Edward Snowden’s Father Speaks

Lon Snowden, father of Edward, has written a letter to President Obama regarding his son.  It is a most eloquent statement in defense of civil disobedience in the face of a tyrannical state.  For example:

You are acutely aware that the history of liberty is a history of civil disobedience to unjust laws or practices.

Citing Thoreau, regarding using civil disobedience as the last option:

“…but if [the injustice by government] is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.  Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”

There is more:

Civil disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act and Jim Crow laws provoked the end of slavery and the modern civil rights revolution.

We…find your administration’s zeal to punish Mr. Snowden’s discharge of civic duty to protect democratic processes and to safeguard liberty to be unconscionable and indefensible.

We also find reprehensible your administration’s Espionage Act prosecution of Edward for disclosures indistinguishable from those which routinely find their way into the public domain via your high level appointees for partisan political advantage.

There is so much more – the letter is an example of what should be taught in a high school civics course.  It is worth reading, and reading to your children or grandchildren.

In the final paragraph, the letter includes a request:

In light of the circumstances amplified above, we urge you to order the Attorney General to move to dismiss the outstanding criminal complaint against Edward, and to support legislation to remedy the NSA surveillance abuses he revealed.  

And finally, an ideal that should not need to be stated if the Constitution has any meaning left in it whatsoever:

Such presidential directives would mark your finest constitutional and moral hour.

Not only this: these directives would also delineate if there is an ounce of a human being in Obama, or if he is 100% puppet.

(h/t Michael S. Rozeff at LRC)