The Loyal Opposition
Why Our Democracy Needs Snowden
Quinn Norton
“I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.”
— Edward Snowden
Can Snowden, striking as he does at the heart of our system of governance be a loyal patriot? Can he be anything else?
For most of history, being opposed to the government was treachery.
The more munificent of the empires of time could allow for a bit of disagreement here and there, but the majority were compelled, sometimes by their own laws, to torture dissenters and put them to death. Law has never been a natural function of justice, but of organized force. Placing justice above that force was a relatively recent societal innovation. In most of history, the elites and kings represented what was right, and made law. By definition, disagreement was illegal and wrong.
Democracy was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be more flexible, not just for the benefit of the dissenters, but to keep the whole project from spiraling into the kind of craziness that caused empires and great nations to rot, fail, and fall from within. The rule of law became justice as it represented the needs of people, not just the majority, but of wisdom and progress — a balancing of thought and time.
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https://medium.com/quinn-norton/6ecd110996f
