There Is Fascism, indeed, but not in the Blue Barn!

POLITICAL SPARKS IN THE BLUE BARN

WHILE REPAIRING FCF's PLATE BURNER

This holiday weekend Olbermann's MSNBC cable television program was the source of several conversations in the Flyer's Blue Barn with visiting staff members from afar. It was one of the positive themes that encouraged resistance to the "Thought Police" of both left and right wing.

Here is a portion of Olbermann's sign-off that night:

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.

Olbermann makes an interesting historical analogy about Rumsfeld's American Legion convention address. And pay special attention to the "batteries in backwards" pivot phrase.

Read the complete essay and watch the video placed above his reprinted essay.

Click below: Keith Olbermann There Is Fascism, Indeed