah, the reddest most right wing state in the nation, thousands gatherered to boo and heckle and defy the President, who was there to call us traitors. Marines spoke up and out. Mormons spoke up and out. The Mayor of Salt Lake even LED the demonstrations. We're at a turning point. The president and his henchmen are calling us all traitors. And we're not gonna take it anymore."
KEITH OLBERMANN ON MSNBC
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. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of 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 administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.
Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s 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 “his” 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. Rumsfeld’s speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril—with a growing evil—powerful and remorseless.
That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld’s, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the “secret information.” It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld’s -- questioning their intellect and their morality.
That government was England’s, in the 1930’s.
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 — its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.
The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.
Most relevant of all — it “knew” 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 critic’s 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 — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — 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 today’s 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 — about Osama Bin Laden’s plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein’s weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina’s impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their “omniscience” 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 “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — 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 Emporer’s 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 citizens— 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 — 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. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a “new type of fascism.”
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: “confused” or “immoral.”
Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:
“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” he said, in 1954. “We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.
“We 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.”
And so good night, and good luck.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12131617/
From Garth Bishop, re the Keith Oberman speech on MSNBC: "wonderful, very Churchillian in nature, the stuff dreams are is made of.
About 7:15 this morning on MSNBC I caught the video of the gigantic anti-Bush anti-war rally in Salt Lake City yesterday headed by another wonderful person----SLC Major Rocky Anderson. He should be nominated for U.S. president by the Dems. Good words, well spoken, has always been against the war, and has the perfect TV image, so vital in today's political world.
Did you know that Keith is the only newscaster that writes his own copy? Might be a few local people who do it, but Keith is the only nat'l one that I know of."
During Clinton's impeachment trial, De Lay managed to scare conservatives into voting against their consciences! John Dean says, "If truthfulness about extramarital affairs had been a requisite for everyone in Congress to hold their seats before they voted to oust Clinton, neither the House nor the Senate could have formed a quorum." And these were conservative Christians! Whatever happened to "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!"We all have built into us the capacities for kindness and creativity and beauty. It's a matter of perspective. As Einstein said, "The single most important decision any of us will ever make is whether or not to believe that the universe is friendly." It's our choice.
Received a letter from U.S. Army Officer, 1LT Marcus Byrne stationed in Iraq. Please read his letter below. And please send him and his troops a care package. We must hold these guys in our prayers and send them lots of chocolate! They are fighting for THEIR lives...God Bless them.
You can send CARE PACKAGES to this soldier, and he says: "Anything me or my guys dont need I try to take out to the Outposts where they cant get to the PX that often."
1LT Marcus Byrne
HHC 501st FSB
Camp TQ, Unit 92868
FPO, AE 09381
"As the Native Americans reminded us: "No tree has branches so foolish as to fight among themselves."
You can reach my Home page at: LYDIA CORNELL
And for SPIRITUAL SOLUTIONS to the world crises, along with some amazing prayer miracles in the next few weeks, please check out RADICAL PRAYER at my other blog THE PEACEMAKERS* LIGHT OF TRUTH
And we uncover the truth about Ann Coulter like no one has ever done before at: COULTER KAMPF where you can also find breaking news about hate-speak, extremism, propaganda and smear tactics.
LETTER FROM FIRST LIEUTENANT MARCUS BYRNE, STATIONED IN IRAQ:
Lydia,
I enjoyed your outreach to recovering Republicans. I think I was a republican until...well, until I started reading and became an active newshunter and not a passive gatherer allowing it to come to me.... At the beginning I was a huge supporter of this war and the people running it. I assumed they knew things that they couldnt tell the American people, but when we got here and there were no WMDs, no links to Al Qaeda ..... I changed. By that time I had already made the committment to serve so I did and I am, but that doesnt mean I have to agree with everything they do and say, especially when they put me and my wife in harms way not to defend America, but to defend exclusive contracting and oil rights for corporate cronies. I am working with Marines now also. Brave souls... They had to call Army down here to Ramadi to help them get it under control.
Thanks for your support
Marcus Byrne
His blog is: AIRBYRNE
I urge my readers to send CARE packages to the troops. See address at top of blog.
