Wikileaks puts an end to Leo Strauss and the idea of privileged information

The recent Wikileaks farrago, and indeed all leaks in the Internet age, put an end to the idea that governments can and/or should govern by keeping people in the dark.

The philosopher Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was accused by Shadia Dury of teaching that "perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them." This view of Strauss is, not surprisingly, rejected by Straussians, but the suspicion remains that those in government feel that they are in some way special. The other side of this is the common belief that governments know things that common people do not, which gives them a licence to do the insane things that they do (e.g. invade Iraq).


Whatever the truth of Straussian protected knowledge, the fact remains that anyone in government who commits his/her thoughts to paper or electrons must now think twice: How would this look if it surfaced in the public domain?

This is not necessarily a bad thing.


PS Iain Dale is not happy about Assange.
Are there any lengths, he cries, sounding more and more like Indignant of Tunbridge Wells, to which Julian Assange will not go to slag off America and compromise the security of the west?

I pointed out that he did not complain when Wikileaks published the "climategate" papers, which delayed and diluted the response at Copenhagen. Sauce for the goose...

Sartre in 68

Jean Paul Sartre was in the middle of writing his treatise on Gustav Flaubert at the time, and generally more preoccupied with the events of 1848 than those of 1968! In the words of one of his best biographers "Fully absorbed by Restoration France, the riots of 1831, and the revolutions of 1848, Sartre was at once present and quiet absent from the events of 1968" (Sartre: a Life by Annie Cohen-Solal, 1985, p. 471)

There he was, coming in his most frightening form: the slightly worn-out fellow traveller and, worst of all, an old bourgeois humanist! "As for me, nearly two years after May 1968, he later explained, "I was still trying to work out what had happened. I could not quite work out what they wanted and what role old fogeys like me were expected to play." I can still hear the laughter of the Gods. :-))