Thanks to The Anchoress, we have what I’d consider the clearest example of MSM arrogance and the “we know best, so sit down and shut up” attitude I”ve ever seen.
Here. Let me give you the first paragraph:
Given the Bush administration’s appetite for leak investigations (three are under way), this seems a good moment to try to clear away the fog around this issue.
Oh joy. There’s going to be some fog-clearing. I imagine we’ll be seeing blue skies again, huh?
Well, not so much. See, this is only fog-clearing if you consider what the editors regards as facts to actually be facts. I’ll be charitable and say that their facts are somewhat less than fully confirmed.
But, even assuming that there are “good” leaks and “bad” leaks and the “good” leaks are the ones that shine light on an evil secretive conspiracy by President Bush to take away your rights (and there, I’ve just saved you from reading most of the op-ed. Aren’t I nice?), the Times is still way off-kilter.
Here is what the editors of the Old Grey Mare really want you to understand.
When the government does not want the public to know what it is doing, it often cites national security as the reason for secrecy. The nation’s safety is obviously a most serious issue, but that very fact has caused this administration and many others to use it as a catchall for any matter it wants to keep secret, even if the underlying reason for the secrecy is to prevent embarrassment to the White House. The White House has yet to show that national security was harmed by the report on electronic spying, which did not reveal the existence of such surveillance – only how it was being done in a way that seems outside the law.
Let’s boil that down to bullet-points.
- Things aren’t secret simply because the elected Commander-in-Chief says they should be even if those things keep you from getting killed.
- Things are secret becase we say they should be because we’re protecting you.
Basically, the editors are telling all of us that we should not trust the duly-elected President and that we should trust them.
Well, folks, that’s not happening here. Why in the world should I trust a group of people who believe themselves the sole arbiter of what violations of the law should be above the law and which should not to the point that they’re actually put lives at risk to undermine the result of two Presidential elections? Why should you?
More to the point, who in the hell are they to lecture us as if we were ignorant children, unable to decide for ourselves who our leaders should be and what they should do to keep us safe in this war we’re fighting. Just who the hell do they think they are?
