Posted on 06/03/2014 10:45:26 AM PDT by Iced Tea Party
This is Secretary of State John Kerry’s answer....
“He should man up, come back to the United States. If he has a complaint about what’s wrong with American surveillance, come back here and stand in our system of justice and make his case....”The argument has a specious attractiveness; however, its premises are arbitrary, its logic shaky, and its implications pernicious.
...It is true that some disobedients, such as Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks, did not seek to evade punishment. It is also true, however, that they could not possibly have done so, for their acts of disobedience could not have been concealed. Not paying taxes, sitting in at segregated facilities, and leading illegal marches or demonstrations are not activities that afford the possibility of concealment or evasion of punishment. Other disobedients’ activities have permitted concealment, however, and some were in fact carried out covertly. The “underground railroad” by which people aided runaway slaves is one prominent example.... The Boston Tea Party is another. Are the disguised “Mohawk Warriors” who illegally dumped 342 chests of tea into Boston’s harbor to be condemned because they did not give themselves up and stand trial?...
Defending the inheritance of civilization sometimes entails sacrificing lives and even law. Those who do so invariably risk being denounced by their governments as traitors... [A] true statesmen would have the insight to see the situation for what it is: a Niebuhrian tragedy, in which a reasonable person proceeding in good faith, fully attentive to all commitments, could be forced to choose between being a traitor to the government or a patriot to the people.
(Excerpt) Read more at justsecurity.org ...
He can always stay where he's at.
Gandhi, Parks, King did not conceal their activities because the point of their activities was to publicly promote their point of view.
Which is precisely what Edward Snowden's very public dance with Glenn Greenwald was all about as well.
And the accompanying cartoon is beneath contempt. It compares the USA to Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.
Scratch a Snowdenite, find an America-despising traitor.
Lemme get this straight. Snowdon is a traitor but Bergdahl is a hero?
Right.
Gotcha.
Snowden’s actions might be considered treachery ... BUT ... His revelations have done Americans good in revealing government treachery ... against Americans.
Is “America” an ideal, or is it just a piece of geography?
Seems to be very situational, doesn’t it?
It's more than both.
But that isn't germane.
Comparing the USA to a Nazi puppet state is not only stupid and insulting, it tells you that you are dealing with an irrational ideologue instead of a serious person.
This administration seems focused solely on managing its brand, and nothing else.
And the point of the Boston Tea Party was to do what? Obscure and downplay the colonists' resentment of being denied the rights of Englishmen?
Like it says in the closing words: traitor to the government, patriot to the people.
It's not his reporting to us the details of the U.S. spying on its own citizenst that bothers me so much. It's the details he gave China and Russia about our espionage activities against them that does.
I agree with you about the comparison with a Nazi puppet state. OTOH, one could draw plenty of parallels between the NSA, and the E. German Stasi — only the NSA is leveraging modern technology to do an even more thorough job of domestic spying.
You are full of it. The government is out of control. The government does not America make. Learn to separate the two and you will be on the road to freedom.
I want to give him a medal. He should come back a hero for clueing us all in on the big plan.
Ugh! Chelsea Kerry.
The imagery is admittedly a bit hyperbolic (like all those signs with Obama photoshopped with a Hitler mustache or Joker makeup), but the underlying point about the Big Brother state the government is creating is serious.
A Snowden trial would be a three ring circus that the media could use to avoid all of Obama’s scandals as top billing in the “news”.
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