The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

Get your thinking gear around this horrific tosh (emphasis added);

As the elected representatives of the people, a government has far more moral legitimacy and indeed necessity than a newspaper like the Guardian, its hacks, or their self-aggrandising source networks. If people like Assange, Snowden and Greenwald were truly democrats, they would realise this. But the liberal intelligentsia’s worst kept secret is that they would far prefer governments run by themselves, for themselves, and without challenge.

This is all not to say that whistle-blowing as an activity should instantly be derided, or that governments should routinely target ‘journalists’, but in effect, the answer to this all is quite simple: if you choose to make an enemy of people (because governments are compromised (sic) of nothing less) then it is incomprehensible how you could expect no backlash.

Institutions have rights to defend themselves too, and while a nine hour detention of Greenwald’s partner may well be childish and crude, it is relatively easy to see how such a move is simply a ‘tit-for-tat’ gesture. If Greenwald and his army of outraged cyber-warriors expect ‘better’ from governments, then they forget what governments really are. People, elected by people, who behave and act like people.

Usually when you make an enemy of someone, there are proportionate consequences. Get over it.

Even the editor of the Guardian – usually one of liberty's most pernicious enemies – has a better grasp of ethics than this. 

I have no idea who is behind "Trending Central" but there could scarcely be a better example of the craven submissiveness longed for by authoritarian governments. Our liberty is in danger not just because of the evil of those attracted to "power" but because of the craven submissiveness of people like the author of this nonsense. He seems to believe that everything a government does, however morally despicable, is justifiable because it stands for "the people".

Only Godwin's Law forbids me from mentioning the best example of an elected government from whom "better" might reasonably have been expected. The British Government did not act for me in putting the frighteners on this Fleet Street Irregular. It did not, and rarely ever does, act in my name.