Demand open governance
The following is excerpted from a Concord Monitor (N.H.) editorial.
In A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, John Adams wrote: “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right . . . and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers.”
Adams didn’t use the modern buzzword, but he was talking about transparency. In a society that values liberty, of course people should be informed of decisions made on their behalf, but they also have a right − and a divine right at that − to know about the moral qualities and behavior of their leaders.
The dissertation was written in 1765, a time of acute focus on the mechanisms of tyranny. Two-and-a-half centuries later, awareness of tyranny in all its forms has given way to acceptance. The modern political leader’s success, regardless of party affiliation, is determined not by the rejection of secrecy and obfuscation but the full embrace of it.
There is much that Hillary Clinton should be telling voters and isn’t. The same goes for Donald Trump. And they are certainly not alone. President Obama promised that his administration would be “committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government.” But here is Margaret Sullivan, writing in the Washington Post, on that “unprecedented openness”: “(The Obama administration) has set new records for stonewalling or rejecting Freedom of Information requests.” A PolitiFact tally has Obama breaking at least a dozen specific promises related to transparency.
As journalists are stonewalled or spoonfed tidbits, hackers and whistleblowers grow in numbers and importance. Elected leaders and the voters who fail to hold them accountable created the conditions that have led to the actions of Daniel Ellsberg, Mark Felt, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Anonymous, WikiLeaks, all who risk imprisonment to tear away curtains and veils.
History will sort out which among them are heroes and which are villains, but it’s wrong to dismiss them all as criminals or unpatriotic troublemakers.
On that, we leave the final word to 30-yearold John Adams: “These are not the vapors of a melancholy mind, nor the effusions of envy, disappointed ambition, nor of a spirit of opposition to government, but the emanations of a heart that burns for its country’s welfare.”