Comment by MomsAVoxell

It is indeed important to know about ones government - not just its branches, but also its misdeeds and crimes.

The national secrecy is a cess pool of corruption in any and all governments - the corruption of all government begins with its secrets - a truly free people don't allow their governments to keep secrets, but encourages governance to have a responsibility of protecting the truth over secrecy - and this, under the knowledge that absolutes are unattainable. Of course, nuclear codes need to be made inaccessible; the more the people know about their government, the less corrupt it is, however.

After all, do you know why your government hates Russia, like, legislatively - as opposed to culturally and all the other distractions from governance.

The issue is, the overlying principle is that modern governments must allow the people to survive extremism. Political systems, designed to combat the extremes of mass survival, reach a point where they, too, are extreme. As is also born in the history of other forms of human organization - religion, and so on. The very thing the subject was started to address, becomes it in the end.

Basic knowledge is one thing. But constant awareness is something else. We must always hold our governments and their agency, accountable. It is true of priests and politicians and scientists and icons, alike.