A column in USA Today by Michael Gartner asking President Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Ari Fleischer to pause a moment and read some past essays by E.B. White caught my attention and I feel it would be profitable for all to read ...

He stood foursquare for freedom at a time when others were temporizing, were vacillating, were accommodating. He stood foursquare for freedom when other writers — on their own or at the behest of their government — were deciding to say or write only what we today call politically correct.

"To hold America in one's thoughts is like holding a love letter in one's hand — it has so special a meaning," White wrote in December 1941 on the 3rd day of World War II.

To him, that America was a place where he could say or write what he pleased, in war or in peace. Imagine what he would have written today had he heard White House press secretary Fleischer tell Americans to "watch what they say."

Imagine how he would have responded had he heard national security adviser Rice tell the networks not to air live footage of the ramblings of Osama bin Laden.

"In a free country," he wrote in January 1939, "it is the duty of writers to pay no attention to duty. Only under a dictatorship is literature expected to exhibit a harmonious design or an inspirational tone."