Saturday, March 8, 2008

Seeking a Slogan

"No taxation without representation"
"No taxation without representation" was a slogan in the period 1763–1776 that summarized a primary grievance of the American colonists in the thirteen American colonies. The phrase "No Taxation Without Representation!" was coined by Reverend Jonathan Mayhew in a sermon in Boston in 1750. By 1765 the term "no taxation without representation" was in use in Boston, but no one is sure who first used it. Boston politician James Otis was most famously associated with the term, "taxation without representation is tyranny."
[Wikpedia entry, No taxation without representation]
I seek an equally terse, memorable slogan expressing the sentiment,
No taxation without information
How are We the people to grant our informed consent to our government if we are kept ignorant of our government's doings?

The State Secrets Privilege is used repeatedly to keep us in the dark. We are asked to trust our government to do what is best for us. When the occasional light is shone upon our government's doings, that trust is revealed to have been unearned and misplaced.

This Administration has been worse than most, but any Executive is prone to this defect. Power corrupts. The Framers understood this, and sought to limit the Executive. Their failure was to assume that men of good will would respect the rules.

I therefore seek a memorable, terse, emphatic slogan that captures this notion: without knowledge of our government's doings, we cannot meaningfully grant our consent to those doings. We have been deprived of our ability to grant our informed consent by the - not our - government's insistence that "state secrets" are necessary to protect us.

Stop the madness!

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