Influence, not mostly force

"From Hobbes to Marx and beyond, political theory has largely been written in national and international terms.  Our reflections on the order of society, as well as nature, are still dominated by the Newtonian image of massive power, exerted by sovereign agency through the operation of central force, and we have lost our feeling for all the respects in which social and political achievements depend on influence, more than on force.  For the moment, the varied political relations and interactions between international, subnational and multinational entities, and the functions they can effectively serve, still remain to be analyzed, but an 'ecology of institutions' that has, as yet, scarcely come into existence."Stephen Toulmin.  Cosmopolis:  The Hidden Agenda of Modernity.  Free Press, 1990, 208-209.

 

The US gov't should have 0 (zero) secrets.  A teenage girl has more legitimate secrets than any gov't.  Most of the so-called secrets are to coverup for corrupt and inept (maybe those two words should be fused — incorreption?) officials.  Let's blow the lid off the whole corrupt mess.  I hope there are 50 more of these kind of guys to follow.