In 1980, a 25-year old graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin wrote amaster’s thesis called “Human rights, a case study of Egypt.” In it, he argued that the aim of achieving and maintaining political stability justifies human rights violations by apprehensive governments— including crackdowns on unbridled journalists:
Since the press can play such an influential role in determining the perceptions of the masses, I am in favor of some degree of government censorship. Inflamatory [sic] articles can provoke mass opposition and possible violence.
Why should we care what a 25-year old grad student wrote over 30 years ago? Because that student grew up to be John Brennan—recently appointed director of the CIA. And because the theory he outlined in his master’s thesis seems to have shaped his attitude toward the exercise of power since then.
Go read the rest to learn about our new CIA director.
This is the kind of thinking that people like Brennan, Cheney, J Edgar Hoover, C Thomas, et al display at a young age which catches the eye of the 1% who then shepherd them along in their careers. The 1% controls power and it sees to it that those who rise to positions of power think in a certain way. It’s a closed system which is why nothing ever really changes. And why the Left never rises to the top of the food chain.
Democracy and human rights are not ends (except to the anti-semite Jimmie Carter). Interests are ends. The fiction of American exceptionalism was erected to obscure the difference.
If Carter is an anti-semite, that must mean that he’s prejudiced against Palestinians and other Arabs as well as Jews.