It's a system that often lacks principled defenders, but that's designed to defend itself.
Today it sees itself as a defender of journalism itself.
As a role of defender, the system itself will take preventive measures for attacks before disruptions occur and respond to the damage after attacks.
But in the current economic downturn and plight of print industry, Mother Jones, although suffering itself, sees itself as a defender of journalism, period.
The party considers itself a defender of Catholic values and says it would close mosques suspected of radical preaching.
One of the clerics, Ayatollah Youssef Sanei, a reformist, drew a sardonic parallel, suggesting that Iran, which considers itself the defender of Muslims worldwide, could not criticize China's repressive tactics while it was doing the same thing.
Standing up against welfare cuts in the north, in the south Sinn Féin, the only trans-border party in Ireland, is presenting itself as defender of the poor and the true guardian of the republic.
PARIS — Calling itself a defender of free speech and a denouncer of religious backwardness, a French satirical newspaper on Wednesday published several crude caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, images viewed as a provocation by many Muslims and condemned by the French government as irresponsible at a time of violence and unrest across the Islamic world.
Last week, on a visit to Los Angeles, the secretary of the Smithsonian, G. Wayne Clough, was still struggling to account for why he caved two months ago to Republican lawmakers and the leader of the Catholic League, a group that calls itself a defender of free speech.
Playing to national pride, and national insecurities, the party has used censorship and propaganda to position itself as defender of the motherland, and at the same time to block any examination of Tibetan grievances or its own performance in the crisis.
