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from the anyone-who-expects-to-give-up-freedom-for-security-will-get-neither dept.
Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept writes A Response to Michael Kinsley
Kinsley has actually done the book a great favor by providing a vivid example of so many of its central claims. For instance, I describe in the book the process whereby the government and its media defenders reflexively demonize the personality of anyone who brings unwanted disclosure so as to distract from and discredit the substance revelations; Kinsley dutifully tells Times readers that I "come across as so unpleasant" and that I'm a "self-righteous sourpuss" (yes, he actually wrote that). I also describe in the book how jingoistic media courtiers attack anyone who voices any fundamental critiques of American political culture; Kinsley spends much of his review deriding the notion that there could possibly be anything anti-democratic or oppressive about the United States of America.
But by far the most remarkable part of the review is that Kinsley--in the very newspaper that published Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers and then fought to the Supreme Court for the right to do so (and, though the review doesn't mention it, also published some Snowden documents)--expressly argues that journalists should only publish that which the government permits them to, and that failure to obey these instructions should be a crime.
I can't say I want my government to have its fingers in what is and what is not reported.
See also: Cory Doctorow's review of Greenwald's book at BoingBoing
(Score: 1) by gidds on Monday June 02 2014, @10:00AM
According to the US Constitution, yes. But many of us aren't in the US, and even those who are would probably take a wider view:
It includes the right to say things that you don't like. And that I don't like.
It's not an absolute right; we choose to limit it in specific circumstances where other considerations seem even more important. (I've long said that moral principles are goals to be balanced against each other, not simple yes/no switches; life is complex. I recently found a more involved explanation here [raikoth.net].) But those circumstances are very narrow and carefully-defined; freedom of speech trumps most other considerations most of the time.
For example, do I have right not to be offended? In general, no! Many legal systems make very specific exceptions to that (e.g. to counter racism). But otherwise, it's more important for you to be able to speak; the corollary is that I must accept being offended if I listen.
(I'm not saying that deliberately causing offence is a Good Thing™ — it's rarely justified, and life would be better if we made reasonable efforts to avoid it most of the time. But that's nearly always a much less important consideration than being free to speak.)
Freedom of speech is that ghastly metaphor, a double-edged sword: it's very sharp, and cuts both ways. But it's a vital tool.
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