Yet it might be useful to consider one more filter. Consider it the World Order filter. The fact that we live our lives amid order and not chaos is the great achievement of civilization. This order should not be taken for granted.
This order is tenuously maintained by brave soldiers but also by talkative leaders and diplomats. Every second of every day, leaders and diplomats are engaged in a never-ending conversation. The leaked cables reveal this conversation. They show diplomats seeking information, cajoling each other and engaging in faux-friendships and petty hypocrisies as they seek to avoid global disasters.
at a minimum, i propose that the question of whether the operations of world governments and their brave soldiers have a negative or positive effect on "order" is open. david brooks lives his life amid order, i suppose. but say he was living in kandahar, or grozny, or darfur, or even really downtown. the disasters that are happening in these places - with the possible exception of downtown - are due precisely to the operations of states, and the inter-operations among states. one of the many interesting features of this wholesome order is that it has developed for the first time the ability to annihilate all life on earth.
understand that when folks like brooks use the words 'order,' and even, god help us, 'community,' they mean coercion. every statist philosophy, from brooks-style burkean conservatism to obama semi-progressivism to stalinism, holds that the state is in its essence the cooperative activity of people. cf tony judt, for example: he frames the whole thing as a choice: serve yourself or serve a higher social cooperation = the state. now if that's the position i would just point out that cooperation cannot be coerced, that cooperation can take place only in an atmosphere of freedom. in some sense coerced action may be concerted or simultaneous action but it is precisely the opposite of cooperative action.
now secrecy is central to the operations of coercive power. the vast power of the gov to coerce is applied precisely to keep the activities of the state - including the coercion itself - unknown and hence irresistible. coercion both supposes and enhances secrecy. of course, ignorance of what in fact you're doing - when you pay your taxes, for example - is also completely incompatible with any sort of actual cooperation. at any rate, this is why the activities of governments must be relentlessly exposed. and few have ever done better at that task than wikileaks.
