The Ancient and Well Honed Art of Betrayal

The young man's name is Edward Snowden. Mr. Snowden caused classified documents about the United States of America's government surveillance program to be  brought into the light of the Common Good. Mr. Snowden has been labeled as a traitor by John Boehner, Michele Bachmann, Dick Cheney and a large number of not so well known individuals who have access to our public media. Basically, a traitor is a person who violates his or her allegiance to and betrays their country or who, in a breach of trust, delivers his or her country to an enemy.

The issues that are being conveniently over looked by the above mentioned individuals in this bit of sophistic labeling are what allegiances to, betrayal of one's country, and delivering one's country to the enemies actually mean. The program that Mr. Snowden revealed is illegal. It is a huge violation of several of the Principles of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Mr. Snowden's loyalty and allegiance to his country impelled him to serve it, to protect it from its enemies.

He discovered that a group of individuals acting completely outside of the bounds of our Constitution had decided that their views on our national and international security outweighed any restrictions that our Constitution placed on what they saw as necessary to protect us. Acting completely outside of well known Constitutional guarantees against exactly what they did, they unlawfully created a gigantic system that used billions of tax payers' dollars to literally spy on us. In the name of protecting us from the kinds of subterfuge, criminality, terror, and lies that those who would undo democracy and liberty for everyone in the world have always employed, they knowingly violated one of our most sacred liberties.

A quick look at Humanity's history over the past few thousand years will reveal that this kind of sophistry has always been employed by those who would enslave us. The people who employ this kind of sophistry, if they consider it at all, may actually believe that they know what is best for us. They cannot trust the people to understand and take appropriate action. They believe that their superior vision of what is best for us justifies their violation of a sacred trust. They remain ignorant of the fact that the rejection of this attitude by the people was one of the primary drivers of the creation of this country and a huge step in the freeing of humanity from the grip of the elite few.

It is exactly this kind of blinding arrogance that drives traitors.  It is simple hubris that impels individuals to place themselves above others and in so doing to separate themselves from others, and to consider themselves to be above the Law. They do not see that their actions betray their allegiance to the basic tenants of our constitution which they claim to be protecting.

So, if we want to go on a traitor hunt, it would more be more effective to look for the nest that is spawning these insidious programs, than to try to crucify yet another person who had the courage to see a wrong and try to make it right.

Incidentally, by far, ancient nations and powers, just like human beings, crumble, not from some outside  power or force, but from an inner kind of insidious corruption.