Wait, pointing out a clear conflict of interest and censorship is being "radically pro-transparency"?
I don't believe in WikiLeak's mantra that all information, regardless of context, should be transparent, but since when is releasing information about a clear abuse radical in any way whatsoever?
That most certainly isn't their mantra.
Are you saying there's no difference between 1 or 100 people?
It requires a greater degree of selflessness to value two lives over your own than it does to value a hundred lives over your own. A fairly large number of people would consider sacrificing themselves to save half the world — that many lives lost is such a tremendous tragedy, it almost seems like an obligation. But few people would seriously think about exchanging their life for a stranger's — they'd say sorry, too bad, you got unlucky.
That's true. But the typical formulation for utilitarianism -- "if a trolley is hurtling down the track, certain to kill 5 people ahead of it, is it OK to divert it onto a different track if that will result in killing a single person?" -- is very difficult to talk someone out of.
The idea that minimizing the number of deaths overrides any absolute prohibition on taking a person's life is pretty much impossible to overcome. Hence my conclusion that utilitarianism is, or has become, the default mode of reasoning.
Is that even their mantra? They didn't release all the diplomatic cables right away, and at least tried to protect the names of some people in these documents.
Is it? In today's media climate? You bet your ass.
Well, there are a few, outstanding exceptions. I'm thinking of French philosophers of the Enlightenment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment), England in most of the 1600s and 1700s (Swift will probably be in jail for at least 30+ years in in this day and age for writing things like "A Modest Proposal") and probably Athens around Pericles' time or the Roman Republic. But, unfortunately, you're of course correct in the great scheme of things.