The high-school civics class version of American democracy, at least the version I learned, said that individuals are largely free to do what they do and believe what they believe in private (within the bounds of law), while representative government has a duty to be accountable and transparent.All this NSA and surveillance-state debate in the past week has shown that our understanding of that order has flipped. Now government has the privilege of operating in opacity and secrecy, while our day-to-day must be transparent and scrutinized (without any meaningful input from us about that arrangement).
| I am not much for NYT but even the far left seems to be getting it. |