Glenn Greenwald As The Dead Canary in the Coal Mine of Pseudo-Liberalism

Major Update below
One of the weirdest things about the Greenwald cult is the assertion that we're supposed to be upset that the United States spied on other countries and diplomats.  O, so the saying goes, the humanity!   That his fan base is so wet behind the ears that it doesn't understand that's the truly legitimate reason for spying, to find out what other countries are up to that they're not telling the world about, only shows how truly unserious they are.  That a country keeps something secret is a pretty good indication that it is of legitimate interest to another country and, quite often, is something seriously important for them to know.  Otherwise, they wouldn't be keeping it a secret.  And it's especially funny considering the bread and butter of their cult. What do they think Snowden was doing when he took a job to engage in free lance espionage?   And that was what he was doing.  If we were in a declared war I'd have no problem calling what he did treason, by his own admission.   He was stealing secret information from the U.S. government and handing it out.  As of now, we don't know what he did with all of what he took, I doubt he gave all of it to Greenwald and Poitras and, as it becomes obvious, other entities.  I strongly suspect he was intending to either sell or trade some of it to the Chinese government but was rather stupid in putting himself directly under their control as he did that.  If he thinks that's libelous,  he can sue.

I am glad the United States spies on other countries and I am certain that other countries spy on the United States.  The countries that Snowden fled to and Greenwald lives in certainly do that and, far more so than the United States has been exposed as doing, on their own citizens.  As Joshua Foust seems to be making a habit of doing, he puts into words what others of us intend to get to someday, asking Why is There Outcry Only Over American Spying?   

One of the things that this whole thing shows is that there is a very weird thing going on.  The United States probably has among the strongest legal protections of individual liberties of any country in the world. In fact, it is exactly those liberties from which many of our problems come.  Buckley vs. Valeo, Citizens United are all structured and sold as rights under the constitution.   I would assert that most our problems, most of the real, genuine dangers to democracy,  come from the rich and powerful and their legal and media lackies, abusing those protections to harm and cheat other people, destroy the environment and endanger our democracy.  Oddly enough, extending privacy as far as some of these people want to will only make that worse.  As the post I linked to yesterday morning shows, Greenwald isn't especially on record as caring about that and he is on record of wishing for a billionaire savior who will subvert the democratic process with his money to take power.  Not to mention his hankering after a conservative Republican such as Gary Johnson.

By saying he might support Gary Johnson, Glenn Greenwald has now demonstrated that he is a narrowly-focused advocate who cares about only a few issues, and is not a liberal or progressive with a broad sense of the common good. He’s also a poor political analyst, for if can’t he recognize the damage that would be unleashed by having as a president someone who cavorts with 9-11 truther Alex Jones and who in 2008 endorsed nutball libertarian Ron Paul for president, why pay attention to what he says outside the narrowly legal boundaries of his claims about the government, our politicians and public policy?

And that same narrow focus guides many of his admirers who know that they don't trust the American government while ignoring that, compared with others such as China, Russia, Brazil ... it's the freedom and privacy available in the United States that has allowed the billionaires and multi-millionaires to corrupt it just as it has in those countries which, apparently, are seen by what unfortunately represents the left as havens of freedom and privacy.   And, by the way, we are supposed to take that all very seriously even as it is complete nonsense. 

Most bizarre of all is how the alleged liberals sound exactly like what are supposed to be their polar opposites, their irrational paranoia focused on the federal government to the extent that some of them express admiration for the insanity of Rand Paul and others.  If you transposed a lot of the comments on allegedly liberal blogs to World Nuts Daily or Before It's News, you'd be hard pressed to find the "liberal" expression from the right wing crackpots. 

If the results of Edward Snowden's espionage result in ending the contracting of spying to corporations such as those who hired and cleared Snowden and conglomerates such as the Carlye Group it might signal a real reform of domestic spying operations.  If the base of judges under FISA is widened under a system less guaranteed to produce bias, that will be good.  If there is more, real, independent, congressional oversight of spying, that would be excellent.  But I doubt those are going to be the result of this nonsense.  I've never been less than extremely unhappy with the present system of civilian oversight of spying and I'm certainly not happy with the operations branches of the CIA and FBI.  But I doubt that the national tantrum over the rather unshocking revelations of what the NSA is up to - frankly, I'd always figured they were doing a lot more than that - is going to lead to real reform.  And that reform is absolutely needed because every country that has ever existed spies both internationally and internally.  

