|
I think we are generally better off keeping procedure secret whilst keeping outcomes entirely public. For example, decisions made by the Federal Reserve should be widely publicized, but the debates behind the policy should be kept secret. The same should apply to committee hearings in Congress and to advice received by the President. These types of instances are ones in which our leaders need to be able to make unpopular decisions when they are the right decisions.
Government secrecy is a way for those in the know to avoid being pressured by the uneducated. In the policy-making process, this insularity is critical. Conversely, in the policy-implementation phase, as well as the broad decision-making picture, accountability is more important than secrecy.
__________________
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
|