Sometimes, a guy thinks that he has become "Mr. Wilson." Maybe you are not old enough to remember him (though Walter Matthau revived the character in a movie a few years back). He was the Mitchell's next door neighbor and the foil, therefore, for "Dennis the Menace" best recalled from a late 1950s, early 1960s television show.

Almost every episode began with Mr. Wilson determined not to let Dennis get to him, and, of course, he always did. To turn on television news, to pick up a newspaper and, mostly, to read a blog, even those whose contributors generally express views one with which one agrees, is almost always to become Mr. Wilson.

The always pitch perfect Granny Doc stole some of the thunder that would otherwise have originated from this space. She pointed out how maddening it is when she poses the question "why" to students much happier just spouting off whatever "fact" that has come to mind, but the same inability or unwillingness to apply critical thought to whatever issue comes to mind has become the means by which we decide right and wrong these days.

We have all had our guffaw over the people who want the government to keep their hands off of medicare and the woman quoted in the New York Times article about the "tea party" has brought forth the knowing looks from the same people who snickered over the woman who argued with Senator McCain as to whether his opponent for the presidency was actually an arab and, hence, the implication was clear, a terrorist.

The tea party woman's quote came after she was asked about she squared her supposed opposition to "big government" with her collecting social security benefits:

"That's a conundrum, isn't it?" asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. "I don't know what to say. Maybe I don't want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security." She added, "I didn't look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I've changed my mind."

The foolishness that passes for political debate, though, goes well beyond these gross, and newsworthy examples we have seen and read. Almost seventy years after the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt changed everything, the argument about what government does or should do, or whether government is too big exists against an obviously different backdrop than the one that existed when President Roosevelt took office on March 4, 1933.

The pure debate about the size of the government, or what government is supposed to do ended in the years which followed, and, in twice nominating Thomas E. Dewey as the Republican presidential nominee for the second time, and then General Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952, the view that government should not interfere with our lives was held only by a sliver of people who refused to accept what had been accomplished.

The argument that we have today is not a real one. It is conducted in the main by people who not only accept (and, indeed, demand) the government's role in almost everything we do but object to how the government has been directed to deal with a specific issue about which they are concerned. Thus bankers and brokers do not want as much regulation of the financial industry just as oil companies don't like being told where they can drill. They try to disguise their rhetoric in a big government rant but it is insincere and long past being relevant, in any event.

Here is just a taste of how different our world is from the one which actually argued about what government is supposed to do. This is the New York Times, editorializing on May 18, 1912 (link only works for subscribers) about the aftermath of enormous flooding in Lousiana and Mississippi after hurricanes ravaged the area. (Yes, even before President Bush was born, this could happen.

Sayeth the Times about the refugee camps established in response, largely the reflecting the views of the time:

The Federal Government has acted promptly and well, as the sanitation of the camps is better than might have been expected. The idea that the Government's aid to the afflicted, however, will be adequate to relieve their suffering and to tide them over until crops are planted and produce marketed, should not be permitted to prevail.

and when roughly the same thing have a quarter century later, this is what happened, at least according to a contemporary student of the misfortunes of Louisiana, Randy Newman:

President Coolidge came down in a railroad train
With a little fat man with a note-pad in his hand
The President say, "Little fat man isn't it a shame what the river has
done
To this poor crackers land."

Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tyrin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away
Louisiana, Louisiana
They're tryin' to wash us away
They're tryin' to wash us away

(If, by the way, you have never heard of Huey Long and "every man's a king" don't try to discuss Louisiana).

Today, a private company, drilling for oil to sell at an enormous profit, uses its enormous financial resources to convince a government established through a political system that rewards those who can contribute to campaigns for elective office, not to have a smaller government per se, but to keep it from effectively regulate how and where they drill. Those efforts continue year after year and culminate in secret meetings with the Vice President of the United States , a secrecy upheld, at least in part, by a Supreme Court on which one of the Vice President's hunting buddies sits but does not recuse himself, and, finally a Republican National Convention devoting mainly to proposing that oil companies be urged to "drill, baby, drill"

Then the inevitable occurs and it is President Obama's fault. It was when Mourning Joe told us yesterday that the President was "seemingly disengaged" from this crisis that the Mr. Wilson moment arrived yet again.

