It is really tragic that we have reached a point where something so wonderful as Groklaw cannot effectively function.
Nearly 200 years ago, de Tocqueville asked why the American experiment in self-government succeeded while its French counterpart led to the guillotine, mob excesses, and ultimate tyranny and he gave a complex answer whose core was that private moral restraints in the populace served to check the unbounded passions in people that lead to oppression. In other words, the private life that each of us leads will hugely influence the way we are governed.
Governments are always ready to grab the greatest degree of power that the people will give them. That is the default because it is hard-wired into the human condition. And this is the major factor not grasped by those today who assume that society is evolving to a point that, if only right-thinking people with good motives are given enough power over our lives, they will somehow magically transform society for the good through government action. In reality, if any persons - right-thinking or not - are given largely unchecked authority over our lives, abuses will inevitably follow. As they gather huge amounts of power, their purpose in life becomes to guard that power jealously and to increase it as opportunities permit. No bureau has ever abolished itself. Farm programs from the depression era thrive today as ever, though the logic for their existence has long since vanished. Politicians of all stripes promote expanded budgets for their own areas of preferred government expansion and spend money they don't even have in vast quantities with little or no accountability to the people they supposedly serve.
This is why it is vital in a free society that its people be educated and morally grounded to value their rights as individuals and to resist and distrust unchecked authority in the state. Do we have that today? Perhaps, but only in a very weakened form. Many people today do not even give pause over the idea that the government claims huge amounts of unchecked power, whether it is to fight terrorists or to expand social programs. There is very little residue in our society of the old-fashioned principled belief that it is wrong to have vast centralized power with very few checks upon it. In her sign off piece, PJ notes: "Not that anyone seems to follow any laws that get in their way these days. Or if they find they need a law to make conduct lawful, they just write a new law or reinterpret an old one and keep on going. That's not the rule of law as I understood the term." This is lamentable but it is a mere symptom, and not the cause, of our ills. Politicians make the law as they go, with no accountability, only because they are allowed to do so by those whom they govern. And, if someone already has vast power over you, it is but a small step to extend that power in a technological age by using technology to spy upon, intimidate, and control people. Why, when these leaders are allowed to lord it over us as they see fit, should they suddenly develop scruples in gathering information that only serves to enhance their power to do what we are already letting them do without so much as a peep of principled opposition?
Privacy is in significant peril, and it is a serious loss when Groklaw goes down over this issue. But assaults on privacy are but a symptom of a deeper malady as modern society increasingly believes that it can hand over massive forms of unchecked government to its politicians in the naive belief that such power can be used wisely if only we have right-thinking leaders at the helm. The answer, as de Tocqueville noted years ago, is not to place faith in leaders but rather to take personal responsibility in our lives and to curtail the powers of those who govern. I guess we shall just have to wait and see if this is possible today.
In the meantime, we can praise those who fight the good fight, and PJ has been a supreme example of this. Tireless, talented, and astute, she has been a wonderful force for good over the past decade. May she find a powerful new outlet for those talents as she moves forward, even in a difficult environment.