[lbo-talk] Re: Why I'm Still a Leftist

Nathan Newman nathanne at nathannewman.org
Thu Oct 27 14:28:51 PDT 2005


----- Original Message ----- From: "Luke Weiger" <lweiger at umich.edu>

Nathan wrote: "Many days I'm frustrated with the left, but other days, as so many Dems are excited to see indictments under laws meant to protect the CIA from exposure of its crimes, I realize I still can't shake that leftist heart."

-Maybe this just goes to show why I'm now a mere liberal, but it seems like -you don't even mention (much less address) the hard questions. E.g. you're -right that transparency is fundamental to democracy, but spying obviously -and necessarily requires a partial lack of tranparency.

The fundamental issue is whether what is gained from intelligence services is worth the cost to democracy. Given the history of the CIA, the plus column on secret agents is pretty damn thin compared to the negative column.

And frankly, if the CIA can't keep its agents secret without needing use of criminal law, they are doing a pretty damn bad job to begin with. Leakers should be fired, but moving to criminal sanctions is just a dangerous approach to the whole thing.

-Even if the laws Rove et al. broke are in need of amendment, we shouldn't -feel bad about wanting to see them burn: their violations didn't exactly -constitute civil disobediance.

And yet if some rogue CIA agent had tried to undermine Clinton's nuclear deal with North Korea, liberals would be screaming about the vast right wing conspiracy and congratulating anyone who outed the CIA agent involved.

The problem I have with the whole thing is that you reverse the party labels, and everyone on both sides would be exchanging arguments in a blink of the eye.

-- Nathan Newman



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