The CIA- Enemy or Promise

The CIA- Enemy or Promise

I

Mutual trust is indispensable to any democratic polity. Without it, without a sense that the political men we deal with can be assumed to be self-actuated, autonomous actors engaged in pursuing their material or ideal interests in an open and publicly visible manner, a democratic policy is bound to falter.

In small democratic communities, in New England town meetings for example, each member is personally known to the others and his actions are publicly visible. Such is not the case in modern mass democracies where political actors can no longer be controlled through the direct scrutiny of their actions by their fellows. Hence, such democratic communities are based on the prior assumption, on the wager if you wish, that the great majority of public actors, like you and me, mean what they say and say what they mean. If this basic trust no longer prevails, massive paranoia and a Hobbesian view of the world is bound to ensue. It follows that no matter what his motives, whoever undermines basic human trust is an enemy of democracy. He attacks the very foundation on which the democratic community is based.