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June 30, 2005
NBC: Founding Fathers Could Have Been Terrorists

NBC's Brian Williams extended the concept of moral equivalence into the territory of the absurd in tonight's installment of the NBC Evening News. The new anchor discussed the story about Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's possible involvement in the 1979 American embassy takeover in Teheran and subsequent hostaging of its staff. As I argued earlier, Williams noted that even if true, it wouldn't make much difference in how we interact with the Iranian government, which supported the takeover and quickly co-opted it themselves.

However, as Dread Pundit Bluto noted, Williams instead argued that the British likely faced the same dilemma after the creation of the United States. After all, Williams says, one can easily confuse people like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with George Washington:

The White House and most official branches of government are ducking any substantive comment on this story, and photo analysis is going on at this and other news organizations. It is a story that will be at or near the top of our broadcast and certainly made for a robust debate in our afternoon editorial meeting, when several of us raised the point (I'll leave it to others to decide germaneness) that several U.S. presidents were at minimum revolutionaries, and probably were considered terrorists of their time by the Crown in England.

Did Washington bomb women and children indiscriminately in order to chase the British out of North America? Did John Hancock send teenagers with bomb belts into marketplaces to kill as many people as possible to destabilize colonial society? This comparison insults the intelligence and the memory of those who fought on both sides of the Revolutionary War, which (despite what's commonly thought) mostly saw European-style, set-piece combat between uniformed forces.

Williams indulges in the same, tired moral equivalency that led Michael Moore to declare Zarqawi as the Iraqi version of the Minutemen from our war of independence. This minimizes the cruelty and inhumanity of the enemies of freedom that use civilians as their targets while trying to impose tyrannies far worse than anything George III could ever have dreamed in his most feverish illusions. It also continues the generation-long effort to rewrite American history to eliminate the idea of American exceptionalism, where all forms of government are relatively equal and democracy is simply another choice with no special moral value over monarchies or autocracies.

Shame on Brian Williams, and shame on NBC.

Sphere It Digg! View blog reactions
Posted by Ed Morrissey at June 30, 2005 6:19 PM

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» NBC Enters Michael Moore Territory from Ed Driscoll.com
Ed Morrissey writes that NBC's Brian Williams (who in the past has attempted to pay favorable lip-service to his viewers in the Red States, but trashed bloggers) said on the Nightly News that America's founders "probably were considered terrorists of... [Read More]

Tracked on June 30, 2005 8:01 PM

» Founding Fathers = Terrorists from Flopping Aces
The sad part is that those people on the far left who believe the US is evil incarnate will have no problem believing Williams crap. [Read More]

Tracked on June 30, 2005 9:39 PM

» I have watched my last NBC news program from Media Lies
Captain Ed reports

NBC's Brian Williams extended the concept of moral equivalence into the territory of the absurd in tonight's installment of the NBC E...
[Read More]

Tracked on June 30, 2005 9:56 PM

» What is the definition of Terrorist? from dIRTYrOTTENhEATHEN
Someone called the US Founding Fathers "terrorists". And? I thought everyone knew that already. If any country used the modern day equivilent of the tactics we used in the US Revolution, we would be trying to shut them down, calling them "terrorists", and [Read More]

Tracked on July 1, 2005 7:31 AM

» NBC: Founding Fathers Could Have Been Terrorists from BlogSpy.NET
We found this blog entry very interesting so we've added a Trackback to it on our site. [Read More]

Tracked on July 1, 2005 10:15 AM

» NBC: Founding Fathers were terrorists from Danny Carlton (aka Jack Lewis)
From WorldNetDaily: In his newscast tonight, "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams compared America's first presidents to the president-elect of... [Read More]

Tracked on July 1, 2005 11:06 AM

» Williams on the Founders from ProfessorBainbridge.com
Brian Williams is catching a lot of flak from my fellow conservatives in the blogosphere for some comments that compared the American Founders to terrorists. According to WND, Williams said:... the first several U.S. presidents were certainly revolutio... [Read More]

Tracked on July 1, 2005 2:33 PM

» A Man is Known by the Enemies He Keeps from Ideas In Progress
The flaw in Mr. William’s comparison is that he considers the word “terrorist” to have the same derisive meaning regardless of who utters it. He hasn’t just compared our Founding Fathers to Iran’s fanatical tyrants. He... [Read More]

Tracked on July 1, 2005 2:55 PM

» Brian Williams: Crushed Like a Tiny Bug! from Obviously Right
Could there be more layers of stupidity in one simple sentence? It's offensive, morally obtuse, and historically inaccurate. [Read More]

Tracked on July 1, 2005 6:16 PM

» Michael Moore Gets A Major Makeover from Hard Starboard
And has apparently changed his name and gone to work for NBC News as its #1 anchorman: This time Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News has gone too far. Reporting on the possibility that Iran's President-elect was one of the hostage-takers in 1979,... [Read More]

Tracked on July 1, 2005 11:38 PM



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