Chaos of the Truth

With a firm opposition of the Bush administration, leadership of democrat in the Senate is pushing the new bill to provide journalist substantial level of protection to be able to publicize confidential information of the government. Proponents of this revolutionary legislation claims that the public has the right to know the truth about their elected government, while the opponents assert that such ridiculous policy can disrupt the national security, and interrupt the moderation of the society.

As our society is more deeply transforming into the world of democracy, equality, and freedom, we have demanded more extended level of rights and freedom. Everyday, numerous people advocate for stronger power of the public and at the same time demand limited power of our current seemingly-omnipotent government. However, the question is, by how much should the society be able to control the government.

There is no doubt that the citizens, the true owners of a nation, have every rights to know all the acts of the government. Nevertheless, such information provided to the public needs to have certain level of restriction indeed for various reasons. Especially considering the humble national security, which is always threatened by numerous external and internal forces such as terrorism, it is sometimes critical to keep variety of government information confidential. What kind of terrorist will be arrested while all the suspected terrorists know the entire progress of the terrorism investigation of the government?

Moreover, it has been historically proved that public opinion is very sensitive and vulnerable for distortion. In other words, even if the journalists have the granted ability to share all the truth with all the members of the society, it is surely possible that the crucial background story of the truth might not be revealed along with the publicized information, and belie the entire truth.

Under our democratic society we all surely possess inviolable rights to know what is going on with our government. We give the authority of power to our government with our own votes and regarding this fact, we are truly the owners of our country. However, we also need to keep in our mind that we choose our government with trust, and as a result, our elected government has our mandates to run our country for us. Therefore, in short, we don’t need to know every single details of our government as long as the government obeys the strict constitution of the nation without violating any law. If we undress our government naked and obtain access to all the government policies, our society will eventually fall into endless havoc and confusion. Needless to say, if this chaos actually becomse our reality, no one can guarantee the security of the 300 million Americans.

Source:  The Right to Know