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<blockquote data-quote="curiousbrain" data-source="post: 810615" data-attributes="member: 31608"><p>I have often had this debate with myself over the years, for various purposes.</p><p></p><p>One the one hand, it stands to reason (or, I think it does, anyway) that this is a desired outcome, but on the other hand it is also conceivable that it would make the balancing of interests nigh impossible.</p><p></p><p>In an era when instant and mass communication make generating a frenzy very easy, I'm almost frightened to see how the mob mentality of the different constituencies would react to seeing how a national government has to balance competing interests - there is a case to be made that they could handle it and be fine, but then there is also the case to be made that certain folks thought it necessary to set things on fire when O.J. was acquitted, or because a certain team won a certain sports game; or, to go bananas because some folks didn't like certain legislation, so on and so forth.</p><p></p><p>On the other hand, people were upset about the Pentagon Papers and that perhaps contributed to some people protesting Vietnam, but people didn't march on Washington with machine guns; and the warrantless wiretapping really bummed people out, but they did not react violently; so, either way I suppose there is a case to be made for transparency.</p><p></p><p>It does occur to me though that if a large player on the world stage (e.g. the United States) were to unilaterally adopt transparency while the rest of the actors did not, it would put that country at a huge disadvantage - I think the people of the world might applaud it wholesale, but the other governments would now operate from a position of immense advantage.</p><p></p><p>In an attempt to keep this shorter than it otherwise might be, I'll finish by saying that state secrecy and political power, in general, seems to be roughly analogous to cancer, in that when there is even a trace amount of it, it attempts to spread and infect neighboring organs (in this case, political).</p><p></p><p>Point of clarification: I agree with you, and I'm not defending the choice of all politicians to avoid being transparent, either; I think they avoid transparency not because of the sort of philosophical tripe that I blathered about, but rather because of the skeletons in their closet.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="curiousbrain, post: 810615, member: 31608"] I have often had this debate with myself over the years, for various purposes. One the one hand, it stands to reason (or, I think it does, anyway) that this is a desired outcome, but on the other hand it is also conceivable that it would make the balancing of interests nigh impossible. In an era when instant and mass communication make generating a frenzy very easy, I'm almost frightened to see how the mob mentality of the different constituencies would react to seeing how a national government has to balance competing interests - there is a case to be made that they could handle it and be fine, but then there is also the case to be made that certain folks thought it necessary to set things on fire when O.J. was acquitted, or because a certain team won a certain sports game; or, to go bananas because some folks didn't like certain legislation, so on and so forth. On the other hand, people were upset about the Pentagon Papers and that perhaps contributed to some people protesting Vietnam, but people didn't march on Washington with machine guns; and the warrantless wiretapping really bummed people out, but they did not react violently; so, either way I suppose there is a case to be made for transparency. It does occur to me though that if a large player on the world stage (e.g. the United States) were to unilaterally adopt transparency while the rest of the actors did not, it would put that country at a huge disadvantage - I think the people of the world might applaud it wholesale, but the other governments would now operate from a position of immense advantage. In an attempt to keep this shorter than it otherwise might be, I'll finish by saying that state secrecy and political power, in general, seems to be roughly analogous to cancer, in that when there is even a trace amount of it, it attempts to spread and infect neighboring organs (in this case, political). Point of clarification: I agree with you, and I'm not defending the choice of all politicians to avoid being transparent, either; I think they avoid transparency not because of the sort of philosophical tripe that I blathered about, but rather because of the skeletons in their closet. [/QUOTE]
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