by John D. O'Connor
A media class that smothers debate in moral hysteria cannot defend liberalism; on Iran, true liberty demands argument before orthodoxy makes dissent itself the enemy.
During nonstop lambasting of the Iran War and Trump, one—and only one—rational liberal thought has been uttered by the “Progressive” Left, and that is in the opinion pages of The New York Times:
There is a reasonable debate to have about the wisdom of this war. Iran’s murderous government does indeed present a threat—to its own people, to its region and to global stability. Mr. Trump could make a fact-based argument for confronting the regime now, especially to prevent it from menacing its neighbors and, above all, from developing a nuclear weapon. We are skeptical, but we acknowledge that there is a case to be made.
To be sure, this sop to principled debate was just that, and the remaining seventeen paragraphs of the Times editorial were a vicious, highly emotional rant, mainly targeting Trump’s rhetoric and political style. The effect was to say that Trump is so evil that we can’t even have a potential debate. Thomas Friedman of the Times recently admitted as much.
The Times, along with the rest of the legacy media, has not sponsored anything resembling a true debate. Rather, there has been widespread conflating of Trump’s personal irrationalities with the well-planned, precise, and indeed existentially necessary Iran attack.
To assume that the war was a Trumpian seat-of-the-pants blunder is simply a projection of the media’s reflexive irrationality. This style of rhetoric was long urged by influential radical Saul Alinsky, who advised that one need not make a cogent political argument if one’s traditionalist opponent is portrayed as not just wrong but evil. Debate and skepticism are anathema to the top-down orthodoxy of socialism and its ideological cousin Progressivism. “Liberal” these political straitjackets are not.
In any case, it is patently clear that their media outlets don’t offer anything close to the principled arguments that their opponents would make. But as John Stuart Mill admonished, one must hear the opposing argument from one who sincerely believes it. Per Mill, those who silence discussion assume infallibility, anathema to the truly liberal project.
The argument supporting intervention is simple. To wit, Iran cannot get the bomb, because it would likely use it on Israel. If it did, would the United States help our ally? If we did, given the surprisingly increasing range of Iran’s ICBMs, recently reaching the Indian Ocean, would our Eastern Seaboard, and perhaps cities as far west as Chicago and St. Louis, be vulnerable?
Indeed, since Iran’s aims appeared to be not only “Death to Israel!” but also “Death to America!” Israel’s formidable military capability, together with its Iron Dome, might counsel a war-gaming Iran to launch first against Israel’s ally, America. After all, America has numerous unprotected urban areas. Wouldn’t Washington, DC, and New York, the epicenters of our government and modern media, be helpless to defend against a nuclear attack?
Putting aside the actual launch of Iran’s nuclear bombs, wouldn’t its threat, upon completed development, allow an expensive tollbooth to be erected on the Strait of Hormuz? Since Iran is China’s major oil supplier, its shipments of non-surcharged oil would give China great military strength and competitive commercial advantage, while consigning Americans and their allies to $10 gas as worldwide prices spike. Wouldn’t our present modestly increased prices look wonderful in comparison? Yet the media bellyaches over today’s prices, which they did not condemn when Biden caused similar levels.
And wouldn’t a nuclear Iran seek to colonize the Arab world toward the aim of a broad Islamic caliphate, hindering any progress for gays, women, and unemployed young Arab men? For reasons like these, for decades, Democrat politicians like Hillary Clinton and, weakly and ineffectually, Barack Obama and John Kerry have stated that Iran cannot have the bomb.
Since it appears obvious that a nuclear Iran would be good neither for global security nor prosperity, the only argument against the current US operation in Iran is that the threat from Iran was not yet “imminent.” This is part of the jejune pablum that this is a “war of choice.”
Seemingly, this argument rests on the presumption that Mossad and American intelligence had no knowledge of any imminent completion of an appropriately enriched warhead. Iran has admitted to 22,000 lbs. (11 tons) of enriched uranium, while only 141 lbs. (64 kg) of enriched uranium was necessary to incinerate Hiroshima.
