It’s totally unnecessary, but I will join the pile-on squishing poor old Sean Wilentz for his attempted take-down of Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden for the terrible crime of telling Sean more than he wanted to know about his government is doing. Andrew Sullivan administers an abbreviated beat-down while Henry Farrell supplies the extended version.
Wilentz falls into the category of what one would call the “Ed Meese School” of liberalism. You may or may not remember old Ed, who was attorney general in, naturally, the Reagan Administration. Ed once explained why all the fuss over “suspects’ rights” was a fuss over nothing: “If you’re innocent, you’re not a suspect.” Got that? If you’re innocent, you don’t need rights. And if you’re a suspect, you don’t deserve them. Well, it’s the same thing today. If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about. And if you’ve got something to hide, well, you’re probably a damn towelhead.
