I just finished watching Glenn Greenwald (of Salon fame) and Steven Aftergood (of Secrecy News, an arm of the Federation of American Scientists) talk about WikiLeaks on Pacifica’s Democracy Now.

Aftergood is clearly a statist. The only point of leaking documents is to expose “corruption,” and by exposing such “corruption” then prompt “reform and change.” In short, the only reason to leak is to make the state work better. He disparages even the “collateral murder” leak by noting that leaking it didn’t change anything (such as the rules of engagement), though he then says he agrees with what WikiLeaks did. There are good reasons for government secrecy, Aftergood notes, however, he then praises the Obama regime for its transparency — such as making public nuclear weapons info and so forth.

I agree with Greenwald when he says Aftergood is deluded in believing there will be any substantial reform of anything — especially foreign policy related — given both Congress and the President. But I will go much farther. I don’t want to reform the American state. I wish to weaken it. I wish to see its power reduced and even possibly eliminated. I want an end to empire, and I almost don’t care about the cost. I want Americans to love America for its smallness and peculiarity, not for its largeness or its universality. I want the country I live in to be a normal country, in which government — especially the centralized state — doesn’t really matter all that much. I want soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines here at home doing honest, decent work, and not scattered across 1,000 bases in 120 countries. I want Americans to stop trying to save the world and instead tending to their families and supporting their communities. Love and duty are for neighbor, not ideology or history or state or regime.

No amount of hope and change in political action will get us there. No amount of “reform” is going to get us there. We are beyond that. I do not know what will get us there, I only know politics can’t. I do believe weakening the state will get us there. Not tomorrow, but eventually. So, to WikiLeaks I say, “Yes! More! Better! Faster!”

The Best of Charles H. Featherstone