You know what, I'll just say it. I actually don't care that Snowden has made things a little easier for Al Queda. At some point we have to draw the line on when freedom is more important than safety. Freedom IS more important than safety. Freedom is also dangerous.
If you want to live in a free society, you have to recognize that you won't always be safe, and that in fact, your freedom may just kill you. If you want to be safe, live in a Big Brother dictatorship where you are monitored 24 hours a day. You'll be safe and provided for. I completely recognize the importance of international intelligence gathering. At some point though, we have to draw the line when intelligence gathering "for the safety of US citizens" has taken one step too far into freedom curtailment. For that matter, as a society that believes in the human right to freedom, we should also recognize when to draw the line when our umbrella approach to intelligence gathering overly infringes on innocent non-US citizens.
I largely agree save for two things:
1.) One of the
Constitutionally ordained duties of the government is to protect the country.
2.) The ever-present bug-up-the-butt*** drive many democrats such as Chuckie Schumer and Diane Feinstein have to
disarm Americans. 500 years ago Machiavelli told his would be prince that
"new princes when they come to power and discover their people have been previously disarmed, promptly arm them, and in arming their people these princes make those arms their own."In short;
WE are this nation's true "Homeland Security"
NOT a bunch of uniformed goons at airports wand-raping 80 year old ladies and making 6 year old children undress.
The idea that some Man in Black dweeb in a concrete room is listening to 300+ million Americans is absurd; ain't happenin'. Some how we have to figure out how to separate the wheat from the chaff and screw in some courage.
How many terrorist acts are done by Swedes? By Italians? By little old ladies with walkers and granny-glasses?
The greatest dangers we face are from Muslim nuts, and ever - more so now from home grown ones.
Target them.
Snowden is, as I said, a narcissist. He may not have been acting alone; if that IS true, he wasn't acting as some sort of alarmist saviour trying to point out to Americans what was happening to our country, but as part of a conspiracy.
If he wanted only to sound an alarm, why go to China or Russia? If his goal was beneficent, he wouldn't have done that, and no one is going to convince me he is some great patriot warning us some new iteration of redcoats are usurping our privacy. He is one dweeb who had an in on one small aspect of our intelligence who exposed it without any consideration at all for the harm it would do to the whole, to America, or to the undercover agents who risk their lives in enemy environments to protect America.
