As I have frequently said, I hate politics and wish I could totally ignore it.  I’ve managed to keep it out of this blog most of the time, but wish I’d kept it completely out of it.  Nonetheless, today–again for lack of anything else to post–I am reacting to a bit of political news making the rounds in conservative Internet circles: Hillary Clinton’s illegal non-governmental email system.

Here’s a quotation from Jim Geraghty’s conservative newsletter about it: “ABC News political director Rick Klein said he was at a loss to come up with an innocuous explanation for Hillary’s ‘home-brewed’ system. There is no innocuous explanation. The whole point of it was to create an e-mail system that Hillary and her team would control completely, that would be beyond the range of federal record-keeping rules and laws and beyond the range of FOIA requests. If any message seemed embarrassing, politically inconvenient, or incriminating, she could erase it, and rest assured it was gone forever, beyond the reach of any investigator, FOIA request, or subpoena.”

I’m no fan of Hillary’s, but in this instance I’m on her side.  I oppose sunshine laws.  Politicians, and everyone else, in a free country, would be allowed to meet and discuss things in private.  Let the voters vote for or against them on the basis of the laws they favor and oppose, and vote for and against, who cares why.  Here’s my most horrible thought: if a politician promotes some law I favor, or–more likely–works to repeal some law I hate, I don’t care if he is doing so because bribed to.  In fact, I have nothing against bribery since those with the most are more likely to be right than those with less.

Okay, that would only be true in an economically much more free country than ours is where making money depended on how good your product was, not in how good you were at getting the government to make laws against your competitors, or grant subsidies to you, etc.  Not, in other words, based on the kinds of legal briberies so widespread now.

To get back to the sunshine laws.  The main thing about them that bothers me is how inhibiting it would be to know that you are in effect revealing all your relevant thoughts to everyone whenever you try to work what you think should be done about something your office is in charge.  Plus the extreme difficulty (I should think) of finding out what others think.

It makes me thing of the ridiculous hate laws, which are developing into laws against saying anything that a hyperoffendable  finds demeaning or negative in any way.  One of the books I’ve always wanted to write but never will would be a defense–nay, a celebration–of anger.

As for sunshine laws, I also dislike them simply because they are laws, but mostly because I am a zealot about freedom of speech, which I think should be total.  In other words, it should include the freedom of silence and concealment.  I should be able to say anything I want to–and say it privately if I want to.  And say nothing if I want to.  No fifth amendment right but the absolute right to say, “that’s none of your business.”

I’m over 500 words so ending this minor rant.  It ain’t likely I’ll say anything of consequence.  But I may be the first one utterly to oppose sunshine laws.  No, I can’t believe no one else has, but I don’t keep up with stuff like that.  An irony of my being against them is that I probably reveal more vile things about myself than about anybody.  But that’s mainly because this blog is so private.  I guess.  Actually, if ten million people suddenly began reading my entries, they’d probably stay the same.  Mainly because I’m no longer young enough for it to make any difference to me what others think of me.

Oh, one thing that is against Hillary is that she broke her contract with the government since using the government’s email system for all her government-related emails was part of it.  I lean toward breaking stupid laws, though.  Too bad she didn’t have me working for her: I’d have had a censor letting emails that were innocuous go to her private email system and to her government system, but only questionable ones going to the former.  If Hillary could find a way to finance it, I’d hire experts to revise the questionable ones and put the revisions into the government system before sending the originals to the private system.
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