Feeling morally, intellectually confused?

That's me. Oozing confusion.

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Some people can't see the issues for the nuances...

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

I can't think of any MSNBC anchors that're good with issues...

Mr. Rumsfeld's remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis — and the sober contemplation — of every American. For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land.

He's making the assumption that the majority of Americans oppose Bush and crew, despite the last election. That's why we have elections, y'know...

Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration's track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

There's a difference between clarity of vision and omniscience, though I suppose clarity of vision can seem that way to people who don't pay attention...

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life's blood of human freedom;

Dissent for the mere sake of dissent is pointless posturing. Dissent without a grounding in fact is mere vaporing.

and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

As Secretary of Defense, they're "his" troops. The military is controlled by the civilian administration. That's why we're so different from Pakistan.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

But only every once in awhile. In each and every war we've ever fought there's been a body of opposition, most of them thankfully forgotten by now. In most of those wars they've been wrong. I believe that the loyalists were actually in the majority in the Revolution. Lincoln was parodied in much the same terms as Bush — contrast Chimpy McBushitler with the description of Honest Abe as an ape and the cry of John Wilkes Booth when he bumped off the Great Emancipator: "Sic semper tyrannis."

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld's speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril — with a growing evil — powerful and remorseless. That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld's, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the "secret information." It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld's -- questioning their intellect and their morality. That government was England's, in the 1930s.

It dismissed and insulted its critics in much the same manner today's critics dismiss and insult those who are in favor of fighting the enemy rather than letting the enemy destroy us.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

Just like today's disloyal opposition knows that the threat to civil liberties is much greater than the threat of terrorism. One fellow even made the point that there have been only X number of fatalities from terrorism since 9-11-01, so obviously the threat's been overstated.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

I don't hear the disloyal opposition saying much about Iran's armaments program, its use of military proxies, its nuclear program, or the theat it presents to the West.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions — its own omniscience — needed to be dismissed.

Where's the disloyal opposition's hard evidence?

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Just like Kieth Olberman knows the truth.

Most relevant of all — it "knew" that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated.

That's the way you feel when you don't get elected, isn't it? If John Kerry was president things would be ever so much better. Telling people what they want to hear is not always the same thing as telling them the truth. In fact, it seldom is.

In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused. That critic's name was Winston Churchill.

Yes. A man noted for his clarity of vision, not for omniscience. His was a clarity of vision that he refused to lose, even as those who were ever so much more civilized in their outlook were determined to negotiate and negotiate and negotiate and thereby achieve peace in their time.

This idiot really isn't going to compare himself to Winston Churchill, is he?

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening.

At least none that Keith Olberman can recognize.

We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

And we have MSNBC, today's equivalent of the press that reviled Lincoln, yearning for peace in our time.

History — and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England — have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty — and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

But it was Winston who took office and Winston who hung in when things looked darkest, when Coventry was burning. And it was the Chamberlain set who took over from Winston when the job was done and made Britain what it is today.

Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Some of us would call it very apt.

Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

And that Keith Olberman has delusions of adequacy.

His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.

It's the version that's standing up to Islamism...

It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

Chamberlain's high water mark was Munich. He'll always be associated with it. Bush and Rumsfeld are studiously avoiding Munichs.

But back to today's Omniscient ones.

You mean the ones with clarity of vision?

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely. And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.

That's why we have elections. Bush won the election. Kerry didn't. The Dems didn't.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama Bin Laden's plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein's weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina's impact one year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their "omniscience" as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

Nope. Wouldn't happen. To the disloyal opposition it's much more important to "dissent."

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

The Taliban were thrown out of Afghanistan. That proved something. Sammy's in the dock. That proved something. Muammar's decided he doesn't want to have nuclear weapons. That proved something. Syria's out of Lebanon, despite the fact that they're trying to get back in. Yasser's dead. Al-Qaeda's high command are in durance vile. NATO's actually shooting bullets at bad guyz, for the first time in history and against my personal expectations. Yasser's dead and the Peace Processor is unplugged. The lines are drawn with a lot more clarity than they were in September, 2001. We know who our friends are and we know who's on the side of the bad guyz. The diplo war goes on, day after tedious day, with victories here, loses there, and probably draws in the majority of cases. If you pay attention, you don't see arrogance and hubris. You see clarity of vision and determination, and you see the Bataans and the Midways of a different war. But not if you don't pay attention.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire "Fog of Fear" which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

Got the ad hominem out of the way. We can move on to the next idea in Olberman's little butterfly mind...

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer's New Clothes?

Sure he can. Cindy Sheehan's the one who hung her bosom out, not Donald Rumsfeld.

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

He probably has today's U.S.A. confused with the U.S.A. of his youth, which I would submit was a better place. Our parents had gone through depression and war and they had been perhaps forced to pay attention, but they had collectively a clarity of vision that was more like Rumsfeld's than like MSNBC's.

The confusion we -- as its citizens — must now address, is stark and forbidding.

Sometimes when I don't pay attention I get confused, too.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

We're using historical examples? Can we use Boss Tweed, too? Can we trot out Bull Connor? But why doesn't Olberman address the example of Charles Borah that Rumsfeld used? Why not address Cordell Hull — "Gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail."

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

If they're destroying our freedoms, they're not doing it in the same manner as the terrs. Nobody's head's been chopped off, women aren't stuffed into sacks. There's no requirement to go to church every Sunday. No one's been assassinated. MSNBC hasn't been closed down.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld's other main assertion, that this country faces a "new type of fascism." As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it. This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

That's a pretty casual dismissal of the entire concept of Islamic fascism and its more than passing resemblence to the enemies our parents and grandparents fought. There's no mention of the Islamists' loathing of man-made law, of individual freedom, of the right to think as you damned well please.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow. But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: "confused" or "immoral." Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:

Go ahead and quote. It implies you've actually read something.

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," he said, in 1954. "We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular."

And so good night, and good luck.

Comments? Email KOlbermann@msnbc.com