I'm not unhappy that some of that spying happens when it prevents murders and terrorism and a host of other crimes against The American People and people elsewhere.  I'm not unhappy when it puts criminals in prison.  I'm unhappy when they spy on pacifist groups, environmental groups, and civil rights groups.  I'm unhappy when they get away with doing that.  I suspect that under a Gary Johnson administration, that wouldn't be done less often than it is under the Obama administration.  Though I thought Eric Holder, among many others, should be replaced by people less wedded to the establishment.   That establishment serves the billionaires, the Bush family, the Cheney Family, the Koch's and not The People.   That is where the real danger to democracy lies, their ability to game the Bill of Rights and the law for their purposes, and, as Greenwald shows, he's not really interested in addressing that, he wants it to take the presidency.

Update:  After finishing this post I remembered that Glenn Greenwald was a big fan of the Citizens United ruling, presenting a truly dangerous ruling for the very legitimacy of the government as a "free speech" issue. That along with his heroic savoir billionaire, cutting through the democratic system powered by the billions in "free speech" at their disposal, betrays just how elitist Greenwald is.  A long time ago I noted how dismissive the media were of the importance of self-government by an accurately informed population are and Greenwald is certainly singing from the same book they are.   Among the most important reasons for free speech to matter is its service to that kind of self-government by The People.  When "speech" is equated with money, it's very easy to do a calculation.

If money equals speech then you can count it, you can figure out how much speech someone has. It only takes the simplest math. With P being a person and m being the money they have. P(m)= Speech owned by p. Or, more simply, 1xm=Speech. P is a person and always equals 1. m is a variable, it depends on the amount of money P owns. As m increases then the total speech owned by P increases. Buckley v. Valeo makes it possible for the first time in our history to calculate the amount of free speech someone has.

It might be lost on our brilliant Supreme Court and the scholars who support this monstrosity but if m=O the free speech owned by P is zero. Maybe they are so busy rearranging legal Platonisms that they don't know what happens when you multiply one by zero. Or maybe they do understand and the outcome doesn't bother them. And that wouldn't surprise me anymore than that it is a Buckley who has his name attached to it.

But that doesn't much concern the libertarian puritanism of Greenwald.

For those who believe that “money is not speech,” I’d be interested in your answers to these questions. [Note: the link doesn't work at Salon]

As for the question of whether corporations possess “personhood,” that’s an interesting issue and, as I said, I’m very sympathetic to the argument that they do not, but the majority’s ruling here did not really turn on that question. That’s because the First Amendment does not only vest rights in “persons.” It says nothing about “persons.” It simply bans Congress from making any laws abridging freedom of speech.

And in a response in the comments:



GlennGreenwald
FRIDAY, JAN 22, 2010 11:37 AM EST
KcM

As Justice Stevens said in 2000, "money isn't speech. It is property." I find it hard to argue differently.  [From KcM's comment]

Greenwald's comment on it:

I don't find these even plausible, let alone persuasive. Anyone who believes that would have to say that there's no First Amendment problem with any law that restricts the spending of money for political purposes, such as:

"It shall be illegal for anyone to spend money to criticize laws enacted by the Congress; all citizens shall still be free to express their views on such laws, provided no money is spent;" or

"It shall be illegal for anyone to spend money advocating Constitutional rights for accused terrorists; all citizens shall still be free to express their views on such matters, provided no money is spent"; or

"It shall be illegal for anyone to spend money promoting a candidate not registered with either the Democratic or Republican Party; all citizens shall still be free to advocate for such candidates, provided no money is spent."

Anyone who actually believes that "money is not speech" would have to believe that such laws are necessarily permitted by the First Amendment (since they merely restrict the expenditure of money, which is not speech).

Do you actually believe that? I don't even find that argument sufficiently coherent to warrant much discussion.

It would be like saying: "No person shall be permitted to use a megaphone or television outlet to advocate liberal views -- there's no First Amendment problem: megaphones and television outlets are just 'property, not speech'."

Of course, I've never known of someone who had, never mind could use billions of megaphones and the number of billionaires who would use their wealth to promote liberal views would seem to be not in evidence or where are they now?   Greenwald is a wealthy libertarian living the expat life in a multi-million dollar enclave among truly horrific third world squalor.   He's a very odd hero of American style liberalism.