Yes, it is.

Minstrel Boy...

The main purpose of government secrecy is to protect the government from you.

It's instructive that the greatest threat posed by the recent WikiLeaks document dump was the risk of international embarrassment. Embarrassment, of course, is a manifestation of shame.

In other words, the concern was that shameful things done in the name of our country would be exposed, not to the people we did shameful things to or said shameful things about. They know who we are and what we did.

The shameful things done on our behalf would be exposed to us.

What a shame.

There's an easy fix. Government officials who don't want to be embarrassed shouldn't do things they're ashamed of. Government officials who do things they're ashamed of should be found out and turned out.

Seems to me that having a government that doesn't do shameful things should be one of the ways that America is exceptional.