Lawbreaking Lawmakers
by digby
Via Greg Mitchell, here's Michael Lind in Salon asserting that the problem with WikiLeaks is that Americans do not respect the rule of law:
"For Assange's admirers, the embarrassment that his publication of stolen government and corporate documents produces for government policymakers, bankers or corporate executives whom they dislike more than compensates for the theft of classified or private information on a grand scale. The idea that the law in its majesty is supposed to protect the bad as well as the good apparently is rejected by those who celebrate information vandalism, as long as its victims are the State Department or big banks."
But what do you do in a democracy when the ones making the laws are also breaking the laws and using the law to keep their lawbreaking a secret?
I think the founders saw this as the necessary antidote:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
This is a built in tension in democracies, which depend upon an informed public to properly function. The wealthy, in collusion with the politicians, tend to get sloppy and greedy and the lawmakers immunize themselves with official secrecy and two tiered justice. So muckrakers must rise up to expose them.
The problem isn't the people becoming lawless. The problem is powerful institutions becoming lawless and that includes the corporate media that covers up for them. The only thing the people have to fight that is democracy and a free press. It's not much, but it's all we've got.
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