C'mon, Convince the Cynic!

                I enjoy a good spy novel or movie.  The intrigue, the suspense, the constant struggle between good and evil, right and wrong, grip my attention and don’t let go until the last word is written or uttered.  Of course, we all realize real spies are nothing like James Bond or Jason Bourne.  It’s a much more mundane world than the ones in which the likes of Bond and Bourne live.  Nevertheless, it is still a world about which few of us are very knowledgeable.

                Edward Snowden has piqued our attention recently.  His case is one which raises questions of morals, ethics, conscience and legality.  Some are touting him as an American hero, while others are calling for him to be tried for treason.  I haven’t made up my mind yet.  But I do find the discussion thoroughly intriguing.  We have a government contractor working with the NSA who swore an oath to secrecy revealing information about secret government operations.  An international flight to avoid prosecution ensues.  The hero/traitor ends up stranded in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport “transit zone” similar to Viktor Navorski's situation in the New York airport, the Tom Hanks character in the Spielberg movie The Terminal.  His attempts to gain asylum status in numerous countries are thwarted by U.S. diplomatic maneuvers.  Finally, Julian Asange, founder of Wikileaks and resident of the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he was granted asylum protecting him from a European arrest warrant for questioning in a sexual assault investigation in Sweden, enters the scene.  From his Ecuadorian embassy apartment, Assange is doing all he can to get Snowden asylum in some country, somewhere. If all this wasn’t reality, it would make a great fictional novel.

                Is Snowden a patriotic leaker of information in an effort to summon “the American people to confront the growing danger of tyranny” as his father has written?  Or is he a traitor bent on providing sensitive information to countries not considered friendly with the United States?  His detractors point to the broken oath he took when he signed on to the job where so much information was at his fingertips.  They insist he has provided less than friendly countries (the U.S. doesn’t really have enemy countries right now) with information that could compromise national security.  His supporters maintain he had a moral right, even a responsibility, to reveal information about illegal and/or unethical activities by a tyrannical government.  They claim his actions are defenses of the Constitution, to which he also pledged to defend from enemies foreign and domestic, not assaults on it.

                The other day, I read the statement by Edward Snowden, released through Wikileaks. While I still haven’t decided whether I think he acted correctly or not, I have decided he, or his Wikileaks advisors, are not doing well at building his case or winning me over.  

                1. He laments that he had to flee for revealing the truth.  Not a good argument.  Not all truth should be revealed.  Ask any negotiator involved in hostage situations, vehicle or real estate sales, or union contracts. I don’t want to know about military secrets being used to protect our country.  As the old saying goes, “Loose lips sink ships.” Just because it is true, doesn’t mean it is best to broadcast it.

                2. He chides President Obama and others for engaging in “political aggression” by convincing other countries not to grant him asylum.  Not a good argument.  He and Assange insist he is a political refugee, not a criminal fleeing justice.  If so, he has willingly entered the political arena and should expect to play the game of political maneuvering.  The U.S. government isn’t forcing him into exile.  He has chosen that course.  And he is accusing President Obama of deception?  Wasn’t it Snowden who deceived the NSA by promising never to disclose the information made available to him?

                3. He accuses the U.S. government of “using citizenship as a weapon.  Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person.”  Not a good argument.  Whether he is guilty or not has yet to be decided.  It can’t be decided until he is held to answer charges in our justice system.  Of course the government is pursuing him, blocking his avenues of escape.  That’s what all law enforcement agencies around the world do when someone is suspected of breaking a law.

                4.  The Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like him.  It is afraid of us, “an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised.”  Not a good argument.  First, he makes the mistake of referring to the American public as informed.  Our presidents are consistently elected by much less than half the eligible voters (and quite a few ineligible ones).  Second, he assumes the information he is leaking will make the American public angry.  We are angered out.  We have grown tired of exerting angry energy every time we learn of some new breach of the constitution by congress, state governments, circuit courts or Supreme Court justices.  What is it he thinks should anger us now?  The government has been using records of phone numbers called by suspected terrorists to track down leads.  What a surprise.  We had no idea our government would do something like that.  We are also supposed to be outraged to find out our government has been bugging dozens of foreign embassies.  Again, what a surprise.  My only question is, “Where are we on the list of countries that spy on other friendly countries?  Are we keeping up with the competition?”  I know it is just for their own political necessity, but I’m a little irritated by the French and English statements of indignation when everyone knows they have been doing exactly the same thing.

                Yes, I have become cynical.  I have been for quite awhile.  I still vote, though I really don’t believe it will do any good.  If an  initiative I agree with is passed, some court will strike it down anyway.  I still pay my taxes, though I know they will be grossly misused by those entrusted with them.  I still hang out my flag on national holidays.  I think it is an attempt to remind myself that the basic ideas on which this country was founded are still worth celebrating, even if most are almost unrecognizable today.

                I am something of a whistleblower as well.  And some think I am a traitor because of it.  I believe God sent Jesus to tear down the wall that separated all of us from him.  And I believe everyone on earth needs to hear that truth.  I am blowing the whistle on God.  In spite of governments' or individuals’ attempts to suppress that truth, I am proclaiming it; living it.  As a result, many people in this world believe I have betrayed mankind, turning my back on science, social norms, cultural mores and political entities.  I won’t be fleeing, looking for asylum.  Just praying and trusting in God.  I guess, in a sense, I am stuck in the “transit zone” as well; my citizenship is in heaven, but my life is in this world. What a privilege. 

Read the Whole Thing. I Dare You.

Declaration of Independence

[Adopted in Congress 4 July 1776]

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The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levey war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.