General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I had dinner with a Civil Disobedience Veteran ... [View all]Leopolds Ghost
(12,875 posts)Whistleblowers, Whistleblower protection groups, and dissidents in countries with weak civil liberties (which we are not yet, but are moving towards in part thanks to Bush and with no letup since) are three groups of civil disobedients who are the most core original advocates of anonymous disclosures. If Snowden had wanted to escape arrest he would have / should have remained anonymous (according to lawyers who are experts in whistleblower cases.)
The reason Ghandian civil disobedience works is that you are going up against a regime that is unwilling to simply kill everypony, or cause you to disappear. When dealing with "war on terror" stuff, we do not know if that is the case.
Not the first one, obviously, that would be China or Syria (which is why it mystifies me that Snowden fled to China.) But we have to be careful not to become one of those democratic South American countries like the red scares of the 1970s and 1980s where people simply went missing.
That's also why the Vietnam war era protests (my impression, but correct me if I'm wrong) folded like a wet blanket after Kent State.
(Well, that and the fact that the majority of Baby Boomers were anti-hippie and pro-war -- it was the WWII era GREATEST GENERATION that went into the 60s as liberals and voted to end the war -- according to polls! The hippies were a minority of liberal children of the last widespread "liberal generation" in the US. And yes, I'm pro hippie)
Even today, Peggy Noonan of all people claims of the people she talks to, "young people have no problem with being spied on" because they don't remember a time when there was a distinction between the public and the private realm; "middle-aged people are too scared" of terrorism to do anything but let it continue; and it is the elderly who are most often staunchly against it and willing to risk safety for liberty. (she's against it)
Now I don't know if that's true of today's generation, that true liberals and civil libertarians are a minority of a mostly apathetic generation, as the Silent Generation was accused of.
As far as the people at the next table go -- lets be honest. The only reason I'm not rooting for Snowden to get away scot-free is because it would make him more likely to quietly "disappear" in some foriegn country. In today's America, which is beseiged by propaganda and China style conformism, his capture would only lead to most Americans rallying to see him waterboarded and in favor of being spied on. Too bad that rule by the opinions of the majority is not how civil rights operates, but it's how our courts and quasi-neo-conservative communitarian fuzzy-headed American thinking works. So that's another a reason to root for him not to be captured, because it will force the issue, and we've seen how Americans have landed on every issue when forced.
As for the people at the next table,
one does not have to be a right winger to be a civil libertarian.