Keith Olbermann - Special Comment: Rudy Guiliani

"Never, ever again will this country ever be on defense waiting for [terrorists] to attack us if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense!" - R. Guiliani

There is no room for this. This is terrorism, dressed up, as counter-terrorist. It is not warning, but bullying, substituted for the political discourse now absolutely essential to this country's survival and the freedom of its people. No Democrat has said words like these. None has ever campaigned on the Republicans' flat-footedness of September 11, 2001; none has the requisite, irresponsible, all-consuming ambition; none is willing to say 'I accuse' rather than recognize that, to some degree, all of us share responsibility for our collective stupor. And if it is somehow insufficient - if it is somehow morally, spiritually and politically wrong to screech as Mr. Guiliani has screeched - there is also this: that gaping hole in Mr. Guiliani's argument that Republicans equal life, Democrats equal death.

Not only have the Republicans not lived up to their babbling on this subject, but last fall, the electorate called them on it - as, doubtless, they would call you on it, Mr. Guiliani. Repeat: Go beyond Mr. Bush's rhetorical calamities of 2006. Call attention to the casualties on your watch and your long, waking years of slumber between the two attacks on the World Trade Center. Become the candidate who runs on the 'vote for me or die' platform. Do a Joe McCarthy. Do a Lyndon Johnson. Do a Robespierre. Only, if you choose so to do, do not come back surprised nor remorseful if the voters remind you that terror is not just a matter of casualties. It is just as certainly a matter of the promulgation of fear. Claim a difference between the parties on the voters' chances of survival, and you do Osama bin Laden's work for him. And we, Democrats and Republicans alike, and every variation in between, we, Americans, are sick to death of you and the other terror mongers trying to frighten us into submission - into the surrender of our rights and our reason - and is a betrayal of that for which this country has always stood.

Franklin Roosevelt's words ring true again tonight, and clarified, and amplified. They are just as current now as they were when first he spoke them seventy-four years ago. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and those who would exploit our fear for power, and for their own personal, selfish, cynical gain."

Values

No one is exempt from the call to find common ground.

Of course, in the end a sense of mutual understanding isn't enough. After all, talk is cheap; like any value, empathy must be acted upon. When I was a community organizer back in the eighties, I would often challenge neighborhood leaders by asking them where they put their time, energy and money. Those are the true tests of what we value, I'd tell them, regardless of what we like to tell ourselves. If we aren't willing to pay a price for our values, if we aren't willing to make some sacrifices in order to realize them, then we should ask ourselves whether we truly believe in them at all.

By these standards at least, it sometimes appears that Americans today value nothing so much as being rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. We say we value the we legacy we leave the next generation and then saddle that generation with mountains of debt. We say we believe in equal opportunity but then stand idle while millions of American children languish in poverty. We insist that we value family, but then structure our economy and organize our lives so as to ensure that our families get less and less of our time.

And yet a part of us knows better. We hang on to our values, even if they seem at times tarnished and worn; even if, as a nation and in our own lives,w e have betrayed them more often than we care to remember. What else is there to guide us? Those values are our inheritance, what makes us who we are as a people. And although we recognize that they are subject to challenge, can be poked and prodded and debunked and turned inside out by intellectuals and cultural critics, they have proven to be both surprisingly durable and surprisingly constant across classes, and races, and faiths, and generations. We can make claims on their behalf, so long as we understand that our values must be tested against fact and experience, so long as we recall that they demand deeds and not just words.

To do otherwise would be to relinquish our best selves.

The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama