it is easy to falsify documents; to lie; to shred; to bribe; and so forth
True, as we've seen so many times in public, and in private memoirs etc. But you have people and organizations like National Archives, investigative reporters, a few actual public-service politicians, etc. As well as internal disputes get aired occasionally. Control of information can't be as absolute in this digital age, only delayed.
If there are such bad people behind the scenes, your remedies are wholly ineffectual.......
A completely bogus "absolutist" argument, that creates a phony position of "absolute, always destroy everything, impossible to ever get truth..", etc.
That's a common debating tactic to avoid any discussion of the issue.
Given a completely authoritarian view of gov't, I suppose you could conceive of a '1984' type gov't that somehow keeps all information out of the public, but it's not very commonsensical, if you believe there will always be some who have a conscience. (Even in Orwell's fictional story there were characters who deviated from total mind-control) |
