‘One cannot critique the surveillance state without critiquing the rest of the existing political apparatus’
Posted: January 26, 2014 Filed under: Censorship, Law & Justice, Think Tank | Tags: Edward Snowden, Future of Freedom Foundation, Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange, Justin Raimondo, McCarthyism, Sean Wilentz, Sheldon Richman, United States Leave a comment
Big Government Fans Rally Around the Surveillance State
Sheldon Richman writes: If I understand Princeton historian Sean Wilentz correctly, progressives ought not to be grateful to Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Glenn Greenwald for exposing government spying because they are not card-carrying progressives. (“Would You Feel Differently About Snowden, Greenwald, and Assange If You Knew What They Really Thought?”) Apparently they have either hung out with libertarians, praised or supported a libertarian, or said something sympathetic to some part of the libertarian philosophy — which cancels out anything they might have gotten credit for. (Wilentz is no stickler for consistency, since he criticizes Greenwald for taking libertarian positions now and also for making anti-immigration statements in the past. So is he too libertarian, Professor, or not libertarian enough? For an analysis of Wilentz’s McCarthyite tactics, see Justin Raimondo.)
The problem for Wilentz is that when guys like these disclose that the government conducts comprehensive surveillance in ways that would have made O’Brien drool, it puts the entire progressive agenda in jeopardy.
