I’ve had the opportunity to listen to Edward Snowden a couple of times. Before hearing him, I have progressed considerably far from the view I learned in grade school along with the name of Benedict Arnold that there was and is a stark difference when comparing cowards, traitors, moles, and deserters to heroes, patriots, agents and loyalists. There is often, however, not much of a difference. Especially when the horrors of war cover with blood the motives and objectives of the warring factions and subject many to certain death when they cannot sincerely tell to whom to give their loyalties.
On the one hand, we have benefited by knowing what Mr. Snowden revealed and there is real value in the discussion it has sparked. Probably none of that would have happened without an Edward Snowden. If he had been caught and prosecuted, he would have been muzzled by our sometimes patronizing, bourgeois, elitist and suffocatingly orthodox Judiciary and prosecutorial executive.
Yet, I’m not sure I agree with him. I don’t think he has an answer nor has he come to grips with when, where and how secrecy has to be maintained. Such decisions cannot be left to the individual supernumerary, agent or soldier to determine. Nor am I comfortable with oversight outside of an adversarial system: meaning it can’t be those in charge of running our security agencies. Furthermore, if the gate keeper or overseers do not have an adverse motive to reveal wrongdoing and overstepping, or to provide a credible check and balance, the government will always devolve into excess and malfeasance.
Still, if you think like I do that individuals like Edward Snowden have broken the law and do deserve to be punished, we still act like feudal lords who would lock captured royalty in the tower under relatively tolerable conditions until a prisoner exchange or money or other bartered items was exchanged but would throw into the most horrid dungeon the peasant foot shoulders and then subject them to the worst tortures imaginable. How do we do this?
Generals, Cabinet Heads, Agency Directors, Judges, CEOs, Corporate Owners, Congressional Reps, Senators and even Presidents sometimes make similar bad decisions to that of Edward Snowden and are never punished and when they are, their sentences are fairly trivial. We reserve the worst punishments for the least among us because our royalty cannot view such conduct in a rational manner. This is because their conduct does not just cause the harm the laws they broke were fashioned to prevent but their actions threaten to unmask and reveal our royalty, our leaders own excesses and law breaking. This cannot be tolerated by the powerful. It is equal justice they fear more than simply punishing the wrongdoer. So they make examples of the Tim DeChristophers and Edward Snowdens of the world by punishing them more harshly than they would ever punish those of the same socio-economic class. They don't want justice, they want obeisance at all costs.
Loren M. Lambert, December 8, 2015 ©.
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