While the establishment press debates the definition of 'democracy,' government officials are quietly gutting the public's right to know what they are actually doing.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch framed the current threat to the nation as a philosophical dispute over whether we are a 'republic' or a 'democracy,' warning of politicians who make it 'harder to vote' by invoking 'nonexistent vote fraud.' But that semantic sideshow obscures the real crisis: a government that operates in the dark, accountable to itself rather than the voters.
Look at Washington State, where the right to transparency is being strangled by the very officials sworn to uphold it. As the Lewiston Morning Tribune reported, voters enacted the state’s Public Records Act by initiative in 1972 with only a handful of exemptions for personnel and litigation. Since then, the Legislature has carved out hundreds of exemptions to hide its tracks. In 2007, the Legislature established the Sunshine Committee to review these loopholes, but the Tribune notes the committee has become 'toothless thanks to the feckless indifference of legislators who ignore most proposals to make agencies more transparent.'
When media organizations petitioned Attorney General Nick Brown to clarify the rules, his office bogged down. A revised proposal published in May actually backtracked on transparency, making it easier for third parties mentioned in public documents to seek injunctions blocking their release. The Tribune rightly argues these notifications 'should be very rare' because 'public documents belong to the people.'
The Post-Dispatch quotes Benjamin Franklin’s warning—'A republic, if you can keep it'—as a call to protect voting rights. But you cannot keep a republic if you cannot see inside it. The right to vote is meaningless if the officials you elect can shield their actions behind endless exemptions and bureaucratic stalling. Bipartisan indifference has turned transparency laws into suggestions.
Sunlight is the only disinfectant left. Until the records are public and the exemptions are closed, the 'democratic republic' the pundits champion is just a veneer for the permanent ruling class to hide behind.
