[Peace-discuss] Glenn Greenwald interviewed by The Atlantic

[E.Wayne Johnson]

...When Jane Hamsher and I founded Accountability Now, to target incumbents who served corporate and Beltway interests rather than their constituents, we did so by forming a coalition with libertarians and others devoted to civil liberties protection.  There is much greater agreement across the ideological spectrum than our conventional political punditry wants to recognize.

But clearly, the people on the Right genuinely devoted to civil liberties and restraining executive power are (as is true for Democrats) only a minority.  The problem is partisan tribalism.  Most people care about restraining executive power and fighting for civil liberties only when their party is out of power.  When their party is in power, they place blind trust in political leaders and believe they will do Good without any need for checks and restraints, because they are Good.  That's why conservatives who spent the 1990s shrieking about the tyrannical FISA court (it issued warrants for the Government to eavesdrop on Americans in secret!) suddenly favored warrantless eavesdropping (and every other unchecked power) when a Republican was President, and it's why so many Democrats who spent the last decade pretending to be so upset about Bush's Terrorism policies and expanded powers are perfectly content now that it's Barack Obama wielding them...

...The largest corporations which own the largest media outlets need to maintain a positive, constructive relationship with the government -- as the corporate-government axis grows, that relationship becomes increasingly important -- so the last thing they want to do is antagonize political power...


read more:
http://www.theatlantic.com/special-report/ideas/archive/2010/06/an-interview-with-glenn-greenwald/57976/
-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20100614/0565e631/attachment.html>