2004 Year in Review

I've Got a Secret

This is my last regular opinion column for the city1.com Café op-ed pages. I will be moving to my own site, which will be up and running in the near future. The site

http://www.il61270.com

is online but under construction. The façade as it exists now is but a placeholder for the finished site.

In the mid-60’s, Fritz Fischer, a German historian, published a work on the ‘secret’ aims of Germany during the First World War. It was an explosive volume for it delineated the plans of the German Empire towards it neighbors and, as Fischer explained, served as a blueprint for Hitler’s Third Reich and his plans during the Second World War.

Golo Mann, son of the novelist Thomas Mann, was a historian himself and took issue with Fischer and his manipulation of the facts. In particular, Mann took Fischer to task for his use of the word ‘secret.’ Mann’s position was that Germany’s aims during World War I were not secret at all; in fact, the average citizen could read Germany’s intent in the daily newspapers of the time.

The same is true today. If a person wants the full story on an issue, he can find it in the newspapers, in magazines, on television, and on the web. We have more information about the salient questions of our time than we can handle intelligently. We have so much, in fact, that many of us throw up our hands in frustration; we can’t possibly wade through the material. Some of us choose a position, on the right, in the middle, or on the left, and hold on no matter what.

Despite the plethora of information, many of us are no more informed than our favorite commentator on the cable news or on talk radio. We look to them to give this breadth of information a form we can understand and use to develop our own views.

An opinion writer does not write to change the opinions of those with whom he disagrees. That would be a futile effort. He may write to challenge his opposition to look afresh at their ideas, but he does not dare to be so presumptive as to believe they will suddenly bolt from their beliefs and align themselves with him. For a writer to believe such would again be futile. Great and sudden changes from long-held beliefs come about because of profound changes in one’s own life, either external or internal.

A good example of such a profound change can be seen in satirist/commentator Dennis Miller, who now espouses a conservative point of view after a lifetime of slamming Republican ideology. Why did Miller make such an abrupt about-face?

Miller turned when he discovered that there are people in the world who really, really hate the United States, who hate Western culture. They hate so vehemently they are willing to kill thousands of innocents without the slightest twinge of conscious. They hate so viciously they are willing to sacrifice thousands of their own people to see a resurgence of a long-somnambulant empire.

Miller turned when he realized there is evil in the world, unredemptive evil, skirting along the edges of religion, calling on the name of the Creator even as it violates the very principles of life, fraternity, and spirituality that are central to all religions. He turned when he realized that no matter how open he was, how forgiving he was, how understanding he was, there were malevolent men and women who would take his life, the lives of his family, the lives of his friends, and destroy the one true democracy in the world without a moment‘s hesitation.

Miller turned on September 11, 2001. He no longer felt it wise to turn the other cheek.

Conversions such as Miller’s are not the norm, however. There are those who hold fast to time-worn notions of the ill-informed and the wishful. Take for instance the newly-inaugurated [Hot] Air America talk radio. Franken and Garafolo are so vitriolic in their efforts to denigrate conservatives – and give liberals a talk radio showcase - that they end up ridiculous and self-parodying. One might add that conservatives such as Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity are equally oblivious to their extremism.

It is naïve to believe that Chris Matthews, Aaron Brown, Forrest Sawyer, and Alan Colmes night in, night out work to turn conservatives into liberals; or that Sean Hannity, Dennis Miller, and Joe Scarborough work to convert liberals to the conservative cause. They know such ventures are audacious and hopeless. People must be converted only because they have, like Dennis Miller, an overwhelming need to do so – and a radical change need not be the result of an epiphany. (So-called ‘independent’ commentators as Bill O’Reilly are nothing more than opportunists who seize the popular issues and go with the majority. They have few, if any, core beliefs.)

Commentators write to stir, to incite, to buttress, to inspire those who have similar beliefs. They assure those of their cause they are not alone in believing as they do. Above all, they encourage their readers to uncover the truth, for there are no secrets, only secretive people.

I thank thecity1.com for giving me the opportunity to vent my views on various topics, without censorship of any kind. I hope I have acquitted myself well, and I invite you, thecity1.com visitors, to stop at my site when you're surfing the web.

by William Driver, Guest Columnist
April 2, 2004