Hi Neocon,
This idea of "chilling to candid speech" is an amusing one, since a technique used in propaganda is to reverse the usual meaning of a concept. The "chilling of free speech" phrase is commonly used in reference to government actions that limit free speech:
eff.org
IMO what is chilling to candid speech is the secrecy of the backroom dealings that separate wealthy contributors, lobbyists and ambitious military/intel operators from regular folk, who depend on the news media, or the kindness of those self-interested to release their censored view of events. This chills speech by locking out, denying, or lying about what went on, due to its profitability (political or commercial) for the insiders, and objections by outsiders who foot the bill.
My reaction is - I would like to see expansion of the sunshine laws until there is a bright light into every musty corner of the government I pay so much for. I wouldn't pay for secret policy discussions, except by coercion.
The idea that road-improvement contracts are negotiated in private is ridiculous, but backroom foreign-aid deals are a criminal travesty, both in policy, procedure, and execution.
And the list goes on. The only exception are bona-fide military issues, which boil down to "where we're going to hit next", an agent's i.d., and things like the formula for aerosol anthrax. This kind of bona-fide restricted information is 1% of the vast sea of enlightening (and, the point is, some incriminating) information we pay for, and which, I posit, is the primary value-add of 21st century government in the Information Age.
Some links:
fas.org
jamesmadisonproject.org
I would "admit" to the rationale for executive privilege, if three things:
1 - I had a divine level of trust in the executives
2 - I did not feel that our democracy is threatened to extinction by secrecy and amorality, combine with advanced financial, surveillance, and military techniques available to government and quasi-government that can accomplish de-facto police state simply with intent to do so.
3 - And, if I hadn't seen enough of human nature and personalities throughout government since WWII to forewarn the most ruthless behaviour, only if in secret, up to and including killing large numbers of civilian Americans to further political interests. One example:
salon.com
"Among the more shocking things Bamford learned is that in 1962, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff approved something called Operation Northwoods. Fortunately never implemented, it involved committing random acts of terror on Americans in the United States and then blaming them on Cuba. Most of the documents detailing this Bamford found in the National Archives, among the thousands of papers the Joint Chiefs of Staff released about the Cuban missile crisis."
The intel agencies are so completely out of control of any recognizable responsible individual that the employees don't even know how the agencies work:
"The Puzzle Palace" was a landmark book, and widely read ... inside the NSA itself, where the agency's secrecy prevents its employees from knowing much about their own history, it was a bestseller. The book was a history of American intelligence from 1917 and was both shocking and pedestrian. Operations like Shamrock were exposed for the first time, but Bamford also spent a lot of pages simply explaining how the NSA was organized. Nobody knew anything, so it was all interesting."
Secrecy is a cancer in our government.
Honest deliberation of public policy activities best take place in public, and records kept. The "mischief" you refer to is exactly what is caused by hidden, backroom deliberations. Mischief is unlikely to occur when all deliberations are in the sunlight. Mischief is guaranteed when deliberators feel their actions won't be observed. |