The question then remains: How do these critics define “imminent”? If “imminent” means that Iran actually has the bomb in a warhead, doesn’t “imminent” also mean “too late”? And shouldn’t we discuss where we would be if a Democrat had won in 2024, even as the media hate Trump?
Our liberal republic was founded upon notions of skepticism, diversity of thought, and the fallibility of the intelligentsia, especially those not rooted in traditional values. Our liberty’s foundational safeguard is unrestrained argument. The liberal Enlightenment project eschewed the imposition of any religious or all-encompassing orthodoxy and especially feared the combination of the press, moral vigilantes, and the passionate mob.
Our wise Enlightenment forebears (e.g., Hamilton, Madison, Burke, Mill, and Montesquieu), hoping to avoid the despotism of enforced ideology, would view today’s reflexive media as ushers of society’s destruction.
Today, while claiming to be “liberal,” the intellectual style of the legacy media is that of cheerleading for stultifying progressive thought, which by its very essence suppresses debate.
Our Founders hoped to devise a system where free and vigorous argument would be the norm. Progressivism, however, has sought to dismantle that system. The first influential Progressive president, Woodrow Wilson, greatly disliked the Constitution. He argued strongly for the central administrative control of the country by educated elites, while of course re-segregating the military and the government.
As Burke so ably foretold, reliance on mankind’s limited “stock of rationality” would lead to French-style terror. Burke’s opposing thinker, Rousseau, urged that once the “general will” was determined, through guiding intellectuals, all dissenting citizens must be “forced to be free.”
We have seen such unchanneled “liberal” thought in progressive revolutionaries such as Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Castro, and Maduro. Under the liberal flag of “the people,” none of these despots allowed free argument. Progressivism, as history has proven, is anything but “liberal.”
It is harmful enough to our democratic republic that major media outlets attempt to suppress debate on the most important societal issues: “climate change” (climate denier!); our election security (election denier!); COVID’s origins (conspiracy theorist!); “Russian collusion” (Trumper!); an aging President’s acuity (MAGA!). But intentionally squelching debate on an issue involving potentially imminent incineration of our world is beneath contempt.
In stark contrast to media-enforced, illiberal progressive ideology, the unwashed “deplorables” welcome true debate. A visit to coffee shops and luncheonettes throughout mid-America finds many people of various educational attainments happy to discuss all points of view in a respectful fashion.
As both Smith and Burke observed, those involved in the commercial trade economy are necessarily disciplined by its morality, which develops civic common sense as well. On the other hand, Burke warned of “calculators” (men of money) and “sophisters” (feckless intellectuals) eschewing traditional mores, inimical to a sound republic, and who therefore promote mob irrationality.
Both sides of our political divide are thus not equal and opposite, as thoughtless commentary would have it. Rather, one side, in diverse parts traditional, rough-hewn, and/or simply commonsensical, is not ideologically driven nor part of a cancel culture. These are the true “liberals” in today’s America.
It follows that the other side of the divide is decidedly illiberal, a league led by calculators and sophisters, hoping to incite the masses through the media they control toward top-down, power-worshipping progressive orthodoxy. Why, we ask, is John Fetterman the only prominent Democrat, among hundreds, willing to argue rationally about our country’s defense?
As the media prevents argument and bans debate, skewing all reporting to the reigning progressive ideological canard, we ask, per Abraham Lincoln, shall our “government of the people, for the people, by the people . . . perish from the earth”?
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John D. O'Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San
Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as
Deep Throat in 2005. O’Connor is the author of the books Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism and The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened. O’Connor and Mark Felt collaborated on the 2006 book, A G-Man’s Life, which was made into the 2018 film, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House.
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/03/is-it-possible-for-the-left-to-engage-in-principled-debate-on-iran/
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