Categorical Aperitif

David Michael Green:

What the WikiLeaks episode actually reveals is not any major juicy secrets (so far), but rather that the enemy of the right is truth. What they are defending here - and what they are calling for murder to be used in order to defend here - is simply the privilege to lie, and the right to keep their lies and hypocrisies from being exposed.

That's the true revelation of the last weeks, not anything that WikiLeaks has produced just yet. Indeed, the fact that WikiLeaks has not so far actually dropped such a major bomb and yet has induced a visceral reaction so intense that it includes calls for murder reveals far more about the character of regressives than it does about anything else.

These are people who believe in entitlement. These are arrogant elites who believe the rest of us don't need to know what they're doing with and to our lives. These are people see truth as a danger. These are people who not only actively undermine democracy at home and abroad, but who are fundamentally opposed to, and frightened of, democracy's very essence. They speak the word (endlessly), but the last thing in the world they actually would ever want is rule by the people.

And they know that the people in a democracy just might not put up with their crimes and their lies, and thus secrecy must be jealously guarded, even if that requires the murder of a truth-teller. That, ultimately is the most substantial revelation that the WikiLeaks documents have so far produced.

Indeed, I've noticed that many on the right love to shout about "freedom," but after years of watching then in action one can't help but wonder whether to them it's just a word, to be brandished as a rhetorical weapon when convenient and forgotten when not; in practice, the substance of the thing often seems abhorrent to them.

More.