Go back five decades, to the Red Scare of the 1950s, and the words seem almost the same - all one has to do is substitute "terrorism" and "al-Qaida" for "communism" and "the Soviet Union."
The award-winning journalist and commentator Elmer Davis couldn't foresee that the hysteria of the McCarthy era would be repeated again a half-century later. But the words that Davis wrote in 1953 have resonance in our present crisis.
"The first and great commandment is, Don't let them scare you. For the men who are trying to do this to us are scared themselves. They are afraid that what they think will not stand critical examination; they are afraid that the principles on which this republic was founded and has been conducted are wrong...
"The United States has worked; the principles of freedom on which it was founded - free thought as well as political liberty - have worked. This is the faith once delivered to the fathers - the faith for which they were willing to fight and, if necessary, die, but for which they fought and won.
"Those men, whose heirs and beneficiaries we are, risked, and knew they were risking, their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. We shall have no heirs and beneficiaries, and shall deserve to have none, if we lack the courage to preserve the heritage they won for us."
These are the stakes that we are fighting for. And you bet I have a dog in this fight.
I've been in journalism in one form or another for my entire adult life. When I broke into the field, in the afterglow of Watergate, journalism was more than a job. It was a public service where you could make a real difference in peoples' lives. Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Go after the bad guys. Stand up for truth and justice and have fun doing it.
I believed that then, and in spite of the many ups and downs in my professional career, I still believe that. When the press is on its game, big things can happen.
And that's why I am willing to fight those people who would muzzle us, who equate our work with treason, who believe the only journalism that should exist is puffery for the ruling regime.
Ever since the beginning of the so-called "war on terror," the Bush administration has asserted that the prosecution of this ill-defined and open-ended conflict is more important than the basic democratic rights enshrined in our Constitution.
In their view, warrentless wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping, the creation of secret prisons, the torture of prisoners and the elimination of due process are all necessary in the name of fighting terrorism.
But rights that are taken away are not easily restored. That is why we, as journalists, refuse to accept the Bush administration's rationale that the press has no right to report on the aforementioned things, because we are at war.
The administration's attacks on journalists in general and The New York Times in particular ought to alarm every American.
An recent editorial in the National Review urged the administration to revoke the Times' White House press credentials. Heather MacDonald of The Weekly Standard called the Times "a national security threat." Fox News Channel's Brian Kilmeade suggested that the government set up a Office of Censorship to screen the news. Jules Crittenden wrote in the Boston Herald that the Times' editors "are hiding behind the idea of freedom of the press" and that "there comes a point where even professional capriciousness and misguided idealism - to be charitable - have to be labeled for what they are: giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Treason."
And MSNBC commentator and San Francisco talk shot host Melanie Morgan said that she "would have no problem with (New York Times editor Bill Keller) being sent to the gas chamber."
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