Big Brother News

Let's face it, when someone pries into your personal life or tries shut you up, you don't like it. Maybe this is something particular to Western societies, what with the long tradition of tolerated dissent (as long as you don't pose an actual threat to the people in charge). Most people who consider the First Amendment to be a good idea are a little afraid of corporations and governments that spend too much time trying to shut down the public exchange of information (see this article about self-serving wikipedia manipulation). That's why there are so many people happy about Karl Rove retiring. In addition to being a political operative whose demagoguery was only outdone by the vice president himself, Karl Rove was an expert at manipulating public opinion and running roughshod over our unalienable rights. There's nothing wrong with PR, mind you. It simply has to be balanced by some kind of ethical code. "Win at all costs" is not an ethical code. Take the various Bush administration wiretapping scandals, for example. It's very hard to violate the basic precepts of constitutional law, lie about it, and be indignant when other countries who state openly that they don't care about privacy at all and actively want to control their population indicate they are going to do the same. I mean, c'mon, China even restricts what's allowed to come up on Google searches (which may end up hurting Google's popularity in the long run). Americans aren't even sure if they like undercover journalists. How did wiretapping get to be okay?