Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
is a edward snowden a hero? a follow-up.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/06/is-edward-snowden-a-hero-a-follow-up.htmlYesterday, Jeffrey Toobin and I taped a segment about the Edward Snowden leaks with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, for his “GPS” show, which will be broadcast this weekend. You—and Jeff Zucker, CNN’s ratings-conscious president—may be disappointed to hear it didn’t come to fisticuffs; it was all very polite. Jeffrey reiterated his objections to Snowden’s behavior—he broke the law, he compromised national security, he fled to Hong Kong—and I repeated my argument that he has performed an invaluable public service.
Clearly, there are two sides to this issue. But, in light of the questions that have been raised about Snowden’s conduct—and not just by Jeffrey but by other liberal writers who might have been expected to be supportive, such as Josh Marshall, of T.P.M., and Kevin Drum, of Mother Jones—it’s worth expanding upon a few points.
First, speculating about Snowden’s motivations, his character, and his level of technical knowledge is all very well. Given the scant details we know about his life, it’s probably inevitable. But there may also be an element of intellectual snobbery involved, and there’s certainly a lack of appreciation of the risks to which the leaker has exposed himself in going public.
Apparently, Snowden didn’t finish high school. So what? When a geeky high-school dropout, such as David Karp, the founder of Tumblr, sells his tech start-up for a fortune, he’s lauded as an American original. When Snowden reveals that the federal government, for seven years, has been logging practically every phone call that Americans make, some people question his technical prowess and whether he really knows how the National Security Agency works.
69 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
That's it in a nutshell.
But I was actually referring to people who claimed to be liberal or progressive in the media.
Which is why the machine is out in full force against him. If Martin Luther King were alive today, he'd be right under the bus with Snowden, thrown under by the same people who have no respect for constitutional rights or human rights.
... these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
– Thomas Jefferson, August 1774
– Thomas Jefferson, August 1774
A Time to Break Silence
...
And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction (...), many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.
...
(...) There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war (...) and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup (...), and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
...
It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. (...) years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
...
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm
...
And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.
Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction (...), many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.
...
(...) There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war (...) and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup (...), and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.
...
It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. (...) years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
...
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm
Ignorance is a bliss!! Isn't it?
when anyone raises the topic of the things Obama is called on this board on a daily basis: "Why, I never, ever saw any such thing here! I can't imagine what you're talking about."
A single incident would prove your case against my response.
I'll wait. 
