We live in a democracy. That means that we rule ourselves; we do not have leaders, we have representatives. And that means that debate must take place vigorously and constantly. The more important the issue, the more vital loud and vigorous debate becomes. Donald Rumsfeld doesn’t seem to understand that. To him, people criticizing his conduct or the assumptions that underpin his decisions on the war on terror or in Iraq are the equivalent of appeasers or of being morally confused. The media, well, it tells “myths” that weaken our national resolve. Lies, of course, but lies designed to force critics to stop criticizing.

The confusion is on Rumsfeld’s end — he seems to have forgotten what country he is supposed to represent. Others have not:

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.

… 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.”

Dissent is patriotism; it is our primary obligation; it is the thing that guarantees freedom and liberty. Dissent is everything in a free country, as important to its survival as blood and oxygen are to yours.

In stark terms, it is time to choose. Rumsfeld wants a country in which dissent is silenced, where the population simply sits down, shuts up and prays that the Leaders are up to the task. Intruding upon those Leaders with questions and criticism weakens the country’s will. Obermann and Murrow want and wanted what we have always had or strived to have: a nation of adults choosing for themselves the direction of the country, no matter how serious the issue or how grave the hour. So choose: will you be one of Rumsfeld’s children or one of Murrow’s adults?