Pause for a moment to let that sink in. How can the government have ultimate decision-making power consistent with the First Amendment with regard to the publication of leaks? As Kinsley himself goes on to say, "You can't square this circle." Indeed. Unless you believe the government should be able to impose prior restraint on the publication of anything it deems secret. Unless you want to argue that the Constitution should be amended accordingly. Unless you believe the government should have been able to prevent the publication of, say, the Pentagon Papers (it certainly tried).

By the way, that "in a democracy (which, pace Greenwald, we still are)" is worth pausing to consider. Not just for the pretentious use of pace, which I admit is amusing, but more for the childlike notion that America is a democracy and there's nothing more to be said about it. It's almost like Kinsley has never heard of gerrymandering, or doesn't understand that when voters are no longer choosing their politicians and politicians are now choosing their voters, democracy isn't what's at work. It's almost like he's never heard of former IMF Chief Economist Simon Johnson's argument that modern America is best understood as an oligarchy (pro tip for Kinsley: oligarchies and democracies are not the same thing). It's almost like he's never even heard of Noam Chomsky (more on whom below — for now, suffice to say that Chomsky is great at explaining people like Kinsley, who are simultaneously sophisticated about irrelevancies and simple-minded about fundamentals).

Anyway, never fear, "No doubt the government will usually be overprotective of its secrets, and so the process of decision-making — whatever it turns out to be — should openly tilt in favor of publication with minimal delay."

“Whatever it turns out to be”? Kinsley has already explained the “decision must ultimately be made by the government." By comparison, does it really matter what specific mechanism the government then decides on? This is a lot like conceding that the government should have the power to execute American citizens without any recognizable due process, then confining the argument merely to mechanics (Terror Tuesdays, anyone? Due Process just means there is a process that you do?). In both cases, the government’s arguments and those of its media flunkies are indistinguishable.

(Again, see Chomsky below on the propagandistic technique of narrowing the range of acceptable debate, and then permitting vigorous discussion only within that narrow range.)

And here's a bit of the current reality of what Kinsley breezily refers to as a government "usually overprotective of its secrets." Secrecy metastasis would be a far better way of describing what's going on in America, where the government knows more and more about the citizenry and the citizenry knows less and less about the government (otherwise known as "Kinsleyan Democracy”).

By the way, if we were to implement the Kinsleyan notion that the government be vested with ultimate decision-making authority with regard to the publication of any information the government itself has stamped secret, what do you think would be the impact on secrecy metastasis? Do you think there would be less secrecy? Or even more secrecy abuse?

Ah, forget I said it. Silly question. It's not like the government has any history at all of using secrecy to cover up incompetence, corruption, and criminality.

Kinsley is a guy who's spent his adult life as a journalist — or at least pretending to be one — and it's as though he has no notion at all of George Orwell's pithy definition: "Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations." Now, if Kinsley wants to cede his journalistic autonomy to the government (I think Matt Taibbi would have said "journalistic balls," but there is only one Taibbi. I'm halfway through his new book, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, another study of Kinsleyan Democracy, and it is awesome), that's fine. Kinsley pretty clearly prefers the role of servile government flack to that of independent journalist. But would it really be healthy for the republic if all people calling themselves journalists were in fact doing government PR work? Surely we have enough of that already?

There are so many other unintentional instances of Kinsley's status as an exemplar of regulatory capture, of his own person functioning as elegant proof of Greenwald's arguments. He calls Greenwald "the go-between for Edward Snowden and the newspapers that reported on Snowden's collection of classified documents." I'm guessing he settled on "go-between" because James Clapper had already used "accomplice"…?

Also, did you know that Greenwald is a "self-righteous sourpuss" (my God, who still uses this word)? Or maybe you didn't care? I get so tired of these astonishingly shallow critiques. How much you might want to disguise your disgust with the Kinsleys of the world is primarily a tactical question, and different people will arrive at different conclusions. But if you're not disgusted, if you're not in fact outraged, by the government criminality and journalistic complicity Greenwald chronicles in No Place to Hide, then at best you're not paying attention. Criticizing the demeanor of someone uninterested in concealing his disgust reveals a warped set of priorities and a pernicious set of allegiances.

As for substance, for all his flamboyant displays of largely irrelevant erudition (Henry James, Michael Frayn, Herbert Marcuse… bingo! And this guy calls Assange a narcissist?), Kinsley comes across most fundamentally as… a simpleton: