Edward Snowden: American Hero

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#1,304
Carl Pickens said:
He should have keep his mouth shut on things being done outside of our own borders. That's where he crossed the line.
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Fruit of the poisonous tree. Once the government breaks admits to breaking the law, I have a hard time believing anything else they have to say about the person who outed them. Character assassination
 
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#1,305
Vol8188 said:
Fruit of the poisonous tree. Once the government breaks admits to breaking the law, I have a hard time believing anything else they have to say about the person who outed them. Character assassination
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You imply he had character to begin with. As I've stated before and will again, I have zero problems with him bringing the domestic surveillance to light. Even happy he did.

Yet when his head got huge and he turned into an attention whore, that's when I stopped supporting him. He consistently began to try to out the US all over the world. Each and every time he fell out of the news, he was right back in with some form of "release" that would be detrimental to the US.

He turned into a grade A, high school cheerleader-esque attention whore and showed his true colors.
 
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Grand Vol said:
You imply he had character to begin with. As I've stated before and will again, I have zero problems with him bringing the domestic surveillance to light. Even happy he did.

Yet when his head got huge and he turned into an attention whore, that's when I stopped supporting him. He consistently began to try to out the US all over the world. Each and every time he fell out of the news, he was right back in with some form of "release" that would be detrimental to the US.

He turned into a grade A, high school cheerleader-esque attention whore and showed his true colors.
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He showed his true Russian tricolor.
 
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#1,309
Grand Vol said:
You imply he had character to begin with. As I've stated before and will again, I have zero problems with him bringing the domestic surveillance to light. Even happy he did.

Yet when his head got huge and he turned into an attention whore, that's when I stopped supporting him. He consistently began to try to out the US all over the world. Each and every time he fell out of the news, he was right back in with some form of "release" that would be detrimental to the US.

He turned into a grade A, high school cheerleader-esque attention whore and showed his true colors.
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This guy's some kind of Russian agent. Even his "benevolent" revelation about intelligence gathering within the US will probably serve to enable domestic terrorism. Not that I'm a fan gov't surveillance, but there is reason we're doing it and a delicate balance between the practical reality of preventing future domestic terror attacks and stepping on the civil rights of US citizens.

Sadly, he thinks he's going to get a second chance to return and attempt further espionage. He belongs in Russia.
 
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#1,310
jvol1 said:
This guy's some kind of Russian agent. Even his "benevolent" revelation about intelligence gathering within the US will probably serve to enable domestic terrorism. Not that I'm a fan gov't surveillance, but there is reason we're doing it and a delicate balance between the practical reality of preventing future domestic terror attacks and stepping on the civil rights of US citizens.


Sadly, he thinks he's going to get a second chance to return and attempt further espionage. He belongs in Russia.
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Blowing the whistle on the feds was fine. When he turned over state secrets to foreign govts. He committed treason..period. if he steps foot here aga I n he can and will be hung or shot. He earned it.

Traitors should die.
 
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marcusluvsvols said:
Blowing the whistle on the feds was fine. When he turned over state secrets to foreign govts. He committed treason..period. if he steps foot here aga I n he can and will be hung or shot. He earned it.

Traitors should die.
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What about the traitors who broke the constitution? Where's your blood lust for them?

Or do you only want to kill those the media tells you to?
 
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#1,314
marcusluvsvols said:
Blowing the whistle on the feds was fine. When he turned over state secrets to foreign govts. He committed treason..period. if he steps foot here aga I n he can and will be hung or shot. He earned it.

Traitors should die.
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Counterfeiters should die also. You should be more concerned with them than Snowden.
 
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Vol8188 said:
What about the traitors who broke the constitution? Where's your blood lust for them?

Or do you only want to kill those the media tells you to?
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He would rather hang Snowden (the whistleblower) over G. W. Bush and Obama (the lead enforcers of laws that violate The Bill of Rights).
 
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#1,316
Snowden keeping you pure.

Zakaria keeping you safe and secure so that you can feel pure.

Fareed vs Edward Snowden on encryption - CNN Video

I love the argument, and you often get it from some on the far right and the far left, concerning how we're the least free today that we've ever been because governments can constantly monitor us - the "golden age of surveillance," as Snowden calls it here. What is always conveniently left out, however, is the fact that previous eras didn't have to deal with the reality that just one single human being could kill tens of thousands (maybe more) and bring down world economies. This isn't the golden age of being safe, when one person could only kill one or two other people with a sword. You must decide what is more important to you: purity or security. But, in the era of cyberspace, you will never have it both ways again.
 
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#1,317
volprof said:
Snowden keeping you pure.

Zakaria keeping you safe and secure so that you can feel pure.

Fareed vs Edward Snowden on encryption - CNN Video

I love the argument, and you often get it from some on the far right and the far left, concerning how we're the least free today that we've ever been because governments can constantly monitor us - the "golden age of surveillance," as Snowden calls it here. What is always conveniently left out, however, is the fact that previous eras didn't have to deal with the reality that just one single human being could kill tens of thousands (maybe more) and bring down world economies. This isn't the golden age of being safe, when one person could only kill one or two other people with a sword. You must decide what is more important to you: purity or security. But, in the era of cyberspace, you will never have it both ways again.
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We are far less free than we've ever been. Forced to purchase insurance. Most all of the good drugs are illegal. And they take more freedoms daily.

As far as the rest, stop living in fear. It's your job to protect yourself, not the governments. And the ability to kill thousands has always been there. Ever since explosives were introduced.
 
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Vol8188 said:
We are far less free than we've ever been. Forced to purchase insurance. Most all of the good drugs are illegal. And they take more freedoms daily.

As far as the rest, stop living in fear. It's your job to protect yourself, not the governments. And the ability to kill thousands has always been there. Ever since explosives were introduced.
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Yes, it is precisely the job of government to protect me. That's its only purpose, to protect me from my neighbor, who may or may not want to steal from me, kill me, or swindle me. Government has no other point but to try to keep us from killing one another or from stealing from one another and to punish us severely should that not be deterrent enough.

I disagree that one person could kill thousands for a long time. That is only a recent development. One lone person (working in conjunction with others or not) simply didn't have that knowledge, power, and/or coordination in the past. This is only enabled by contemporary cyber communications and the miniaturization of weapons. For instance, we now have to worry about one person using a nuclear weapon, whereas this would have been unthinkable in the early days of nuclear weapons, simply because just one person had no way of obtaining and then lugging around a 10,000 lb bomb. (It's the same with computers and their miniaturization.) The fact that worldwide terrorist networks can now coordinate with one another much more effectively only compounds this concern.

Just out of curiosity, if not to protect us from one another, what is the job of government in your opinion? Seems pretty useless to me if that isn't its primary role, but you may be an anarchist. If that is the case, you and I have fundamentally different understandings of what the human being is in the state of nature.

EDIT: Okay, government has another major point, and that is to enhance our standard/quality of life by whatever means within its power, but its primary aim is to protect us. We just live such comfortable, relatively secure lives now and are so far removed from the reality of nature that we forget that the primary purpose of government is to confirm the social contract - that state wherein we give up some of our freedoms to ensure that we can collectively live safer, longer, and happier lives ideally.
 
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#1,319
volprof said:
Yes, it is precisely the job of government to protect me. That's its only purpose, to protect me from my neighbor, who may or may not want to steal from me, kill me, or swindle me. Government has no other point but to try to keep us from killing one another or from stealing from one another and to punish us severely should that not be deterrent enough.

I disagree that one person could kill thousands for a long time. That is only a recent development. One lone person (working in conjunction with others or not) simply didn't have that knowledge, power, and/or coordination in the past. This is only enabled by contemporary cyber communications and the miniaturization of weapons. For instance, we now have to worry about one person using a nuclear weapon, whereas this would have been unthinkable in the early days of nuclear weapons, simply because just one person had no way of obtaining and then lugging around a 10,000 lb bomb. (It's the same with computers and their miniaturization.) The fact that worldwide terrorist networks can now coordinate with one another much more effectively only compounds this concern.

Just out of curiosity, if not to protect us from one another, what is the job of government in your opinion? Seems pretty useless to me if that isn't its primary role, but you may be an anarchist. If that is the case, you and I have fundamentally different understandings of what the human being is in the state of nature.

EDIT: Okay, government has another major point, and that is to enhance our standard/quality of life by whatever means within its power, but its primary aim is to protect us. We just live such comfortable, relatively secure lives now and are so far removed from the reality of nature that we forget that the primary purpose of government is to confirm the social contract - that state wherein we give up some of our freedoms to ensure that we can collectively live safer, longer, and happier lives ideally.
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If we're to go with the Hobbesian view that humans are dangerous, vicious animals. it would beg the question of why allow a select few of these humans to rule over the masses?

It was Lord Acton who stated “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”
 
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#1,320
DEFENDTHISHOUSE said:
If we're to go with the Hobbesian view that humans are dangerous, vicious animals. it would beg the question of why allow a select few of these humans to rule over the masses?

It was Lord Acton who stated “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”
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In order to appropriately confront this debate, we must first get the matter of utopianism out of the way. Are you a utopianist? Because the answer to this question matters. I'm not a utopianist, and I believe that there is no perfect system of government or otherwise. So, no government system or state of anarchy will ever be perfect and each will present its own unique set of problems. The only true question, for me at least, is which system or lack thereof, is best and most desirable. Most people aren't utopianists these days, but perhaps you haven't been made cynical by postmodern relativism.

That being said, regarding your question concerning why trust the few to protect the many, government, ideally, is built to remain accountable to both the people and itself. This doesn't always happen in reality. There are indeed forms of government that can possibly be worse than anarchy, but, in most cases of democracy, the government has accountability. Likewise, it keeps the people accountable. I'm not a populist, and I tend to think the people are more dangerous than the government. Government is good, because it keeps the people - those unwashed, uneducated masses - accountable.
 
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#1,321
#1,321
volprof said:
In order to appropriately confront this debate, we must first get the matter of utopianism out of the way. Are you a utopianist? Because the answer to this question matters. I'm not a utopianist, and I believe that there is no perfect system of government or otherwise. So, no government system or state of anarchy will ever be perfect and each will present its own unique set of problems. The only true question, for me at least, is which system or lack thereof, is best and most desirable. Most people aren't utopianists these days, but perhaps you haven't been made cynical by postmodern relativism.

That being said, regarding your question concerning why trust the few to protect the many, government, ideally, is built to remain accountable to both the people and itself. This doesn't always happen in reality. There are indeed forms of government that can possibly be worse than anarchy, but, in most cases of democracy, the government has accountability. Likewise, it keeps the people accountable. I'm not a populist, and I tend to think the people are more dangerous than the government. Government is good, because it keeps the people - those unwashed, uneducated masses - accountable.
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I am not a utopianist. Nor, am I an apologist for the human condition. I recognize problems emerge in society. I also recognize, absent the state and its monopoly of violence, a free people can figure out problems without state sponsored violence.

"I am the first to admit I embrace a dystopic vision in which human society will be rife with failures, mistakes and foibles, we’re only human after all. And freedom will yield results not endorsed by everyone. But this barking mad idea of taking the worst of humanity and giving them the reigns of power over millions when they can’t even govern their own misbehavior." That's like fighting for peace, or fornicating for virginity

The state is nothing more than a parasitic entity who fleece the populace for survival. Liken them to a leech or a tick, they live off the blood of another.
 
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#1,322
volprof said:
Yes, it is precisely the job of government to protect me. That's its only purpose, to protect me from my neighbor, who may or may not want to steal from me, kill me, or swindle me. Government has no other point but to try to keep us from killing one another or from stealing from one another and to punish us severely should that not be deterrent enough.

I disagree that one person could kill thousands for a long time. That is only a recent development. One lone person (working in conjunction with others or not) simply didn't have that knowledge, power, and/or coordination in the past. This is only enabled by contemporary cyber communications and the miniaturization of weapons. For instance, we now have to worry about one person using a nuclear weapon, whereas this would have been unthinkable in the early days of nuclear weapons, simply because just one person had no way of obtaining and then lugging around a 10,000 lb bomb. (It's the same with computers and their miniaturization.) The fact that worldwide terrorist networks can now coordinate with one another much more effectively only compounds this concern.

Just out of curiosity, if not to protect us from one another, what is the job of government in your opinion? Seems pretty useless to me if that isn't its primary role, but you may be an anarchist. If that is the case, you and I have fundamentally different understandings of what the human being is in the state of nature.

EDIT: Okay, government has another major point, and that is to enhance our standard/quality of life by whatever means within its power, but its primary aim is to protect us. We just live such comfortable, relatively secure lives now and are so far removed from the reality of nature that we forget that the primary purpose of government is to confirm the social contract - that state wherein we give up some of our freedoms to ensure that we can collectively live safer, longer, and happier lives ideally.
Click to expand...

If the governments role was to protect you the 2nd amendment wouldn't exist. Neither would the standing army clause that is supposed to prevent us from having a national army for more than a two year period.

The governments role is to arbitrate. But even that can be done by the free market.

Edit: as for being able to commit mass murder, explosives were invented in the 10th century. So that ability has been around for 1000 years. The difference is you now have 24/7 news to keep you afraid. That's the only thing that changed.
 
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#1,325
Vol8188 said:
If the governments role was to protect you the 2nd amendment wouldn't exist. Neither would the standing army clause that is supposed to prevent us from having a national army for more than a two year period.

The governments role is to arbitrate. But even that can be done by the free market.
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I'd submit to you that the second amendment has been eroded ever since the 1932 firearms act and the gun control act of 1968, as well as other countless violations of this supposed right. It's of course ludicrous to take away a persons right to own the best means of self preservation. Then again, so is the idea of government.

Funny thing about that standing army clause, it was none other than good ole George Washington who organized troops to attack his own countrymen during the whiskey rebellion. So yeah, it's been like this for a long, long, time.
 
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