Fortunate Son: George W. Bush and the Making of an American President

Milton said it best, in Areopagetica. It was 1643 and the British parliament had passed laws restricting the sale of pamphlets and newsbooks by allowing only licensed printers to publish. Criticism of the new ruling elite was eliminated under the rubric of preserving the propriety and religious beliefs of the Puritans . Milton brilliantly criticized this law, which stopped good reporting as well as "evil" publications, explaining, "Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter." Interestingly, the harsh licensing laws Milton came out against were written by a revolutionary government supposedly committed to liberty. The infamous Star Chamber, which had maimed and tortured printers and publishers for sedition and heresy, had been disbanded, but the authoritarian impulse towards censorship remained. It was Milton’s argument that formed the basis for a free press.

In today's United States, putatively committed to liberty and freedom of speech, the book in your hands had to be reprinted after tens of thousands of copies were collected from bookstores all over America and burned. There were no licensing laws involved in the decision by St. Martin's Press, just a set of spurious principles that make such laws redundant. Publishing and journalism do a great job censoring themselves these days, thanks to the discipline provided by lawsuits and the threat of withdrawn access. Instead of truth and falsehood getting to wrestle in the minds of readers, the truth never makes it to the ring, while falsehood is freely told and repeated.

For months now, George W. Bush has failed to deny allegations of cocaine use. Asked directly, time and again, Bush has demurred. He admits to drinking as a young man, but on cocaine, he has repeated a series of non-answers. He has even said that he does not want go into his past because that may give a young person an excuse to do what Bush had done in his past. Basic logic fills in the blanks of Bush’s non-answer. To the question "Have you ever done cocaine?" there are two possible answers, "Yes" and "No." Only one of these two answers fulfills the condition of possibly giving a young person an excuse to engage in a variety of self-destructive behaviors like cocaine use, and that is the "Yes" answer. What conclusions can be drawn from logic? According to the practices of modern journalism, absolutely nothing. Whatever George W. Bush or other major public figures say enjoys life as a fact, thanks to the news media simply repeating press releases faithfully. Thus, George W. Bush is a "compassionate conservative" not because he is particularly compassionate or is even a principled conservative, but because he says he is, and the press repeats it as fact. Even though his own comments on drug use allow us to create a logical proof to show that he has done drugs, journalists like Nat Hentoff are content to ignore logic and claim that Bush’s cocaine use is a rumor reported "without proof." Logic is similarly ignored when Bush’s own claim of compassionate conservatism is accepted without being examined critically. In addition to implying that conservatives are not generally compassionate, neither compassionate nor conservative accurately describe George W. Bush.