Meanwhile, according to USA Today, Rather repeatedly said in an interview that no one has has yet disputed “the heart” of his report. But, Rather continued, a “thick partisan fogging machine seeks to cloud the core truth of our story by raising questions about the messenger, methods and techniques.”

This is pathological. Rather is actually claiming that it’s somehow unfair that the world is focusing on the forged documents—forged documents which were presented to the world by America’s most prestigious tv news organization, and which that organization still refuses to admit were forged—rather than on the “essential” truth of the story, a “truth” that was based on those very forged documents.

Furthermore, as George Neumayr reminds us at the American Spectator, Rather has previously said that Bill Clinton is an “honest man … Who among us have not lied about somebody? I think at the core he’s an honest person … I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things.” Neumayr concludes: “What Rather said about Clinton he will soon revise for himself: you can now be an honest journalist at CBS and lie about any number of things.”

All this stems from the core left-liberal assumption that man is good, a radical break from the traditional moral understanding that goodness exists outside us and above us. Even Jesus said, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God.” But the liberal, casting off the transcendent, believes that he himself is identical with goodness. Therefore, by definition, he cannot be a dishonest person. The only bad or dishonest person is the non-liberal, who claims to believe in a truth higher than man, and who would use that fraudulent higher truth to suppress and repress the immanent goodness of the human.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 16, 2004 07:27 AM | Send