Daniel Ellsberg points out that thanks to the Patriot Act and similar laws, all of Nixon’s crimes would be perfectly legal today.
Watergate would be legal, Ellsberg himself would probably be rotting in jail, and who knows when (or even if) the Vietnam war would have ended. We have not learned our lessons from history, and as the saying goes are doomed to repeat it — with now three seemingly unending wars, rampant abuses of power at the highest levels, and whistleblowers like Bradley Manning locked up and facing possible execution.
3 Comments
Perhaps we learned the wrong lessons from history. There are reasons the power brokers legalized abuse of power, criminalized whistleblowing, and sanitize war reporting. If history does repeat itself these changes may make it worse in some ways the second time around.
Even so, I still believe the arc of history is clearly moving in a positive direction.
David – I hope you are right. It can’t get there fast enough for some folks.
The power brokers have learned from history. The rest of us have learned nothing.