This was a comment on CNN about Snowden, I thought it was to the point. [View all]

[AverageMe]

It's not so simple as hero or.... This is not about a person or personalities it is about defining ourselves as a society. What sort of world do we really want to live in? Do we trust the government to do the right thing? In my view people ought to look at the history of the last several decades and what the trends are and make their own judgments. In theory, I would support the right of government to insure what it believes are the needs, security of otherwise, of the people. In practice I do not believe the current system exists for any other reason than to enrich the already rich and to make sure the status-quo never changes. I don't believe the government has an interest in my needs or my welfare--it promotes policies and systems that are bad for me personally and appear to harm most people. This, in the end, is what this issue is about.

The "secrets" the government holds are so great and so immense that we know very little about what actually goes on unless we do our own research. The mainstream media is utterly useless in my view in getting at the truth for a variety of reasons that go back, to Walter Lippman's notions on how public opinion ought to be shaped--I leave it to the reader to look into that.