Breitbart.com
Stone, the far-left filmmaker and apologist for liberal leaders worldwide, blasted the U.S. in a public appearance to promote his critically assailed series The Untold History of the United States at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
The director of Platoon and W. said NSA leaker Edward Snowden is a hero, the world should stand up to the U.S. and that the country's presence in the world must be countered.
It's a disgrace that Obama is more concerned with hunting down Snowden than reforming these George Bush-style eavesdropping techniques," said the outspoken, politically-charged filmmaker during an afternoon press conference at the Thermal Hotel in Karlovy Vary....
To me, Snowden is a hero, because he revealed secrets that we should all know, that the United States has repeatedly violated the Fourth Amendment." Stone said. "He should be welcomed, and offered asylum, but he has no place to hide because every country is intimidated by the United States....
Stone I find pretty irrelevant, though he is a fine director. Snowden, though, is a different matter.
ReplyDeleteI'm amazed that so many people seem to accept this false dichotomy regarding Snowden. "Is he a criminal or a hero?" is a silly question. If what appears to be true about him and his actions is, indeed, true then he is both. The idea of being both criminal and hero is not foreign to American experience. The Founding Fathers were, by definition, criminals. Many of them paid a high price for their treason, but it appears they felt the cause of freedom to be worth that price.
A far better question would be "should Snowden be pursued and prosecuted for revealing how the Fourth Amendment was being violated?" From my perspective the ideal situation would be one in which he was tried and, regardless of the weight of the evidence against him, the jury returned a "not guilty" verdict. This, too, assumes that things related to Snowden are as they appear.
Fourth Amendment limitations on government power, like other limitations set by the Constitution, are not mere inconveniences for the government to find ways to "get around." They restrict government power for the purpose of protecting freedom. If the idea that government is free to ignore the supreme law of the land is accepted, then the supreme law of the land becomes not the Constitution but the will and whims of those in power.
Stone is often not far left, but off the edge of rationality, but on this point, he's sailed back into good sense, and I agree with the statement here.
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