Tuesday, December 14, 2010

WikiLeaks is free speech

It's little surprise that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has found himself in trouble. People in high places like to keep their secrets. But secrecy is incompatible with democracy and an open society. Maybe that doesn't mean there should be no secrecy. But it does mean there should be people fighting relentlessly to bring the truth out into the open.

It's revealing that the same people that promoted corporate funding of independent political broadcasts as free speech deny the same label to WikiLeaks.

I'm reminded of what happened to Eliot Spitzer when he pissed off the wrong people. He was taken down by a hooker scandal after a bank reported a suspicious wire transfer.

A political economy

A recent piece in the Economist ( A new anthology of essays reconsiders Thomas Piketty’s “Capital” , May 20, 2107) ends with these words: &q...