Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Government Fears an Informed Public

"Where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission."
--V (V for Vendetta)

Edward Snowden continues to demonstrate the stuff of heroes. He states that President Obama has reneged on his promise that there would be no diplomatic 'wheeling and dealing' over Snowden's case. Now, the Obama administration is pressuring foreign governments to deny Snowden's asylum petitions.

Snowden observes that the right to seek asylum is an inalienable one. Individuals have the right to defend themselves. This includes the right to seek the help of others for self-defense purposes.

The US government is moving to offend the rights that it was famously founded to defend.

Snowden observes, "These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me."

Snowden astutely notes that in the end, the Obama administration does not fear whistleblowers like him. What it and all governments really fear is "an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised."

Sage words for us to reflect on as we begin our Independence Day celebrations.

1 comment:

dgeorge12358 said...

Here's what we're not taught about the Declaration and Constitution: Those words at the time they were written were blazingly, electrifyingly subversive. If you understand them truly now, they still are. You are not taught - and it is a disgrace that you aren't - that these men and women were radicals for liberty; that they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest of their world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order of nations; and that they were willing to die to make that desperate vision into a reality for people like us, whom they would never live to see.
~Naomi Wolf, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot