The Glade 4.0

Also, I'm not sure it matters where he fled to.

He went to non-extradition countries. Surprise, surprise, many such countries are not exactly our buddies.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/traitor



We'll have to just agree to disagree, it seems.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Yes, but in the context of a discussion about whether someone is a traitor to his country, I think it's the second definition that most people have in mind.

By the way I am loving that China, Russia and all of our other post-cold war "friends" are telling us to eff off. Despite claims to the contrary within the US, these countries have not changed at all when it comes to viewing us as, at the very least, an adversary if not a downright enemy. Russia isn't our enemy anymore! -derp.

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Oh absolutely. In my analogy, though, the public is Snowden's "client", so there's no third party involved (assuming he hasn't handed over any info to the Chinese, Russians, etc.).

The discussion was introduced with a request for folks' thoughts, and that's what I was addressing. Tangent to that, some might question the possibilty of treason, and that's why I qualified my opinion in my second post.

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In time, this too shall pass.

We don't know. If he has, that's a problem.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Yea, this.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Yes, but he chose the two that have the capacity to be an existential threat to the U.S., or at minimum to inflict major national-level damage in the worst-case. Venezuela would be far less suspicious; the formerly-huge Chavez's plans to defned Cuba against an invasion that might have been a threat 35 or 40 years ago notwithstanding, Venezuela is not a strategic threat to the U.S. on anything like the level of China or Russia.

The non-extradition status of China and Russia is largely irrelevant. Even if they had such status, his choice in that regard would be highly suspect.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Completely agreed.

We have peaceful relations with Russia and China. They don't share all of our values and goals, but it takes a rather large leap to get from that to "enemy." To view fleeing to Russia or China as indication that a person has committed treason says more about the United States than it does about the individual fleeing the country.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

No one said that fleeing to China or Russia was treason in and of itself; what we said was that it raises suspicions, and it really says nothing about the United States at all. China and Russia are not enemies, but they are not friendly either, the characterization of them as "friends" for diplomatic niceties notwithstanding.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

In addition to agreeing with what RD said, I have to also say I was thinking of "treason." Not "traitor."

Apologies.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

My problem with that statement is that if everything was working "properly," he would have never been able to do what he did. There were no legal checks and balances in place. There was just one guy who broke the law to "do the right thing."

To me, that's not how things are supposed to work. We should have checks and balances. We should have a government that has accountability. We should have power in the hands of the people they claim to serve.

I personally don't think we have any of that. It's a carefully constructed facade.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

There is no one to carefully construct anything.

You will never get a government that doesn't encounter these sorts of issues. It can't be done. Governments are made of people. Constitutions don't enforce themselves; they are enforced by people. The lack of checks and balances is the problem, not really the data seizures themselves. That's the problem that has come to light. That sort of thing will happen. We need to address it as it happens.

If everything is a facade and it can't be addressed because any time things are not perfect it can be blamed on a "system" or some puppetmaster behind the scenes, then it's all moot. We're already ****. Revolution won't even work; there will just be a new government, it will be imperfect again, and it will all come around.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Thomas Jefferson has some words on that issue. The long and short, though, is that an armed populous killing politicians tends to keep politicians honest.

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No it doesn't. It keeps anyone from being a politician. Then, you get whoever can convince people that they'll solve the problems of having no government at all. Or, even better, you get the populace fighting each other because SURPRISE!! Things never nicely break down to "population versus government", and some people will object to having their politicians killed.

Finally there's the simple fact that politicians are citizens, and anyone that thinks killing them for their misdeeds without a proper trial and sentencing is basically saying they just don't belive in fundamental fairness.

Jefferson was being a **** idiotic blowhard when he said whichever quote you're referring to. The "revolution every 20 years one" is total lunacy, and the "blood of patriots" thing is just flowery words in the heady spirit of defeating a major world power.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

There are no consequences for misgoverning this nation. Until such a time as there are, the government will continue to travel along the trajectory it is on. And, yes, it is the government v. the population; unfortunately, the majority of the population blindly trusts the government.

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Except that it isn't the government versus the population. The government is the way it is because its a product of the population; the government is an amalgamation of wildly different viewpoints, much as the population is. As for "no consequences for misgoverning this nation" those have to come from people, and dishing out consequences has costs to the disher. Documents and principles have no power themselves; people have to act on them and it is outrageous to expect people to endure major upheaval just to stop "misgovernance" in a nation where they can fundamentally go where they want, do what they please, and make a lot of money in the process.

The poor of this nation are rich compared to the vast bulk of human history. People are not going to struggle for "freedom" from "tyranny" when it isn't going to materially improve their lives. No one wants to live in a chaotic shithole.

