And we have a word: “disgraceful.” This is the Republican line on the NYT’s latest taddling on the government. Apparently the Times enjoys the irony, since they’ve titled their piece (still fronted on day two) Bush Says Report on Bank Data Was Disgraceful.

“Disgraceful” is nice, but I’m disappointed that higher-up Republicans didn’t borrow Rep. Peter King’s even more colorful charge that the Times was “more concerned about a left-wing elitist agenda than it is about the security of the American people.” Let’s try to figure this one out.

What was the Times’s agenda in publishing the piece? We don’t have to speculate. In the executive editor’s letter, Keller makes plain that the newspaper exercised its press freedoms to inform the public of government activities. (Also, probably to sell newspapers.) There’s no reason to doubt this explanation; it’s consistent with a “left-wing” agenda. I don’t even think that King doubts it.

I think, that Rep. Peter King (of our state!) thinks, that freedom of the press is an elitist idea.

Ghosts of the founding fathers, appear! Okay, I guess that doesn’t work without Whoopi. Let’s instead try to remember what it was like to first learn the Bill of Rights in elementary school. Just relax….

… at that time, the freedoms guaranteed by the first ten amendments to the constitution were considered radical. Many thought they were overreaching. Today, we recognize that the states were right to accept the Constitution only with the Bill of Rights attached to it—these rights are the foundation of a working democracy…

(That’s how I remember it anyway.) It seemed so quaint, that those basic freedoms were once radical. Men in wigs, with wooden teeth, bristling at the idea that the federal troops could not be quartered in citizens’ homes—even in wartime!

But after two hundred years of democracy, it seems Americans are still suspicious of its “elitist” principles. Those uncomprehending mobs of the 1770s that we studied, who weren’t sure what democracy was and who just wanted to be free of British rule—those people are us. Our standard of living has gone from single-cow families to multi-SUV ones, but we’ve made no progress in understanding democracy.

That’s not pleasant to observe, but there’s a bright side: we’ve done pretty damn well under two hundred years of dumb-mob rule. I suppose we’ll keep on keepin’ on, so long as enough smart people who care about freedom keep saving it for the rest of us. (“Freedom,” as in the freedom to wear a ninja suit without being arrested, not the cynical rhetorical “freedom” of freedom fries, operation Enduring Freedom, etc.)

One thing we should all keep in mind—one little bit of self-righteousness I think we’re entitled to—is that we are the ones at risk. We, the dirty city-people. At least as much as anyone is at risk. It’s grossly unfair for residents of the suburbs and countryside to cede American rights in the name of a threat that is statistically insignificant to them.

Keller puts this subtly, and powerfully, in his response to the paper’s “disgrace” :

It’s worth mentioning that the reporters and editors responsible for this story live in two places—New York and the Washington area—that are tragically established targets for terrorist violence. The question of preventing terror is not abstract to us.

Elitist terrorist targets.