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To: montanajoe
My word is irrelevant. When Snowden signed up, he gave his word not to divulge the secrets he had access to. He broke that word. He is therefore a Traitor to his country.

The problem is that the government in return "gave him their word" to serve and protect US citizens.

For example, you get a job as a security guard at a typical medical office and sign a standard contract that orders you to maintain privacy of what's going behind the closed doors. Once you start your job you discover that this business is an illegal organ harvesting center. Will you break your contract to report the crime?

One can say that the government trumps the private contract, and the government is the topmost authority in this world - and its actions cannot be questioned. But quite a few people would be quick to point out that there is a higher authority:

Explosive revelations by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, documenting illegal government spying, are an unprecedented gift to truth and freedom.* They add wind to the sails of those who have labored to inform the public of the massive surveillance and wiretapping by our government on US citizens. Yet is Snowden a hero or a traitor? World opinion seems almost evenly divided. Many leaders and authorities say he is a hero; but Pres. Obama and Republican backers of the CISPA bill, which would legalize much of the spying Snowden has exposed, believe he should be convicted of treason and espionage.

At times like this, the Bible—ethical keel of Western civilization for millennia—must weigh in. Society needs a higher authority than opinion polls, federal law or precedents set by activist judges. Violation of law for the sake of vital good is an option within the redemptive nature of Biblical ethics. Jesus said it is lawful to do good. As Creator and Architect of salvation, Jesus Himself violated the eternal law that God will not coexist with sin. He gave free will to angelic and human beings, allowing potential for the most grievous rebellion for an ultimately greater good: that we might choose for Christ and live with God forever.

[...] Jesus, the "Yahweh" of the Old Testament, also violated His own Mosaic law against working on the Sabbath when He healed a man blind from birth, horrifying the legalistic, ruling Pharisees. Hungry, Christ harvested handfuls of grain with His disciples on the Sabbath, illegal under the Mosaic Law. He said man was not made for the law but the law for man. He challenged the Pharisees, saying if their ox fell into a ditch on the Sabbath they would pull it out. Similarly, He righteously lifted a blind man out of the lifetime ditch of sightlessness, even though that broke the law.

Obedient, unthinking following of orders did not work in Nuremberg. It should not work anywhere else either. Every order of a human being, or of a group of humans, may and should be questioned for compatibility with Christian ethics, as humans are fallible (and highly so.) If we all do that, the world will become better, and evil will be unable to propagate. Defeat the Stanford Prison Experiment.

43 posted on 05/30/2014 10:58:16 PM PDT by Greysard
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To: Greysard

>> Obedient, unthinking following of orders did not work in Nuremberg

That’s an egregious analogy.


51 posted on 05/30/2014 11:48:39 PM PDT by Gene Eric (Don't be a statist!)
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To: Greysard
I believe the Constitution is divinely inspired and it gives us the framework for self governance. But in order for it to work the people entrusted with the secrets of the government must have integrity, honor and self discipline ...traits Mr. Snowden lacks.

For the sake of argument assume you get your Libertarian Constitutional Republic. The new government goes out and staffs itself with folks who have no allegiance to anything but their own view of what the Constitution says. Therefore they have no obligation to keep the secrets of the new government secure.

How long will it last? The belief that integrity and honor can be disregarded by anyone entrusted with state secrets is astonishingly naive

52 posted on 05/30/2014 11:52:21 PM PDT by montanajoe
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