Hero or Traitor ?
You either fit into one of two camps – there is no middle ground and very little ‘I don’t know’.
As for me, he is very much a Hero; and this from a law and order guy.
But what is surprising is that this issue crosses liberal and conservative lines. Many of Obama’s biggest cheerleaders on the Left feel totally betrayed by Snowden’s revelation that Big Brother America is spying on their tweets, emails and phone calls while a good number on the Right are equally turned offed.
The question that remains outstanding though is when do security measures go too far in their encroachment of our freedoms?
When do we tell the airport security folks to stop checking the elderly’s pacemakers and the infants’ diapers all the while electronically strip searching the rest of us … all in a bid to uncover radical Muslims?
Why do we paralyze our border crossings with useless delays?
And why does the US believe it is necessary to spy on all of our electronic communications with the same objective in mind?
Their supporters parrot back “if you have nothing to hide, then you should have no objection to being monitored”.
It has a certain logic but it misses the point entirely.
In a free and open society citizens have the right to carry on their day to day activities without having to worry about someone looking over their shoulders.
If someone is…we no longer have a free and open society. Full stop.
And until Snowden enlightened us with his recent disclosures we thought such espionage was restricted to police states such a China and Russia.
Yes dear reader – we owe him a great debt of thanks.
My question in all of this is what has gotten into the once great United States of America?
They are engaging in activities they once railed against.
A parallel example can be seen in the case of waterboarding. To his credit Obama has discontinued this method of torture but it was prevalent during the time of George W Bush’s Presidency and many look back in fondness of its effectiveness.
Again the Walter Mittys’ of this world seem to favour this type of torture and even torture in general because it “saves lives”.
Again a true statement but do we lower ourselves to the level of evil regardless of how noble the objective?
Either we in the West stand for Freedom and Liberty and Humaneness or we do not. There is no middle ground. And as for those who say we need to jettison our freedoms for safety – let me assure them – once we jettison the former, we will never enjoy the latter, despite their best wishes.
But of even greater importance, we will no longer be Free and it appears to me that that is exactly where we are all headed and it is scary.
As I see it..
‘K.D. Galagher’
