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They are anxious not to upset or disturb, to be perceived as fair minded and open. There is no understanding that, as Chamberlain demonstrated quite vividly, simply sitting down across from someone with evil intentions is itself a sign of, as Webster's says, an anxious overture. Right about here it would be fair to ask of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's little sit down with the dictator of Syria: So what's up? How's the peace process in the Middle East going with Syria these days? Does it ever cross your mind that the message you sent by anxiously meeting with Mr. Assad might, just might, have anything to do with the openly expressed wish of Hamas that your candidate Senator Obama be the president?

As this election year unfolds, as once again the spiritual heirs of Neville Chamberlain and Matthews's ex-boss Jimmy Carter try to win the American presidency and turn the United States into the world's leading advocate of appeasement of those who promise yet again the mass murder of the Jews -- not to mention Americans -- it is worthwhile to remember just why one American presidential candidate can't wave to the crowds in the same graceful, elegant style of his opponent.

And to remember that every time John McCain does wave in that awkward fashion, the rest of us need to understand what we are really seeing. We are seeing a deeply personal reminder of one human being's actual, very physical, very tortuous encounter with evil.

It happened to John McCain. It happened to the Southeast Asians of the killing fields and re-education camps. It happened to the Jews of the Holocaust. It happened to the Russians of the Gulag. It can happen in any age, in any country, at any time. In truth? It happened right here in America when for a century after the Civil War eyes were closed to the link between the political structure of the Democrats and the fact that black Americans by the hundreds were frequently found dangling from tree limbs at the end of a noose. All it takes is for a Chamberlain or a Carter or an Obama or, yes, a Chris Matthews -- good people one and all -- to look and not understand what they are seeing.

So the correct answer for Matthews guest Kevin James was not, as Matthews himself supplied it, that what Chamberlain did wrong was give Hitler Czechoslovakia. No, what Chamberlain did wrong was far worse. He never understood he was seeing evil.

Ask John McCain.

Jeffrey Lord is the creator, co-founder and CEO of QubeTV, an online conservative video site. A Reagan White House political director and author, he writes from Pennsylvania.

topics:
Education, John McCain, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Television, Military, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Israel, NATO