LAST WEEK, President Obama declared war on Fox News, the TV network news division that seems to be most skeptical and critical of his administration.

“We’re going to treat them as we would an opponent,” declared Anita Dunn, the White House’s communications director, without making clear how Mr. Obama would “fight” Fox. As Ms. Dunn put it: “We don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”

Certainly, some of Fox News’s opinion celebrities are on the extreme side, such as the clownish Glenn Beck (though he has brought to the forefront some legitimate news stories, such as the rampant corruption of the politically connected and taxpayer-supported group ACORN and the inappropriate conduct and dubious backgrounds of various administration “czars”).

But is it really a president’s job to ostracize a news outlet for being critical?

John Nichols of the hard-left Nation magazine, who is deeply contemptuous of George W. Bush (and author of Dick: The Man Who Is President), called it a “radically wrong response.” He argued that the administration should instead engage Fox, which draws roughly as many viewers each night as the other cable news networks combined.

David Gergen, a former adviser to Democratic and Republican presidents, called it a “risky strategy” and “not one that I would advise.” Getting “very personal against the media” tends to backfire by stiffening reporters’ resolve to get the story. And the White House’s public attack will no doubt give Fox “stature” and boost its ratings.

Some have argued that the president is coming across as a “crybaby” (Mr. Nichols labeled him “Whiner-in-Chief”). Mr. Obama, after all, has enjoyed almost slavish media adulation, in notable contrast to his predecessor. “He’s sort of God,” said Newsweek’s Evan Thomas, while CNN is so sycophantic that it even “fact-checked” jokes on Saturday Night Live about Mr. Obama, chiding the comedy show for poking fun at the commander-in-chief.

Here is a president who wields massive power, has been blessed with media praise and helpful spin, is raking in millions of dollars on books and awards, has a big taxpayer-funded operation to shape his message, enjoys the overwhelming support of both houses of Congress, and has won the Nobel Prize for what he had accomplished by the end of his first week in office. Yet he cannot stand criticism from the one network that has yet to come aboard the Love Boat. Such petulance does not play well with everyone.

“Recognizing Fox as an enemy worth fighting is an admission of weakness for a president whose appeal has been partly predicated on the promise of unity,” New York magazine observed.

I would agree that our president does himself no favors politically by lashing out at the press. But my concern is much deeper than partisan strategy.

The White House’s declaration of enemy status for Fox seems to reflect a growing disrespect throughout our society for free speech, the wellspring of America’s greatness and generous spirit. A president of all Americans, even those who disagree with him, should have the grace and bigness to realize that.

Ominously, growing numbers of Americans seem to think that it is illegitimate for anyone to have an opinion at variance with their own. And that those who disagree — or would report facts that challenge their viewpoint — become a fit target for retaliation, punishment, abuse, even the coward’s art of slander.

While the White House was attacking Fox last week, word came that a former contractor for the Ohio Association of Police Chiefs had been charged with poking around in government computers for private information about “Joe the Plumber,” a man who had questioned candidate Obama about the wisdom of taking money from those who had earned it and giving it to those who had not. Three state officials have already lost their jobs for their role in the ransacking of his privacy. Rather than argue with Joe, Obama supporters had allegedly sought to punish him with humiliating disclosures.

Last week, meanwhile, radio’s Rush Limbaugh lost his bid to become part-owner of his hometown NFL team after some networks — including the joke-checking CNN — posted fake racist quotes he had supposedly made, apparently planted on the Internet by people who oppose his conservative ideology. Highly damaging charges of racism without foundation seem to be the new McCarthyism — a way to chill dissent and punish those who depart from the favored orthodoxy.

The bombastic Mr. Limbaugh is not to everyone’s taste, to say the least. I myself find his glee over the difficulties confronting newspapers particularly obnoxious (and hypocritical), given that he gets virtually all of his information from them. But any man should be judged on what he actually says, and the context in which he says it, rather than persecuted with slander for expressing opinions. Inventing racist quotes is hate speech, of the most despicable kind.

Those who celebrated the NFL’s rejection of Mr. Limbaugh do not seem to understand: The freedom to speak out is one of America’s greatest strengths. The way to fight bad ideas is to express better ones, not seek to crush the discussion by vindictive retaliation.

Edward Achorn is The Journal’s deputy editorial-pages editor ( eachorn@projo.com).