Don’t be nosy.

That’s the advice from a supposed news outlet named CNN.  Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

In an op-ed on their website, they have a clinic in logical fallacies by LZ Granderson, starting off with this appeal to authority:

LZ Granderson, who writes a weekly column for CNN.com, was named journalist of the year by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and is a 2011 Online Journalism Award finalist for commentary.

Well, bully for him.  I’m won the Breitbart Blogger Award.  I don’t need to put it at the beginning of every article I write to help add credibility. I use logic and facts.

The article continues, admonishing Americans for being nosy, but giving them an out by blaming a media obsessed with the finer, intimate details of the private lives of even D-list celebrities.  Then it goes off the deep end:

Heads should roll because of the Fast and Furious debacle. We don’t need every detail of that operation to be made public in order for that to happen.

If it were an isolated sting, maybe. But it is at least the third incarnation of a gun-running scheme stretching across two administrations, which means we could be pressing to open Pandora’s Box. We do not want to open Pandora’s Box, not about this and certainly not about a bunch of other potentially scandalous things the federal government has been involved with.

Heads should roll, but the American people don’t really need to know why?

This is honestly the premise of the article?

And how do you make the logical leap that if it only happened once  it would be fine for Americans to know, but since this happened over two administrations, the people really don’t have any business snooping around here?

That makes no sense.  If the scandal is bigger, doesn’t it make it more important that sunlight shine on it?

After all, if this was one guy in Arizona who decided to run guns, it’s not that big a deal.  You fire him and move one.

If it’s being directed from Washington and people in the White House knew about it and lied, the American people should know the who, what, where, when and why of it and accountability should be handed down accordingly.

Bigger scandals demand greater transparency.

However, according to one award winning “journalist,” since we didn’t learn all the details of Iran-Contra, we shouldn’t learn all the details of Fast and Furious.

No, really.  That’s his logic:

We still don’t have access to all of the messy facts surrounding the Iran-Contra scandal that erupted during the Reagan administration. All we know is that weapons were sold to Iran in exchange for hostages and that the proceeds from those sales were used to illegally fund rebels in Nicaragua who were supposedly fighting Communism.

This is known as the appeal to tradition:

In Granderson’s mind, since we have never learned the truth about scandals, there’s no reason to learn the truth here.  It’s how it always has been.

His failure continues:

Lt. Col. Oliver North took one for the team back then, and there’s a good chance Attorney General Eric Holder will have to take one for the team in the Fast and Furious controversy. And by team, I’m not referring to Republicans or Democrats, but rather Americans.

You see, freedom isn’t entirely free.

It also isn’t squeaky clean.

And sometimes the federal government deems it necessary to get its hands a little dirty in the hopes of achieving something we generally accept as good for the country.

I didn’t see him making this argument when liberals were screaming about the “torture” being conducted on 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. I looked. I found nothing.

This is how he justifies allowing known gun smugglers to buy large amounts of weapons, smuggle them across the border into Mexico, use them to kill hundreds of Mexicans, control sections of the Arizona countryside, and murder two Americans?

If this operation were truly about securing the freedom of Americans, I still wouldn’t support this plan. It’s madness.

But it wasn’t about protecting American freedom.

If it was, why weren’t the guns tracked? Why wasn’t even the most basic attempt at tracking them made?

The guns were allowed to pass into Mexico where authorities expected them to be used in crimes and recovered a little at a time, then traced back to America.

To what end? To keep America free?

How do you make that leap?

By removing logic from your argument, that’s how.

For example:

Such as the death of Osama bin Laden. We danced, we cried, but we did not make a big deal about a secret operation that was executed in Pakistan without the permission of the Pakistani government. The Obama administration did what it thought was in the best interest of America.

Much in the same way, Project Wide Receiver and Project Road Runner — the earlier versions of Fast and Furious under President Bush — were executed with the hope that they will do more good than harm.

First off, this:

You can’t compare a targeted military operation with specific goals, conducted by highly trained military operatives, controlled by a command center with a live video and audio feed of the action with a program that just let thousands of weapons loose in a foreign country. The only similarity is neither foreign country knew what hit them. Other than that, they are apples and oranges.

Secondly, I reject the idea that a government action, no matter how illegal, immoral or irresponsible, is acceptable because they meant well. Granderson mentioned Pandora’s Box being opened if we truly investigated Fast and Furious. You want to open Pandora’s Box, tell the government that if they justify every action they take by claiming it was for our own good, we the people will excuse it.

Think about it: We have allowed weapons to cross the Mexican border and into the hands of criminals for years. Many of these weapons were involved in killing innocent Mexicans. There’s nothing very admirable about that. But the truth is, it’s very American.

You can see from this LZ Granderson doesn’t have a very high opinion of America. In his eyes, “very American” is something that has components of selfishness, irresponsibility, callousness and apathy. Nothing about charity. Nothing about compassion. Nothing about freedom.

“Very American” has no positive connotation. He has chosen only our faults to define us, also known as:

The premise of the article, that Americans shouldn’t be poking about in the federal government’s wet work because it’s done for our own good, is stunning, considering it was proposed by an award winning “journalist.” It disgusting in it’s political bias, it’s lack of respect for the rule of law and the overt disrespect of America’s history of good deeds.

Americans should not accept malfeasance, regardless of the good intentions. We would be better served heeding the words of James Madison, who said, “All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.”

All men, Republican or Democrat. In fact, when someone from the government tells you what they are doing is for your own good, that’s when you should question it most.