This is not "seemingly disengaged." Play acting, showing your anger, doing photo ops which prove one's compassion is not being engaged. That is not what a President is supposed to do, anymore than one who reads a book to schoolchildren rather than try to protect the country when told that "bin Laden [is] determined to attack the United States. We need a President to promote a way out of these messes, not to clean them up.

Like, maybe, telling our citizens this:

The catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf right now may prove to be a result of human error, or of corporations taking dangerous shortcuts to compromise safety, or a combination of both. And I've launched a National Commission so that the American people will have answers on exactly what happened. But we have to acknowledge that there are inherent risks to drilling four miles beneath the surface of the Earth, and these are risks -- (applause) -- these are risks that are bound to increase the harder oil extraction becomes. We also have to acknowledge that an America run solely on fossil fuels should not be the vision we have for our children and our grandchildren. (Applause.)

We consume more than 20 percent of the world's oil, but have less than 2 percent of the world's oil reserves. So without a major change in our energy policy, our dependence on oil means that we will continue to send billions of dollars of our hard-earned wealth to other countries every month -- including countries in dangerous and unstable regions. In other words, our continued dependence on fossil fuels will jeopardize our national security. It will smother our planet. And it will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk.

Now, I understand that we can't end our dependence on fossil fuels overnight. That's why I supported a careful plan of offshore oil production as one part of our overall energy strategy. But we can pursue such production only if it's safe, and only if it's used as a short-term solution while we transition to a clean energy economy.

And the time has come to aggressively accelerate that transition. The time has come, once and for all, for this nation to fully embrace a clean energy future. (Applause.) Now, that means continuing our unprecedented effort to make everything from our homes and businesses to our cars and trucks more energy-efficient. It means tapping into our natural gas reserves, and moving ahead with our plan to expand our nation's fleet of nuclear power plants. It means rolling back billions of dollars of tax breaks to oil companies so we can prioritize investments in clean energy research and development.

But the only way the transition to clean energy will ultimately succeed is if the private sector is fully invested in this future -- if capital comes off the sidelines and the ingenuity of our entrepreneurs is unleashed. And the only way to do that is by finally putting a price on carbon pollution.

Actually, the whole speech, and its cousin, so to speak, from a few weeks earlier about what government can and should do, should be read in full. It, not Mourning Joe and the like, or pictures of oil seeping into the water, ought to dominate the news. Then, if we are going to have a discussion about big government or small government, about getting government off the backs of business or so called "tort reform" to,as President Bush tried to tell us once, enable gynecologists to "practice their love.", we can have it from a base point where relevant history is at least recognized, if not fully understood.

If your opinion is based on nothing more than seeing an event, or reading about it, and reacting to it in the abstract without context, it is, in my own opinion, worthless. If Jim Joyce erroneously calling a batter-runner safe should be changed because it ruined Armando Gallaraga's perfect game, should be "changed" by the Commissioner of Baseball, because you happened to see it, what about, for instance, Jeffrey Maier's interfering with Tony Tarasco catching what umpire Richie Garcia called a home run which irreparably damaged the Baltimore Orioles, or Ed Armbrister's interference with Carlton Fisk in the 1975 World Series? There are a million more examples of which you have heard mention all week. The point is that context is everything.

