On this Independence Day, I'm thankful for Edward Snowden [View all]

[MannyGoldstein]

Last edited Thu Jul 4, 2013, 11:21 PM - Edit history (1)

I don't know why he did what he did. Perhaps out of patriotic duty. Perhaps for money and fame. Hero or scoundrel, I'm not yet certain.

Whatever the reason, I'm glad that we now know just how invasive and pervasive our government of the 1% has become. Add Spy on Everyone to the other new American policy initiatives of torture, and the suspension of habeas corpus and due process, and it's difficult to not conclude that we are transitioning to a police state.

If Paul Revere did not have advance information (gathered by espionage, incidentally) that the British were heading out to raid Lexington and Concord, he'd have been too late to start the chain of riders which fanned out to warn the countryside, and brought help. It would have been too late, the colonials would have been neutered.

We now have advance warning. Like the Minutemen, we must help before it's too late, or we'll fulfill the prophecy of Ben Franklin's closing words at the Constitutional Convention:

"I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other."

Happy Birthday, America. May we enjoy many, many more as a free people under the rule of law.