The Economist > ongoing feature dossier American politics: Democracy in America (Nov29,2k10) "In defence of WikiLeaks" by "W.W." located iin Iowa City, a university-industried town in corn country.

If secrecy is necessary for national security and effective diplomacy, it is also inevitable that the prerogative of secrecy will be used to hide the misdeeds of the permanent state and its privileged agents. I suspect that there is no scheme of government oversight that will not eventually come under the indirect control of the generals, spies, and foreign-service officers it is meant to oversee. Organisations such as WikiLeaks, which are philosophically opposed to state secrecy and which operate as much as is possible outside the global nation-state system, may be the best we can hope for in the way of promoting the climate of transparency and accountability necessary for authentically liberal democracy. Some folks ask,

"Who elected Julian Assange?" 

The answer is nobody did, which is, ironically, why WikiLeaks is able to improve the quality of our democracy. Of course, those jealously protective of the privileges of unaccountable state power will tell us that people will die if we can read their email, but so what? Different people, maybe more people, will die if we can't.

...the wildspaces of terror, it's framed all too anti-statist for m+ taste, have an antipasto ...



The foregoing by "W.W. in Iowa City" (I think its hometown to the University of Iowa with a huge fan-based footbhall team, prominent in the College Football series on TV).  Better check out my factoids!

--  inauthentically liberal democratic schmatic, Christian-democratic, Christian-social, reformational-democratic but yours, Politicarp.