arthur-alpert-pic23“The spirit of liberty,” said Judge Learned Hand (1872 – 1961), “is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women.”

What put me in mind of his wisdom is the instant feedback afforded by Web publications, including the New Mexico Independent.

I’m of several minds about it.

Oh, it’s great in theory, democratic and downright exhilarating when online readers make informed, intelligent comments. That, however, doesn’t always happen. And I shrivel when correspondents (who know they are right) express themselves savagely.

And then I turn to nationally syndicated columnists across the political spectrum, journalistic celebrities all, who blatantly defy history.

And it awakens the savage in me.

Take Cal Thomas, whose latest dire warning about a nuclear-armed Iran omits his own full-throated advocacy of the U.S. war on Iraq, which — by crushing the bitter, Sunni enemy next door — raised the Persian Shiite state to superpower status.

Surely W.B. Yeats was thinking of Thomas as he wrote:

The ceremony of innocence is downed; the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Consider George Will, whose recent apology for unregulated capitalism concludes, “And when markets are allowed to operate, greed generates its own punishment.”

Punishment of whom? Cannot philosopher Will see that we, the people, are suffering for Wall Street’s free market follies, as we did 80 years ago?

None so blind as those who won’t remember.

Or centrist David Broder, who praises President Obama for moving right on national security in defiance of his “liberal critics” and again for courage “in joining Cheney in opposing the calls… for a ‘truth commission’ to search out and presumably punish those whose past security practices are now being changed.”

Broder is even older than I am, so he studied civics, including the Constitution and the quaint idea we’re a “nation of laws.” But he cares not who broke them. Or why. Nor does he ask if the Bush-Cheney policies enhanced national security or subverted it.

Talk about senior moments; he’s forgotten skepticism, too.

E.J. Dionne Jr.’s analysis and tentative approval of Obama’s “political project” makes me cry.

The president, says Dionne, would build an “enduring political establishment located slightly to the left of center but including everyone except the far right.” That’s why, he writes, Obama “has resolutely tacked to the center, pushing aside calls for nationalizing the banks and working closely with the financial establishment to review the economy.”

Good grief! Free market ideology fails. A catastrophic foreign policy boomerangs. And we’re to applaud Mr. Obama for leaving the nation saner, yes, but fundamentally unchanged? Still run, top-down, by corporate power? No structural reforms? No major transfer of power from the top of the pyramid to the middle class?

And Dionne is a liberal.

Anybody here speak for justice?

Dick Cheney boasts his administration protected us for seven years, but few ask, “Why not eight?”

Why did it fail to protect us from old enemy Al Qaeda before 9/11? It’s not as if there weren’t warnings. Plural.

Has nobody noticed that the former vice paranoid is laying political groundwork for his fellow rightist authoritarians? So they can say — if and when terrorists attack again on American soil — “I told you so.”

Enough. I fear savagery. Time to recite the Learned Hand mantra:

I may not be right. I may misunderstand those with whom I disagree.

I must try to remember that.