If any of those reporters or their papers had betrayed Einsenhower's trust by breaking the story and compromising the war effort overseas, the American public would have lynched them. And some papers would have been out of business.

The entire country had committed to the war with the biggest committment possible: American lives.

I believe those reporters and their editors were well aware of what the consequences of betraying Eisenhower would have been. That does not, however, stop me from being impressed by the unified stand America took back then against an appalling evil.

If only such battles, and the world itself, had remained as simple as they were then. I think you'll agree there was bad on both sides during the Cold War. The Soviets certainly deserved opposition, but neither party in the conflict was lilly-white. Neither were they all bad. We tend to believe the Soviets were the worse of the two, but we're biased. Still, history will probably side with America on that score, Vietnam notwithstanding.

Don't know if it can ever be that simple again. Seems every few generations we hear about America losing her innocence again. Americans now realize they are not immune to terror or major attacks on their own soil. Of course, Americans also have come to realize - since the '70s, if not earlier - that they cannot always trust their government. And nowadays Americans claim to not trust the media, even though to me it seems Americans only distrust the media when it provides information or a viewpoint which conflicts with their personal politics.

Still, if there were to be a new and genuine War Against Evil along the lines of World War II, if there were to be a new and inspiring leader along the lines of FDR - if that were to happen, who knows? It's just possible Americans might be willing to place all their faith - justified or not - in government again. And they might well unite in common cause against inhumanity and injustice perpetrated by an easily identified (and therefore easily demonized) enemy on a massive scale.

I would nominate China for the role of bad guy, if it were to happen at all - which I hope and believe it won't. But if China seized Taiwan and then, for instance, refused to stop but gobbled up the Phillipines and Indonesia in a prelude to an invasion of Japan and menacing either Australia or India? And if China then set about committing awful crimes against those they've conquered, a modern update on the rape of Nanking, what then?

Then perhaps that era of unity and undiluted patriotism could return again. But at what awful cost?