So it is with those who post in the same places where these scratches appear, who hear a terrible story about an attack on a boat trying to bring supplies to the Gaza strip. If you do not know what happened when Israel was established in 1948, and has happened continuously since then, if you do not know why Israel was established in the first place (Granny Doc's question, again), or what Hamas is all about, or what it has done with "supplies" and its attacks on Israel bu rockets fired from civilian areas in Gaza, then you are free to call Israel a nazi state, or a threat to mankind. One lovely commenter in these supposedly friendly pages told me that that past is nothing more than an "excuse" as if Israel is just spoiling to kill as many people as it can or, as he amended it, to find a basis to take over Judea and Samaria.

Assuming Israel has the nuclear capability that many assume it has, ask yourself what would happen if their opponents had the same thing and then tell me about "excuses." A young, 30 year old, American Jew, born in the U.S.S.R. wrote this about a year and a half ago, as it has resonated since then, as much this past week as ever before:

I am a Liberal in almost every sense of the word. I believe in protecting Civil Liberties as carefully as we protect the dearest things to us, but not with guns. I think guns are the cause of countless preventable tragedies in the households of Americans. I believe in Equality. In ending all Racism, Homophobia, and Sexism. I believe that government has a duty to help its citizens grow through education, help the elderly, have health care, and that it's not "each for himself". But I don't believe they have a right to spy on me. I believe in the freedom of Choice. I support a woman's right to have an abortion if she feels it necessary in her life. I believe in Barack Obama. I supported him with all my heart. I have never felt as strongly about a politician in my life. And in a few days he will be our president. This is a short list of my left, my Liberal, my closest media self.


I do not agree with the Liberal Media when it comes to Israel. I have never seen such one sided reporting in my life. And I've seen some amazing propaganda growing up in the Soviet Union. I have never seen a group of people so determined to portray Israeli people, Israeli soldiers, as blood thirsty, inhumane monsters. I am not a politician. I am sure there's a great political reason for this kind of reporting. For this kind of misrepresentation. I am sure there's a great reason for my hearing on a UK television set, while getting ready to play one of the festivals a couple of years back, a reporter saying, in a tragic voice with a tragic face "At this moment Hezbollah is fighting for its very existence." As if Hezbollah was a kitten that fell down a well, and not a terrorizing organization, and that Israel was the one who threw it down there. I'm sure there's a reason. And i think the reason is fear.

That last sentence may not be right; it could be Something Else, but that is not today's subject. These pages will return to that subject in a week or so, and maybe we will even tackle the Arizona immigration law, another issue where yelling and screaming have gotten in the way or readingm challenging and analyzing.

That is the subject of today's rant. The point made in this rather long essay is simply that critical thought is critical to our continued life on this planet. Nothing---nothing---has a single answer except for who won last night's ballgame (the Red Sox did, by the way, 11-0).

Your job, my job and that of the rest of us is not to just sling back what we have heard other people say about the issue, but to look at it from all sides and ask Granny Doc's question and challenge every conclusion including our own.

Yes, my favorite living politician has spoken to this, too, and he did so in one of the speeches you were told to read back a few paragraphs ago. He has said similar things before, but these words, from the President of the United States, mean more than any display of anger at an oil company could and they are the words of a real leader, not one playing the part:

Today's 24/7 echo-chamber amplifies the most inflammatory soundbites louder and faster than ever before. And it's also, however, given us unprecedented choice. Whereas most Americans used to get their news from the same three networks over dinner, or a few influential papers on Sunday morning, we now have the option to get our information from any number of blogs or websites or cable news shows. And this can have both a good and bad development for democracy. For if we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line with our own, studies suggest that we become more polarized, more set in our ways. That will only reinforce and even deepen the political divides in this country.

But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and our beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

Now, this requires us to agree on a certain set of facts to debate from. That's why we need a vibrant and thriving news business that is separate from opinion makers and talking heads. (Applause.) That's why we need an educated citizenry that values hard evidence and not just assertion. (Applause.) As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously once said, "Everybody is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts." (Laughter.)

Still, if you're somebody who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in a while. If you're a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website. It may make your blood boil; your mind may not be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship. (Applause.) It is essential for our democracy.

Exactly.