The Conservative Case for WikiLeaks
Posted on December 9th, 2010 by Jack Hunter
Lovers necessarily keep or share secrets. Being in a healthy relationship means achieving a certain level of intimacy, where shared knowledge of each others’ weaknesses and insecurities is protected by a bond of mutual trust. Sometimes lovers might do devilish things that outsiders wouldn’t understand, or shouldn’t be privy to, and this is fine. But by and large, what they do is simply no one else’s business.
But imagine that the man in the relationship kept it a secret that he had other women on the side, kids, a criminal record, venereal disease, and basically betrayed his lover in every way imaginable, unbeknownst to her?
Now imagine a third party felt it was their moral duty to reveal it?
No one questions that governments must maintain a certain level of secrecy, including WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who told Time that “Secrecy is important for many things … [but it] shouldn’t be used to cover up abuses.” The entire premise of Assange’s whistleblower organization is this: To what degree is government secrecy justified? And when particular secrets could be damaging to the other partner in the United States government’s relationship — the American people — should these secrets be revealed in the name of protecting the public?
How often does our government use “national security” simply as an excuse to cover up questionable dealings? Reports Time: “in the past few years, governments have designated so much information secret that you wonder whether they intend the time of day to be classified. The number of new secrets designated as such by the U.S. government has risen 75% … . At the same time, the number of documents and other communications created using those secrets has skyrocketed nearly 10 times…”
To say that government must keep secrets is not to say that all government secrets must be kept.
As admitted even by Pentagon officials and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, none of WikiLeaks’ revelations do anything to compromise national security or endanger American lives — but they have wreaked havoc on political life in Washington, D.C. Americans are not supposed to know, for example, that their government bullied and threatened individuals and other governments that might have undermined the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009. The federal government attempting to squelch anyone who might undermine global-warming dogma? Do WikiLeaks’ conservative critics believe revealing this is a “national security” risk?
Americans are not supposed to know, apparently, that behind the scenes Saudi Arabia has been encouraging the U.S. to take military action against Iran. But if we end up going to war with Iran shouldn’t it be in America’s national interest, and not simply as a subcontractor for another country? Asks Fox News’ Judith Miller: “Why should Americans not know that Arab states, often at the top level, have been urging Washington to take military or other drastic action against Iran, while they publicly oppose such action?”
And when did conservatives become so protective of Hillary Clinton? What happened to the days of the “Stop Hillary Express,” when right-wing talk radio portrayed the former first lady as Satan and theorized about all the devious ways in which, if in power, she might conspire to bring down the country? When WikiLeaks revealed that Secretary of State Clinton tried to obtain DNA, fingerprints, credit-card numbers, and other private information belonging to United Nations officials, we learned that Clinton’s style was every bit as mafia-esque as her conservative critics once warned. Yet conservatives now attack WikiLeaks for revealing what they once feared. It should also be remembered that the same conservatives now calling for Assange’s head either ignored or were sympathetic to Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame allegedly at the Bush administration’s behest — a revelation arguably far riskier to our national security than anything ever released by WikiLeaks.
But the worst hypocrisy throughout this controversy has been in conservatives reflexively defending the government and attacking WikiLeaks. Since when have conservatives believed that Washington should be able to shroud any action it likes in secrecy and that revealing government’s nefarious deeds is tantamount to treason? Isn’t it government officials who might secretly work for corporate, ideological or transnational interests — and against the national interest — who are betraying their country?
Interestingly, Wikileaks’ founder espouses the traditionally conservative, Jeffersonian view that America’s constitutional structure limits and lessens government corruption. Reported Time: “Assange appears to believe that the U.S. has not become ‘a much-worse-behaved superpower’ because its federalism, ‘this strength of the states,’ has been a drag on the combination of the burgeoning power of the central government and a presidency that can expand its influence only by way of foreign affairs.”
Decentralizing government power, limiting it, and challenging it was the Founders’ intent and these have always been core conservative principles. Conservatives should prefer an explosion of whistleblower groups like WikiLeaks to a federal government powerful enough to take them down. Government officials who now attack WikLleaks don’t fear national endangerment, they fear personal embarrassment. And while scores of conservatives have long promised to undermine or challenge the current monstrosity in Washington, D.C., it is now an organization not recognizably conservative that best undermines the political establishment and challenges its very foundations.
25 Responses to “The Conservative Case for WikiLeaks”
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Randal, on December 9th, 2010 at 6:19 am Said:A good exposition of the conservative case for Wikileaks in relation to government. Your Time quote also illustrates that Assange himself is not fundamentally anti-American, as many seem to have assumed, presumably because the ongoing “megaleak” releases happen to have come from a US source and deal with US state affairs.
The US conservative case for Wikileaks is precisely, as you say, that US conservatives believe that government serves the people, and that therefore any government secrecy must be the exception rather than the rule, and be tightly justified in each case. And since government cannot be trusted to police itself, there is a need for external bodies to do so – this was the role of the press originally, but they have failed us in the west, and need to be reinvigorated by the outsiders of Wikileaks.
However, it is a mistake to assume that Wikileaks is wholly, or even primarily, devoted to government. In fact, the Wikileaks philosophy deals with what they term “conspiratorial” behaviour in general – anywhere where groups of people get together and seek to cooperate to achieve something in secrecy from outsiders. The activities of Wikileaks are directed towards exposing such conspiratorial behaviour wherever it is directed to criminal or immoral ends.
By creating mechanisms for secure dissemination of leaked information, through respected and trusted brands such as Wikileaks, it is hoped that it will be more difficult for conspiracies to operate, thereby putting them at a disadvantage in relation to less criminal and less conspiratorial competitors. In order to preserve secrecy, they will have to clamp down more tightly on their internal communications, which will inhibit their processing of information and therefore their strategic planning and operational effectiveness. Organisations with less to hide will be less affected.
It’s a plausible theory, imo, and one which should be supported, if only because it seems clear that our societies are presently seriously threatened by the excessive wealth and power of both corporations and states. The more they are forced to operate in the open, the less of a threat that wealth and power becomes.
Mike Lewinski II, on December 9th, 2010 at 9:14 am Said:This may be a good time to recall a quote from an unnamed aide in the Bush administration:
The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality–judiciously, as you will–we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
It seems clear to me that loyalty to the Republic necessitates treason to the Empire. Their interests are diametrically opposed. Secrecy (and indeed, duplicity) in all dealings of the State is a defining characteristic of empires, and exists primarily to protect the governing class from being held accountable by the governed.
Sadly, it seems that the majority of the governed today have little interest in such accountability. Another empire comes to mind:
In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. — Edward Gibbon
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http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2010/12/09 ... wikileaks/*
"Teach them to think. Work against the government." – Wittgenstein.
