David Kelly was a grown man who, through conviction or egocentrism, stumbled into the kitchen and found the heat unbearable. To suggest that anyone is "responsible" for his death is, literally, childish. But childish is what public discussion increasingly becomes, writes John Waters.
Underlying this infantilisation is the Sixties ethic of youth rebellion. The generation that rebelled against authority in the 1960s trundled on to the higher citadels of media and politics, where it now resides, behaving as though the limits of its revolution had never been rumbled. Politically, it clings to the idea of a rolling frontier of libertarianism - without limits, costs or consequences.
Never having confronted the untenable realities of its own irresponsibility, it has no concept of the importance of authority. Formed in the slipstream of a peace won at a price beyond imagining, it discounts this circumstance as no more than its due. It is intoxicated with its own love of freedom, which it perceives only in terms of what it insolently won from its parent generation, forgetting that this had before been bought with blood. And, never asking where its freedoms came from, it never wonders who will protect them if they again come under threat.
It has rejected all heavenly and earthly establishments and, though now itself ensconced in power, still wants to wear flowers in its hair. The Sixties ethic is expressed in the idea, ever-present in the subtext of news and public commentary, that, far from democratic, the West is a vicious tyranny, which only spin and propaganda prevent being seen for what it is.
Modern media have a bad dose of Watergateitis, a disease that convinces its sufferers they are a deadline away from bringing down the tyrannical and corrupt government that has betrayed the people. This, being symptomatic of the irresponsibility mentioned above, is a fantasy made possible by the reality that makes it silly.
In Prague 1970 or Baghdad 2000, citizens or journalists had no call to fantasise about tyranny.
Most interesting about the drama unfolding in London is that, for the first time, a clash is occurring between two elements of this flower-child establishment. Tony Blair, though secretly of sterner stuff, belongs to that wishy-washy Sixties generation, coasting to power on the back of the idea that the hour of peace, love and understanding had come round at last. With a guitar in one hand and, incongruously, a Bible in the other, he slouched towards Downing Street.
His arrival in power represented a moment of truth. Would the generation that had spawned him join in taking responsibility for the project of imaginative reconstruction that Britain so urgently required after years of destructive Tory rule? Or would Blair himself, rather than face the contradictions of power and office, try to limbo-dance his way through a term or three?
At first, he tried to take both sides of the road. Abandoning radical elements of his agenda, like social welfare reform, he resorted to a soft-focus nannyism calculated to reassure middle England while keeping sweet the spoilt student types that had been his electoral springboard. But he soon discovered that, in the matter of us versus them, he was no longer of the us.
You can carry rebellion to the door of government but once across the threshold, become the figure you once luxuriated in rebelling against. September 11th, 2001, was when Blair realised - perhaps truly for the first time - that the security not just of Britain, but perhaps of Western civilisation, might depend on him. That was when he split from his erstwhile bedfellows, abandoning the one- dimensional idealism that had survived in the safe-haven of late 20th century Britain, to become the realist and visionary he had earlier promised to be.
This is the meaning of the present commotion. Following the capture of Iraq, a healthy journalism might have concerned itself with the reconstruction of that sad nation and the implications for the troubled region of which it had latterly been the bane. But months after the overthrow of one of the greatest despots in recent world history, leading organs of public information remained obsessed with discrediting the decisions that made this possible.
Blair made several mistakes that make him a legitimate target in the eyes of the post-Sixties flower-powerism dominating the British media, and indeed our own: he behaved like a grown-up, acted with good authority, took responsibility for maintaining freedoms others take for granted, and, above all, stood four-square with the hated but of similar mindset, George Bush.
His actions implied that peace, love and understanding are sometimes not enough, that occasionally the good guys must kick down doors and put manners on the bad guys.
For these sins, he will never be forgiven by the Peter Pans who thought he was one of them.