Even if they did, you would just end up with a new government and a new form of "misgovernance". You go and toss out all the people that you think are doing things wrong and implement some new system where everyone's rights should theoretically be perfectly respected and the government theoretically can't do any mischief and..

Guess what? People are going to need food and water. They need electricity. They need medical care and clothing. They are not going to take "earn it yourself" as an answer, especially if the means of those things being produced disappeared due to the fighting, because going and "tossing out the politicians" isn't all neat and clean in practice. Someone is going to have to answer legal questions about who owns what, who can do what to whom, and a host of other things, and if people think the legal system is unfair, quoting the founding fathers at them is not going to help much.

And guess what? Now that you tossed one government out, its a lot easier to toss another.

You can dislike the fact that people behave that way all you want, but people are people, and unless you can invent different ones, that's what you got. We live in a country where when it comes right down to it, people have what they need, and can, with either luck or industry, live in fabulous wealth and technological advancement. They can feel so safe from outside attack, defended by the mightiest weapons ever produced that they can tell themselves the threats don't even exist. And they can do as they please on a day to day basis with a very very low risk of being arbitrarily yanked off the street for an imaginary crime, and even if they are, there is public and press outrage that goes unchecked by the government.

Or, to put it even more cynically, there's no **** money in revolution. There's no steak dinners or fancy new iPhones, and no matter how many people want to bemoan materialistic impulses, it is **** asinine to expect people to accept austerity for no better reason than to satisfy an ideological stance. It won't happen, and it won't happen because there's no point in an ideology that doesn't make life materially better.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Diamondeye:

What country do you live in? Our most vaguely defined espionage agency is carrying out the largest data-mining operation in human history on its own people. Our Internal Revenue Service has been targeting and obstructing opposition political groups. We just flaunted every element of due-process as immaterial on prime time TV several weeks ago. And the director of the NSA point blank told Congress that they didn't have to worry about constitutional challenges to their surveillance behavior on the grounds that they only need reasonable suspicion to arrest and charge someone for terrorism.

So, tell me, what country do you live in, because it's apparently not the same United States as the rest of us.

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You keep saying this like it's true...

First, there's no "us". There's "you". Don't try to appeal to popularity with an unspecified "us".

Second, you're didn't address a single thing I said and are completely changing the subject. Furthermore, citing individual incidences (some of which involve nothing more than people saying things in unspecified conversations) just establishes that.. things aren't perfect. These are all individual instances of problematic government behavior. Government will always engage in problematic behavior. It will in this country, it will in every other country, and you will not fix it by killing politicians, having revolutions, or worrying about ideologies. The best that can happen is that there's a new set of problems to deal with.

Weren't you going to renounce your citizenship or something a while back? Why don't you just get on with it already? No? Not interested? Then what? Are you just sitting around waiting for someone else to get started on the revolution? You're going to be waiting a while. The conditions that produce revolutions simply don't exist in this country and aren't about to.

If they did, you wouldn't be posting on the internet so cavalierly about it, because you'd be worried someone was going to kick down your door later this week after the NSA read your "treasonous" postings. You may think this is going to happen but.. you're still here, and Obama's been in office 4 years. ****, they're making fun of the NSA on the Jimmey Kimmel show my wife is watching right now in front of God and everybody. Yeah, that's what happens in totalitarian dictatorships; I bet they ridiculed the KGB on late-night TV all the time in the Soviet Union.

Back in 2005 or so, maybe 2006, on an earlier iteration, we had people talking about "oh yeah, in 5 years the government will have totally fallen because the people will have gotten sick of this ****" blah blah blah. Yep, here we are 7 or 8 years later and the same people are still talking about how we're on the verge of collapse and revolution. Any day now... Any day...

If all you want to do is just spend the rest of your life being dissatisifed with everything, then there's plenty of retirement communities where you can play shuffleboard and ***** about the government full time, I guess. Have at it.

OR you could address something specific. We have a secret FISA court. This court, on the face of it, seems to be an unConstitutional establishment of a court by Congress because trials (and therefore by extension judicial proceedings in general) are to be public. Do you disagree with that? Why or why not? Or is this just another excuse to ***** that DE isn't ***** about the government enough? Because really, if you tell some guy on the internet how wrong he is about government, obviously that will eventually change how government works.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Because it is. Things just don't break down neatly like that. Snarky one liners aren't going to make it so.

Does everyone you meet agree with you about everything political? No?

Then it's not the population versus the government. The government is the way it is because the population is the way it is.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Just like you denying it doesn't make it not so.

I just don't feel compelled to write a dissertation on the topic.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville