The March of Ignorance, cont'd

The New York Times editorialized about what it called the administration's "fixation with secrecy." The editorial pointed particularly to a move to re-classify information about the United States' arsenal of ballistic missiles that was released in 1971 (no, that's not a typo) by then-Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. (For those who don't remember him, Mel Laird was a longtime Republican member of Congress who was appointed Secretary by Richard Nixon.)

This is not the first time that the administration's minions have attempted to reverse time by taking information that has been public knowledge for decades and declaring it secret. As of last spring, when the director of the National Archives objected to a program--itself secret--to erase history by re-classification, 55,000 pages had been taken from the public record.

It's easy to ridicule this fatuous and sure-to-be-futile attempt to obstruct knowledge and obscure the truth, but the mindset that embraces such nefarious escapades is frightening in its foolishness. The idea of spending government resources--human and monetary--on such monstrous stupidity when we are running mountainous deficits and failing to deal with huge challenges at home and abroad is mind-boggling.

This is the kind of wasteful and self-destructive activity that the Soviet Union embraced in its death-throes. Can we hold out hope that the United States will re-discover the values that made her the world's great inspirational leader when her government engages in such shenanigans? Not likely.