How fascinating to reflect on Dan Rather's fall from grace and wonder, how did we get here? We've come full circle. Thirty-one years ago John Dean told Richard Nixon that there was a cancer on his Republican presidency. At that time Dan Rather was a contemporary of the reporters who were dragging the Watergate scandal out into the harsh light of day. Today by all appearances, the cancer is eating at the Democrats and the liberal establishment, and Rather is the focus. There is growing suspicion that there's a connection between Bill Burkett, the man most likely to have provided CBS with the forged Air National Guard memos, and the Kerry-Edwards campaign. The implications of this are huge. A national news organization may have fraudulently attempted to influence this presidential election, and the Democratic challenger's campaign may be connected to it. Rather, in what is becoming a ridiculous posture is invoking "longstanding journalistic ethics" in refusing to expose the forger, or even acknowledge the forgeries.
I'm not the first to see the parallel of monolithic CBS verses the pajama clad bloggers, to collectivism verses liberty. These excerpts from Milton Friedman's introduction to F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom offer perspective. It's an odd coincidence that Friedman wrote these words in 1971, just two years before the Watergate scandal began to break. It's easy to recognize the Democrats and the left of today in the words of Milton Friedman then.
The same collectivist fallacies are abroad and on the rise today, but the immediate issues are different and so is much of the jargon. Today we hear little of "central planning," of "production for use," of the need for "conscious direction" of society's resources. Instead the talk of the urban crisis - solvable it is said only by vastly expanded government programs; of the environmental crisis - produced it is said by rapacious businessmen who must be forced to discharge their social responsibility instead of "simply" operating their enterprises to make the most profit and requiring also, it is said, vastly expanded government programs; of the welfare or poverty crisis - here the jargon is still "poverty in the midst of plenty," though what is now described as poverty would have been regarded as plenty when that slogan was first widely used…
…the relation between the ends and the means remains widely misunderstood. Many of those who profess the most individualistic objectives support collectivist means without recognizing the contradiction. It is tempting to believe that social evils arise from the activities of evil men and that if only good men (like ourselves, naturally) wielded power, all would be well. That view requires only emotion and self-praise - easy to come by and satisfying as well. To understand why it is that "good" men in positions of power will produce evil, while ordinary man without power but able to engage in voluntary cooperation with his neighbors will produce good, requires analysis and thought, subordinating the emotions to the rational faculty. Surely that is one answer to the perennial mystery of why collectivism, with it demonstrated record of producing tyranny and misery, is so widely regarded as superior to individualism, with its demonstrated record of producing freedom and plenty.
Today the left, the Democrats, and the Mainstream Media are engaged in the most dishonest campaign I've ever seen. I suppose there's the possibility that other presidential campaigns have been equally dishonest but they had to have been better disguised. Kerry himself may unwittingly be leading the way. He's like the broken clock that shows the right time twice a day. By taking both sides of every issue Kerry is right half the time, but his utter disregard for any consistency on any position may be leading his immediate base of support to believe that even the appearance of honesty is unnecessary.
Comments